Giving a keynote address to about 200 agricultural journalists this week in Leverkusen, Germany at the Future of Farming Dialog 2016 was Liam Condon, President of the Bayer Crop Science Division.

There were three key areas to Condon’s address: challenges in agriculture, innovation and sustainability. He started out with a statement that he can not comment on the negotiation between Bayer and Monsanto. Liam made a point that even with a volatile agricultural market right now, Bayer will continue to invest significantly in the Crop Science Division.

During his keynote address, Condon confirmed the current outlook for the Crop Science Division of Bayer in 2016: “In light of the continuingly weak market environment, we expect Crop Science to continue to outperform the market with sales to remain on the prior-year level on a currency- and portfolio adjusted basis. This is equivalent to reported sales of about EUR 10 billion.”

Condon also outlined the current Crop Science R&D pipeline with products to be launched from 2015 to 2020, highlighting a combined peak sales potential of more than EUR 5 billion. Beyond 2020, the R&D organization is working with more than 20 R&D targets in chemical crop protection, six targets for biological crop protection and eight targets for traits. In addition, the breeding programs include nine field crop targets in late development and research and 27 vegetable targets.

Condon also confirmed the commitment to R&D: “With about 10 percent of sales going into R&D our investment into innovation remains at an industry leading level in the agricultural industry. Irrespective of the volatility of the agricultural cycle, we need to take the long-term approach to innovation because in our highly regulated industry it takes us on average about 10 years to develop new products.”

You can listen to Liam’s speech and the Q&A here: Liam Condon, Bayer, Speech - Q&A

Please feel free to view and share photos from #FutureFarming here: Bayer Future of Farming Dialog 2016 Photo Album