The Hagstrom Report

Agriculture News As It Happens

Navigation

Bayer CropScience horticulture joins salad bar campaign

2014_0613_BayerExecsSaladBar
Elton Baldy, left, food chain manager for Bayer CropScience, and Rob Schick, the business management lead officer for Bayer's horticultural business, show off an example of the salad bars that Bayer has donated to schools in California, Florida, the Pacific Northwest and Illinois. (Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report)

CHICAGO — Bayer CropScience, a company known for its commodity seeds and herbicides, has formed a horticultural division and is seeking ways to make fruit and vegetable growers aware of its products, company officials said last week on the sidelines of the United Fresh Produce Association meeting here.

Bayer has joined United Fresh’s campaign to give salad bars to schools as part of its attempt to get to know the fruit and vegetable industry better, said Bayer CropScience Horticulture Strategic Business Management Lead Rob Schrick.

Historically Bayer has developed herbicides and fungicides for use in commodities such as corn, soybeans and cotton but sometimes found uses for those products on specialty crops. But the new division is intent upon developing products exclusively for horticultural crops, Schrick said.

One of Bayer’s major goals is to find a solution to citrus greening, the disease that is ravaging Florida’s citrus groves.

Technically known as huanglongbing (HLB), the disease is transmitted by a small Asian insect, discolors fruit and causes trees to die in about five years, according to a Bayer publication.

To develop a chemistry-based solution to citrus greening, Bayer has become a supporter of the Citrus Research and Development Foundation, a Florida nonprofit corporation that works with universities to engage in citrus greening research, said Elton Baldy, the food chain manager for Bayer.

Critics have questioned whether Bayer’s neonicotinoid products contribute to the decline in bee populations that are so important to fruits and vegetables. But Schick noted Bayer has a bee care center in Research Triangle Park, N.C., and said the company “is very confident in the products we have.”