b'to ensure farmers can continue to operate, market and sell their grain, helping ensure grain flow out of the country, while also maintaining safety. It is incredibly complex, but I am very proud of how our Ukrainian team, European team and Syngenta as a company have stepped up to help our customers, our peopleThe experience of purchasing seeds has and worked across the industry to help during this crisis. remained pretty much the same for generations, In addition, we have increasing volatile weather conditions that are becoming more challenging every season for manywhile farmers have continued to evolve their farmers, on top of rapidly increasing threats from pests and diseases that are impacting crop yields. The best way to helpoperations, bringing more sophistication fight these challenging conditions is innovation, developing seedinto how theyre planning their seasons and products and technologies that can make their crops resilient and healthy to withstand these many threats. managing inputs on the farm. We also live in At the same time, getting that innovation to farmers requiresa direct, on-demand society now, and farming a progressive regulatory system that helps encourage the move-ment of seed as well as more investment in new technologies.should be able to operate in the same way. Regulatory frameworks shouldnt be a deterrent to innovation and collaboration, which ultimately help farmers. Genome edit-ing is an example right now where its critical to embrace the sig-nificant potential of this new technology and what it can do for agriculture, allowing us to respond to evolving climate pressures and other crop threats in a much shorter timescale. systems, tools and new innovation that help us run a global busi-ness smarter, in a modern way, and hopefully simpler as well. We SW: Ive heard that one of your passions is customerwill continue to invest where it makes sense, whether it is local experience. What are some ways you think businessescustomer-facing roles to be on the ground with customers, or in need to modernize the customer experience? new enabling technologies that drive next-generation breeding JW: The experience of purchasing seeds has remained prettyand data science. Balancing global to support local is important much the same for generations, while farmers have continued toto ensure innovation is advancing while keeping strong execution evolve their operations, bringing more sophistication into howand customer orientation. theyre planning their seasons and managing inputs on the farm. We also live in a direct, on-demand society now, and farmingSW: What are your priorities now that youre leading should be able to operate in the same way.Syngenta Seeds?To address this need, we recently launched a new farmer- JW: Im fortunate to come into a situation where our business focused business model in the U.S., GHX by Golden Harvest,has been growing rapidly the past few years thanks to strong which provides farmers a new way to buy seed that makes theleadership and amazing people all over the world. We will experience easier with one flat per-acre price to simplify thecontinue to invest in our people and attract the best talent to buying process, so we can spend more time with farmers on thesupport our strategic ambition of becoming the most diverse, things that matter to help them maximize their seed investment.trusted and innovative team in agriculture. Great people are our We still offer the traditional seed selling models, because farmersfoundation.value choice, so we are increasing options available for them toWe are also fortunate that we have growth plans and oppor-choose from. This should help us increase our reach to farmers,tunities in all our regions. We have a very solid strategy, and which is critical to enable our growth and better serve farmers. my focus will be on the execution of this strategy globally. To bring a disruptive step-change in customer-focused innovation SW: Do you see the same customer experience needsto the market more rapidly, I believe we need to combine our globally, or is there a shift that needs to be made? capabilities with a collaborator of choice mindset. A go-it-alone JW: There is a common phrasethink globally, act locally approach is not the most modern way to bring new innovation which is relevant to what were doing at Syngenta Seeds. Ourand service customers better.global scale allows us to better assist farmers in both matureFrom this strategic ambition, our priorities are to continue and the most rapidly developing markets who are facing similarbringing biotechnology and other new technologies to the or unique challenges. We have assembled a world-class seedsmarket to help farmers sustainably feed the world, modernize organization around the globe, and we are leveraging that talentour offers to serve farmers, develop new end-use market oppor-to bring new and innovative ways to service farmers.tunities for farmers, and attack climate change by becoming a I firmly believe local business managers need autonomy andleader in regenerative agriculture. Its an ambitious approach, but support to run their businesses well. They are the closest towe have the people to make it happen, and our customers need their customer and know them best. Global teams help enablenew solutions, so we cannot just continue to have a business-as-the sharing of best practices, and bringing the best processes,usual approach.SWSEED ASSOCIATION OF THE AMERICAS 2022SEEDWORLD.COM /25'