C-Suite: Vern Hawkins with Syngenta Crop Protection
Vern Hawkins, president of Syngenta Crop Protection, LLC began his career with the company more than 35 years ago, starting as a sales intern for Syngenta’s predecessor, ICI Americas. He has held a number of global and domestic business management roles and has broad commercial leadership experience. In 2010, Hawkins was promoted to president of Syngenta Crop Protection for North America where he continues to grow the company’s longstanding market leadership position in Crop Protection. The Scoop caught up with Hawkins during a recent Syngenta Media Summit. Here is a report from our conversation with him.
How is Syngenta poised to work through 2023 with retailers and farmers?
There are a couple of things that we're emphasizing. The first focus area is continued planning with our partners and farmer customers. We want to know – what are their needs, what are their timeframes for ordering and receiving products, can they manage the supply chain challenges – recognizing they probably won't be able to get everything they want when they order it? Our team has gained a lot of experience over the last two seasons on how to manage components that don’t have a reliable delivery date to the production plants. The biggest challenge beyond the active ingredient supply and logistics is that the basic components, which the industry typically doesn't have a strategic sourcing relationship for, have not been coming in on schedule. This uncertainty requires the team to do a lot more change outs. Waiting three days hoping that something's going to come in while the plant is shut down isn't a very smart way to run a business when you have high demand. When those situations occur, we are pivoting and adjusting to keep people working, and getting product produced and delivered to customers.
With disruptions in the global supply chain for the past two years, our team is doing a better job of taking the learnings to have more visibility on components’ scheduling and how to get earlier notifications of delays. That gives us a better line of sight on how to manage production campaigns. The fastest way to grow market share is to have product when your competition does not. Not having product does the reverse and is the quickest way to lose market share. What's most important to a retailer is: they don't want to lose a customer, and we understand that dynamic. Our commitment to retailers is not to put them in a situation where they lose a customer because of our performance. I'm looking forward to validating that capability in their eyes so that we elevate the trust they have in us as a partner.
Retailers have been a big part of our ability to manage a supply challenge because they know their growers’ needs and the level of flexibility their growers have related to product choices better than we do. Over the past few years, we have worked to build a deeper level of trust with our retail partners to meet grower needs. It’s not been perfect, but retailers tell us we've outperformed our competitors, and that we’re the best at communicating what they can expect. We always want to be honest with our channel partners, so when something changes, they have some visibility of it, and can articulate the issue with their customers.
How would you describe your go-to-market strategy?
We've been blessed with a strategy giving us a firm foundation for the past 20 years. We have been working through the channel to serve the grower and never wavered on our strategy. There are three major growth engines that we focus on every year – new products, partnerships and digital solutions. Being a research and development (R&D) company, new products is probably our most significant and consistent growth engine. We have a very strong portfolio, and a very good pipeline. During the pandemic, our R&D team took strict steps to protect themselves and each other, but they never stopped coming into the labs and continued doing field trials and testing during the entire time. We also have a couple of reduced risk products submitted for review by the US EPA right now that we hope to get registered in the next couple of seasons.
The second area, or growth engine, is our partnerships. Working with others who have the same focus and understanding of the business objectives they want to achieve to bring value to growers fosters strong partnerships. At Syngenta, we need the reach that retailers provide in the U.S. market, so part of our contract with the channel is to bring them a brand ladder, which has appeal to the different segments of growers they serve. We support those partners with the agronomics and/or economics or whatever it is they need to meet farmer needs.
Our third growth engine is our digital solutions through AgriEdge, which represents about 30% of our branded business today in Crop Protection. It's really about helping growers use their own data to make better decisions and improve profitability on their farms.
What has surprised you most in the last three years?
Certainly, the supply chain disruption was not anticipated. I've never had that situation before in my career. As a team, we discovered there were ways to circumvent some of the supply problems and demonstrate we could work through unforeseen adversity. A recent example is what we’ve done to address sea freight and getting some of our components. This year, we chartered our own cargo ship and filled the majority of it with active ingredient for some of our herbicides and fungicides. Taking the initiative and being creative paid off, and the delivery of goods was earlier than our expected timeline. In the past few years, we’ve also seen a lot more interest around biologicals and soil health with both areas offering additional opportunities and learnings for our business.
With regard to biologicals, how important are they to Syngenta’s business? What would you expect it to be in three to five years?
Right now, on a scale of one to 10, biologicals are probably a two to three of importance in our market. However, we have committed to become a market leader in biologicals over the next five to 10 years despite this being a very fragmented technological space. We hope to at least be in a five to six range (of importance) in five years’ time. It’s an active space right now, with a lot of people interested, but the potential is still largely undefined. Currently, we are focused on nutrient efficiency because we've learned that we can enhance a corn or soybean plant's production ability. Of course, some of that's driven by the high cost of fertilizer right now. Our teams are also researching soil health and how it influences the plants’ productivity, which bring different yield effects, alongside conventional treatments. We have to find ways to make the recommendation process more streamlined and be confident that our recommendation produces benefit for the grower. One of the things about the biologicals area is it is more sophisticated and uncertain than traditional crop protection, and you often need to have good growing conditions to sometimes capture the extra benefits that biologicals can provide. It is an exciting area to see grow, while keeping our core business strong and having success in the marketplace. As long as we continue to put our customers and employees at the heart of everything we do, Syngenta will continue to be a leader in the industry.
More about Hawkins:
Vern Hawkins has been president of Syngenta Crop Protection in North America since 2010, responsible for the US and Canada markets and teams. In 2021, Syngenta reported Crop Protection sales in North America of more than $3 billion, maintaining their position as a long-standing market leader in the agriculture industry.
Growing up in a rural Indiana community, Vern’s love for agriculture began early. He worked as a farmhand for his neighbors, was active in both 4H and FFA (formerly Future Farmers of America) and attended Purdue University, where he obtained his bachelor’s degree in Agronomy. Later, Vern earned an executive master’s degree in Business Administration from Temple University.
Vern’s service with Syngenta goes back over 35 years, starting when he was in college. He began his career as a sales intern for two summers with Syngenta predecessor, ICI Americas. Vern has held a number of global and domestic business management roles and he has broad commercial leadership experience. Vern was promoted to President of Syngenta Crop Protection in 2010 and he continues to grow Syngenta’s longstanding market leader position in crop protection.
Vern is an active industry leader and a strong advocate for modern agriculture and development of future agriculture leaders.
