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BASF Functional Crop Care
Farmers are challenged to improve yield and plant health while managing environmental stresses. BASF has, for many years, provided herbicides, fungicides and insecticides that help farmers get that job done. In addition to those established tools already in the market, BASF has created a new field providing additional tools beyond conventional crop protection to work alongside conventional crop protection.
Dr. Juergen Huff, Senior Vice President, Functional Crop Care with BASF, tells Brownfield that 50% of nitrogen content in fertilizer is lost between application and plant update, so farmers are investing money into fertilizer that goes into the air, not into the plant. BASF will introduce new Limus urea protection technology to the market as early as next year. The technology keeps the urea from decomposing in the soil.
Huff said BASF has focused on getting closer to the farmer-customer and to a more solution-oriented mindset. He said farmers today face many challenges, from nutrient and water supply to increased regulatory restrictions for application of products. Huff believes farmers are professionals in a high-tech industry. They demand more from industry and recognize potential to make farming more sustainable and more profitable.
Dr. Huff believes implementing tools such as Biologicals will allow farmers to focus on the crop instead of focusing on limitations of technology. He is exciting about the future for agriculture and the role BASF will play. With a growing world population and many more people to feed, farming is facing a huge challenge. BASF, Huff tells Brownfield, is an innovation based company with many ideas to develop – from nutrient and water technologies to new chemical modes of action for new herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and biological.
It is exciting for Huff to see future challenges on one hand and the ability to answer those challenges on the other.
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