Take a few minutes to talk with Brian Naber, and you quickly realize he has a glass-half-full outlook on the state of U.S. agriculture and the crop protection industry specifically.
As president of Bayer Crop Science for the North America and Australia/New Zealand Region for nearly a year now, Naber says growing up in a farming family in southwest Minnesota helped prepare him for the rigors of leading through the current economic and regulatory challenges.
“I think if you’re in agriculture, you have to be an eternal optimist,” he says.
Naber is speaking specifically to the challenges of controlling tough weeds like waterhemp and Palmer amaranth. While dry soil conditions continue to persist in the Midwest this spring, he remains optimistic Mother Nature will send moisture.
But if she doesn’t, Naber is also confident U.S. corn and soybean growers will adjust. He thinks they’ve learned during the past few years of tough weather and supply chain hiccups to have herbicide Plans A, B and C at the ready.
“We don’t know how the environment is going to play out in any given season or what the environmental scenario is that a farmer will face, so they have to be prepared,” he says.
The same is true for crop protection companies, he adds, reflecting on EPA’s decision to vacate product labels for over-the-top applications of dicamba in dicamba-tolerant soybeans for 2025. Bayer XtendiMax, Syngenta Tavium and BASF Engenia are dicamba-based products impacted by EPA’s decision.
Future Focused for Dicamba
Despite the regulatory setback with dicamba, all three registrants applied for new labels with EPA last spring, though approval is not anticipated until later this year at the earliest.
Naber says Bayer took a proactive approach in letting its customers know dicamba would be unavailable for use this season.
“We were very forthright about this with farmers back in August and September,” he recalls. “We said, ‘get the highest-yielding germ plasm in your field, and then let’s put an effective weed-control program together with the fundamentals in place. We’ve got to get multiple modes of actions out there. Let’s make sure we can handle wet, dry or any scenario in between. We just have to do it in 2025 without the benefit of dicamba.’”
He says the company has a stable of herbicide products that it is using to help farmers address tough weeds this year and steward their ground in the process.
“Farmers are excellent stewards of their land and the ultimate entrepreneurs,” Naber says. “I love this relationship we get to have with them as a company, because we get to do what we do best, which is innovate, and we get to work with them on how to realize that innovation on their farm.”
Technology on the Way
New innovations must always be relevant to farmers’ needs and provide value, Naber says, referencing several products the company expects to introduce during the next couple of years.
One of those is Vyconic soybeans, a new trait technology that will be the first to feature five herbicide tolerances — dicamba, glufosinate, mesotrione, 2,4-D and glyphosate — all in one trait package.
“We’ll be delivering high-yielding germplasm for soybean growers. Plus, we’re excited to think about the flexibility that will give them by putting five modes of action into a single soybean seed,” he says.
Vyconic soybeans have an anticipated market introduction in the U.S. and Canada by the 2027 planting season. In the meantime, Naber says Bayer will continue to work on the development of proprietary herbicide formulations to optimize its weed management offerings.
Another upcoming Bayer product is Convintro herbicide for use in corn and soybeans. The Group 12 herbicide features the active ingredient diflufenican, which will be a new mode of action herbicide for preemergence use in corn. European farmers have used diflufenican for weed management in cereals and lentils for several years. Bayer plans to introduce the herbicide to U.S. growers in 2026, pending EPA approval.
“It’s a specialist for waterhemp and pigweed control, something farmers are looking for,” Naber says. “Farmers are telling us, ‘bring me more innovation faster,’ because they need a full toolbox to handle those weeds.”
Taking Challenges in Stride
Tariffs and the possibility of tariffs are ongoing concerns for the agriculture industry this spring. While Naber says the company is sensitive to the impact tariffs could have on Bayer’s business this year, he says the company is ready, domestically, for the 2025 season.
“I don’t see any concerns,” he says. “From a seed perspective, most of it’s domestically produced so it’s staged and sitting in the marketplace for our farmers, and our crop protection products are out there as well.”
He says one of the factors that has contributed to Bayer being more proactive in the marketplace is farmers’ use of larger, faster planters.
“We don’t have the luxury anymore of a planting season that lasts six or seven weeks. Farmers could get it all done in a week or two now. So, it’s encouraged us to get everything out there ahead of time,” Naber says.
“We know Mother Nature is demanding that farmers are timely with their decisions,” he adds. “We want to be good partners with our customers, so we have to be ready, too, and we are.”
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