Bayer Crop Science Canada will award $3,000 to 32 students across the country. 

The Bayer Crop Science Opportunity Scholarship program is available to graduating Grade 12 students entering their first year of post-secondary education this fall. 

Scholarships will be awarded to students based on demonstrated academic achievement, leadership in their community and their vision for how they will contribute to Canadian agriculture in the future. 

To apply, go to cropscience.bayer.ca. The application deadline is June 8.

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The Bayer Crop Science Scholarship for Future Leaders is designed for students enrolled in an agriculture bachelor’s degree program at one of six eligible Canadian agriculture universities (including the universities of Alberta, Lethbridge and Saskatchewan). Each scholarship is valued at $5,000 annually and awarded to students who have demonstrated their leadership, engagement and contribution to agriculture in Canada through their academic, volunteer/community involvement and/or their extracurricular activities. The deadline to apply is April 30.

The Bayer Fund Opportunity Scholarship is for graduating Grade 12 students entering their first year of post-secondary education in agriculture, food science or a culinary program at a Canadian university or college of their choice in the fall of 2020. Up to 65 scholarships valued at $1,500 each will be awarded to students based on demonstrated academic standards and leadership in their community. The application deadline is June 10.

For more info or to apply, go to cropscience.bayer.ca.

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To be sure, several smaller companies remain in the game — but with marriages now consummated for Dow Chemical and DuPont, and for Syngenta and ChemChina, Bayer’s pending takeover of Monsanto and, now, BASF getting set to buy Bayer Crop Science assets, Canada may soon see only four big players in pesticide and seeds.

BASF’s Canadian business director, Ron Kehler, spoke to Canadian farm media Tuesday about that company’s deal to buy seed and herbicide businesses from Bayer.

Asked about competition in the seed and chemical sectors, Kehler said the increased costs of stricter environmental regulations, trait development and finding new modes of action are raising the bar as to who can be a significant player.

“The price to play, or to be in this business, continues to go up,” he said.

For 5.9 billion euros (C$8.7 billion), BASF will get Bayer’s traits and breeding for soybeans, cotton and canola, and, significantly, its Liberty (glufosinate ammonium) herbicide business and LibertyLink and InVigor traits.

The deal also gives BASF Bayer’s seed processing facility in Lethbridge, chemical formulation and distribution facilities in Regina and a seed breeding centre in Saskatoon.

Along with those existing products, BASF has purchased Bayer’s research and development pipeline — including, Kehler said, “more than 250 patent families.”

With this purchase, 1,800 Bayer employees from commercial R+D, breeding and production — of whom 300 are within scope in Canada — will transfer to BASF.

Bayer is divesting these assets in the context of its acquisition of Monsanto.

Kehler described Bayer’s development of LiberyLink technology as “an amazing business story,” currently growing by about 14 per cent per year.

BASF’s purchase of Bayer’s LibertyLink canola, soybean and cotton portolio, he said, will be “highly complementary” to BASF’s existing product portfolio. Many of the large agricultural chemical companies are also now in the seed business.

New to the seed business, BASF plans to use the newly-acquired LibertyLink varieties to “deliver more tools to support growers,” Kehler said.

Having a wider range of products to offer will give BASF staff more opportunities to connect with customers over the course of the crop year, and “partner with farmers in new ways.”

Although the purchase of Liberty, a Group 10 herbicide, will also be a valuable asset for BASF, “we want to offer new solutions for herbicide-resistant management by using glufosinate ammonium as an attractive mixing partner,” Kehler said.

Rotating chemical groups and using tank mixes as part of an integrated weed management program can help to slow the development of herbicide resistance in weeds.

BASF will also continue to build on the seed trait development it’s done in the past.

“We’re now able to fund more work in traits and continue to do the work that we’re doing on herbicide development, which is an area of key important to our research,” Kehler said.

Until the deal closes, Kehler said it will be “business as usual” for farmers dealing with BASF or Bayer.

The sale is conditional on Bayer closing its deal to buy Monsanto, which the German company has said it hopes to do early next year.

— Leeann Minogue is editor of Grainews at Griffin, Sask. Includes files from Maggie Van Camp of Country Guide at Blackstock, Ont.

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BASF, the world’s third-largest maker of crop chemicals, has so far avoided seed assets and instead pursued research into plant characteristics such as drought tolerance, which it sells or licenses out to seed developers.

But Bayer’s $66 billion deal to buy U.S. seeds group Monsanto, announced in September 2016, has created opportunities for rivals to snatch up assets that need to be sold to satisfy competition authorities (all figures US$ except where noted).

Bayer said it would use the proceeds to partly refinance the Monsanto acquisition. It plans to raise $19 billion toward the deal by issuing convertible bonds and new shares, and has lined up as much as $57 billion of bridge financing from banks.

Baader Helvea analyst Markus Mayer said a higher-than-expected valuation of the assets up for sale could mean Bayer now needs to raise less than $10 billion from the sale of new shares, which would be a positive surprise.

Bayer had offered to sell assets worth around $2.5 billion. The European Commission said in August that the divestments offered by Bayer so far did not go far enough and started an in-depth investigation of the deal.

Bayer has to sell its LibertyLink-branded seeds and Liberty herbicide businesses, which generated 2016 sales of 1.3 billion euros, because they compete with Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide and Roundup Ready seeds.

The deal also includes Bayer’s InVigor-branded seed lines, which use the LibertyLink trait technology.

LibertyLink seeds, used by soy, cotton and canola growers, are one alternative to Roundup Ready seeds for farmers suffering from weeds that have developed resistance to the Roundup herbicide, also known as glyphosate.

The spread of Roundup-resistant weeds in North America has been a major driver behind Liberty sales.

“BASF’s decision to acquire seeds assets represents something of a change to its prior view on its needs to respond to recent industry consolidation in agriculture,” Morgan Stanley analysts said.

“Nonetheless, the proposed assets for acquisition are high margin and high growth and represent a sensible bolt-on addition,” they added.

BASF CEO Kurt Bock told a conference call he would look at further acquisition opportunities in the seeds sector as well but said it would take “two to tango.”

The group is also expected to look at other assets — such as vegetable seeds — that Bayer may be forced to divest, a person close to the matter said.

Positive surprise

The sale to BASF values Bayer’s assets at around 15 times 2016 operating profit (EBITDA) of 385 million euros, which analysts said was reasonable compared with multiples of 19.3 for ChemChina’s takeover of Syngenta and more than 20 for Dow’s tie-up with DuPont.

BASF will finance the acquisition through a combination of cash on hand, commercial paper and bonds.

It is expected to reap sales synergies in the hundreds of millions of euros. On the cost side, however, savings will be slim at first as there is little overlap with BASF’s existing business and the group has promised to keep all permanent staff at the businesses it is buying for at least three years.

The acquisition will add to its earnings by 2020, it said.

The deal is conditional upon Bayer’s acquisition of Monsanto going through. While the European Commission could block that transaction, it has approved others, such as the Dow-DuPont deal and ChemChina’s takeover of Syngenta — although only after securing big concessions.

Bayer said it continued to work with the authorities to close the Monsanto purchase by early 2018.

As part of the asset sale to BASF, more than 1,800 staff, primarily in the U.S., Germany, Brazil, Canada and Belgium, will transfer to BASF. It is also acquiring manufacturing sites for glufosinate-ammonium production and formulation, seed breeding facilities and research facilities.

In Canada, Bayer Crop Science’s overall workforce includes about 400 people at facilities including a Canadian head office in Calgary, seed processing plant in Lethbridge, formulation and distribution facilities in Regina, seed-breeding centre in Saskatoon, Eastern Canada operation centre in Guelph and regulatory office in Ottawa.

— Maria Sheahan is a senior editor for Reuters in Frankfurt; additional reporting by Arno Schuetze. Includes files from AGCanada.com Network staff.

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“Now that The Mosaic Company Foundation is on board, we are able to continue supporting the growth of winter wheat across Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, and have professional agronomists available to help farmers improve their bottom lines,” said Paul Thoroughgood of the Western Winter Wheat Initiative.

The initiative is a collaboration between Bayer Crop Science, Richardson International, Ducks Unlimited, and now the Mosaic foundation to build awareness and credibility of winter wheat with the goal of making it a major crop in Western Canada. It has five agronomists working on the Prairies, including Janine Paly in Alberta. The Mosaic Company Foundation is an offshoot of fertilizer producer Mosaic.

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This fall, DUC conservation specialist Bryon Wolters invited Lakeland’s crop technology students to take part in a land reclamation project to supplement their Student Managed Farm experience. The project, located southwest of Vermilion, is on a piece of DUC land that presented some particular challenges for the previous owner.

“The land — known as the Driver project — has 38 bodies of water, rolling hills, and some equipment access issues,” said Wolters. “This made it difficult for the previous owner to do much with it. Previous attempts to turn the land into grass did not go well, so when DUC took it over, we decided to reclaim it, and as part of the process, introduce a crop of winter wheat.”

Wolters called Josie Van Lent, dean of Lakeland ag school, to see if the project would be of interest to her and her students. She jumped at the chance.

“The timing of Bryon’s call was perfect,” says Van Lent. “For a while, we have wanted to do something with winter wheat on the Student Managed Farm.”

Lakeland’s students and DUC seeded 135 acres in mid-September, and the crop was off to a good start as of mid-November. The students also met at the site with Janine Paly, DUC’s winter wheat agrologist in Alberta, to discuss the crop.

“Winter wheat is an attractive crop for a producer to have in their crop rotation — it has the potential to be high yielding and very profitable,” said Paly. “It is, however, an underutilized and underappreciated crop on the Canadian Prairies.”

Seeding the crop is challenging because of the short growing season, but worth the effort, said Paly.

“Producers who grow winter wheat are seeing multiple benefits which include added protection from soil erosion, and restored nutrient levels in the soil. The results so far on this site also indicate that winter wheat is well suited to this climate and geography.”

The students will learn more about weed management practices as well as marketing opportunities for winter wheat, said Lakeland crop technology instructor Peter Walsh.

“The milling industry especially likes winter wheat for its reduced protein and gluten levels,” said Walsh. “It has characteristics that are very desirable for baking flours.”

Winter wheat provides good nesting habitat for waterfowl, particularly northern pintail, whose numbers have been declining since the 1970s. The northern pintail is Alberta’s signature species, said Wolters.

DUC is partnering with Bayer Crop Science and Richardson International in the Western Winter Wheat Initiative. This initiative includes work being done with winter wheat on six “super sites” within Alberta. For more information, visit growwinterwheat.ca.

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Bayer Crop Science, Richardson International, and Ducks Unlimited are collaborating on the Western Winter Wheat Initiative.

“The purpose of this initiative is to build awareness and credibility of winter wheat as a highly productive crop option for western Canadian farmers,” says Janine Paly, an agronomist with Ducks Unlimited.

“If producers are thinking about growing winter wheat they are able to call us for help. We also have an interactive and comprehensive website. It contains stats that support the benefits of growing winter wheat, provides clear production management guidelines, and has tools to help producers grow winter wheat.”

• More from the Alberta Farmer Express: Richardson joins revamped winter wheat initiative

If a producer is planning on growing winter wheat this fall, Paly says now is the time to get things ready.

“If producers are thinking about growing winter wheat, they should start to think about lining their inputs up. They should be getting seed treatments on their farm, setting up their fertilizer with their retailer, sourcing seed, and getting their seeding equipment out of the Quonset and ready to go.”

The recommended time for seeding depends on location in the province.

“For central Alberta, the first weeks of September are ideal,” says Paly. “The farther south you go towards Calgary and Lethbridge, that seeding date can be pushed back towards the end of September.”

For more info, see www.growwinterwheat.ca or call 866-761-5270.

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