Segment Profile

Indications and sectors

Fungicides

Protecting crops against harmful fungal diseases

Herbicides

Reducing competition from weeds for nutrients, water and sunlight

Insecticides

Combating insect pests in agriculture and beyond

Seed Treatment¹

Biological and chemical crop protection, functional coatings and colorants

Seeds & Traits

Optimization and development of seeds and new traits

Sales

Factors influencing sales

Income from operations before special items

Million €

How we create value – an example

e3^® Sustainability Cotton Program
Complete field-to-retail traceability of cotton in the fashion industry

Value for BASF

Expected share of the U.S. cotton seed market by 2025

35%

Value for customers

Higher market price for participating growers of

up to $159/acre

e3^® is BASF’s program for sustainable cotton in the United States. e3^® helps to better manage the production of sustainable cotton and to promote demand throughout the entire textiles supply chain. Verification and certification through independent audits increase the recognition of sustainably produced cotton and enable further reductions in the environmental footprint. Demand for our FiberMax^® and Stoneville^® cotton seed brands, which are part of the program, is high. We expect a steady increase in U.S. market share for cotton seed through 2025, from 11% to 35%.

The e3^® Sustainability Cotton Program helps farmers meet downstream customer demand for more traceable and sustainable supply chains in the fashion industry. They commit to growing cotton more efficiently and to reducing the impact on the environment. e3^® cotton can be traced from the farmer to the retailer and shows end consumers that their clothes have been produced in a fair, economically viable and environmentally responsible way. BASF is the only company providing this level of traceability. This has increased demand for fiber meeting e3^® standards, creating a higher market price for the grower of up to $159/acre.

Strategy

• Innovation-driven strategy for profitable future growth in selected markets
• Stronger customer orientation with a focus on strategic, regional crop systems
• A stronger portfolio with more sustainable solutions

The world’s population is expected to increase by 25%² from 2020 to 2050. Its growing demand for food must be reconciled with limited natural resources such as arable land and water. As a result, farmers around the world face the challenge of increasing agricultural productivity in a sustainable way by about 50%³ by 2050 compared with baseline 2012 to meet the needs of a growing population.

In mid-2019, we completed the integration of a range of businesses and assets acquired from Bayer. With this, we achieved our goal of ensuring business continuity from day one and created a solid foundation for growth. This acquisition has transformed our position in the agricultural industry: We now connect seeds and traits, crop protection and digital solutions. This enables us to optimize farm yields and profitability, and better address environmental and societal demands.

With our innovation-based strategy in agriculture, we put the farmer’s business at the center of everything we do. As one of the world’s leading agricultural solutions companies, we focus our activities on four major strategic customer segments and selected crop combinations, known as crop systems: soy, corn (maize) and cotton in the Americas; wheat, canola (oilseed rape) and sunflowers in North America and Europe; rice in Asia; and fruit and vegetables globally. With a deep understanding of the way individual growers manage their farms and crop systems, we can better serve them with a connected offer based on our expanded portfolio and practical, down-to-earth advice.

The success of our customers depends on many factors such as weather, plant health, soil conditions and prices for agricultural produce. Farmers today have to analyze more and more data of increasing complexity to make the right agronomic decisions. BASF’s innovative digital products, marketed under the xarvio^® Digital Farming Solutions brand, help our customers to use this data to their advantage, supporting better decision-making and ensuring more efficient and sustainable resource allocation.

We actively steer our offer for farmers and the agricultural industry toward sustainable solutions by integrating sustainability into all business and portfolio decisions. Sustainability criteria are firmly embedded in our entire research and development process. We invest continually in our well-stocked innovation pipeline to identify and further develop compounds that benefit both farmers and the environment. We align our research approach and investments with our strategic crop systems to support the success of our customers with innovations.