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American Seed Trade Association (ASTA) Chair John Latham with Latham Hi-Tech Seeds kicked off the virtual 2020 ASTA CSS and Seed Expo Monday with nearly 1000 attendees from around the world registered to participate.

“This virtual format has been great,” said Latham. “I think we really hit it out of the park this week.”

Latham talks about how the industry faced the challenges of 2020 and what priorities are for 2021 in this interview.
ASTA Interview with Chair John Latham (6:58)

ASTA hit the ground running Monday morning with the “Majors Crystal Ball” featuring a panel of speakers from the industry’s largest companies, each presenting their company’s perspective on what lies ahead for the seed industry after a year of upheaval for the entire world. The panelists included Linda Trolinder of BASF, Michael Graham with Bayer, Neal Gutterson with Corteva Agriscience, Trevor Hohls of Syngenta.

After this year, predicting the future is less accurate than ever before, but the major seed company players took a stab at it. As Linda Trolinder with BASF said, “The most clever way to predict the future is to create it yourself.”

Here are a couple of the Majors’ comments from the session
ASTA CSS Majors' Crystal Ball sound bites (7:21)

Register here to see the whole session.

Find more content from ASTA CSS here:
2020 ASTA CSS & Seed Expo Virtual Newsroom

The biggest seed industry event of the year kicks off Monday, December 7, as the American Seed Trade Association presents the annual ASTA CSS and Seed Expo with a state-of-the-art virtual format that is almost like being there.

The organization has already conducted two virtual member meetings this year and Jennifer Crouse, ASTA Senior Director of Meetings and Services, says they have put a great deal of effort into making this event engaging for attendees. “What they are going to experience in our virtual event is geared toward as much interpersonal interaction and engagement as possible,” said Crouse.

She says they had some fun designing their custom platform to be like the Chicago Hyatt hotel where the meeting is normally held, but with some upgrades like putting the Big Bar right in the middle of the trade show and having fields of corn outside the windows instead of downtown Chicago. “But one of the biggest things strategically is that we are going to extend the life of this … there’s going to be several months where you can visit the trade show.”

Monday’s agenda starts with a general session featuring a panel of speakers from the industry’s largest companies, each presenting their company’s perspective on what lies ahead for the seed industry after a year of upheaval for the entire world. That sets the stage for three full days of informative sessions and trade show visiting.

Registration and more information can be found here. Learn more about what is in store next week in this interview with Jennifer.
ASTA Interview with Jennifer Crouse on Seed Expo (7:05)

Find more interviews and information from the expo on the AgNewsWire virtual newsroom.