Manuel Bravo, President & CEO Mexico at Bayer is speaking on the Day 1 Opening Plenary: 'Enhancing Resilience and Sustainability in Mexican Agriculture: A Coordinated Approach to Climate Challenges and Global Markets' at the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit in Mexico City. Before the summit, Manuel shares the importance of leveraging efficient digital solutions for Mexican growers in response to climate challenges. Watch the 5 minute interview or read the full transcript below.

 

How is Bayer collaborating with Mexican growers to respond to climate challenges?

[Manuel Bravo]: Globally, our vision with growth science is to help them produce at least 50% more in the coming years, restore nature and grow regenerative agriculture at scale. We have put sustainability and regenerative agriculture at the center of our strategy in order to help our farmers be more productive, profitable, sustainable, and be able to adapt and mitigate climate change challenges. So, we're helping them become more resilient with better solutions for seeds, crop rotation, digital solutions, and really promoting these new agricultural practices.

What digital programmes and platforms are being developed for Mexican agriculture, and how will they improve the sustainability of the sector?

[Manuel Bravo]: Digital is key to all the solutions that we are bringing to farmers. Firstly, with smallholder farmers in Mexico, around 85% of our farmers have less than 10 hectares. So we are developing a lot of these kind of digital platforms in order to be efficient in bringing them better agronomic practices. For example, we have an E insurance platform in which they're able to mitigate all these climate change risks through digital insurance. We have some others for the smallholder farmers to help them manage water better. For medium and large farmers, we are launching Q4 in Mexico our 2024 global platform, Fieldview, which will bring a totally different game to our farmers in Mexico.

With high global investment into sustainable food systems, how can Mexico position itself as the destination for investment into climate-smart food production?

[Manuel Bravo]: Mexico has a huge advantage. We have a border with the largest market in the world, that is the US. We are part of the largest trade agreement with Canada, US and Mexico. We also have a very good evolution of agriculture in the country, and we have to start seeing this investment coming to the north part of the country. Of course, we need to invest a little bit more in infrastructure and into better digital platforms. But we are meant to be the main exporter of produce to the US.