The University of California, Davis, Seed Biotechnology Center completed another successful session of the Seed Business 101 course (Field Crop curriculum) last week, September 12-16, in Durham, North Carolina.
Congratulations on the completion of the course to the following seed industry professionals: Jeff Coger, Bayer; Edward Fish, Bay State Milling; Jessica Heitmann, Bayer; Chris Holzer, Bayer; Teresa Neuman, Canadian Seed Trade Association; Jeff Ratliff, Bayer; Werner Vossen, Bayer; Kemper Wagner; Carrie Wright, Bayer; and Julie Yang, Bayer.
Dave Westphal, Rale Gjuric and John Sorenson instructed the course. Guest speakers included industry experts: Brian Ashford of Cherry Farms Seed and Wyatt Richardson of Monsanto. In addition, course participants had the opportunity to meet with key personnel and tour local facilities and farms such as: Jay Sullivan Farms, Cashwell & Jones Processing Plant and the Monsanto Testing Station.
Seed Business 101 is a one week course designed to expose participants to the five functional areas of a seed company — research and development, production, operations, sales and marketing and administration. By creating a virtual seed company and case studies for each functional area, the course content is interactive. During each of the four case studies, participants assume a different functional responsibility within the company. The course gives employees that are new to the seed industry a broad understanding of the major aspects of a seed company’s operations and cross-departmental knowledge of best practices for profitability.
The next session of Seed Business 101 Field Crops will be Dec. 2-6 in Chicago, Illinois. The early bird discount ends Oct. 17. For registration and course details, visit sbc.ucdavis.edu or contact Rebeca Madrigal at rsmadrigal@ucdavis.edu.
