Ep 34 | Pramod Thota on Food Safety and Agtech

In another episode of Asia's Farm to Fork: 5 Good Questions podcast, we speak to Pramod Thota, President, Asia Pacific, and Vice President of FMC Corporation, on counterfeits, sustainability and the importance of agriculture technologies in improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and alleviating issues like climate change. Pramod shares with us initiatives that FMC have spearheaded that targets the issues within food and agriculture. Listen to find out more.

Transcript

[00:04] Duke Hipp: Hi again, everybody. I'm Duke Hipp, host of Asia's Farm to Fork: 5 Good Questions podcast and we're honored to have another great guest with us. We have with us today Mr. Promote Thota, President, FMC Asia Pacific, Vice President for FMC Corporation. 

Hi, Pramod. How are you?

[00:36] Pramod Thota: I'm doing very well, Duke. It's a pleasure to join you to discuss agriculture in the state of agriculture today.

[00:43] Duke: Excellent. Thanks for joining us. So we have five questions on tap and so if it's okay, we'll jump right in and get started. 

So, the first question I wanted to unpack with you is around climate change. It's a topic, of course, of great discussion and a lot that's happening there, certainly. And as it relates to food and agriculture, it's a very big and important topic. We've seen it firsthand here in Southeast Asia and all across Asia really, the past few months. Soaring temperatures, multiple typhoons, floods, droughts, and heartbreaking really. In many cases, it's all happening inside the same countries, many countries around this region, but similarly over and over again in the same locations. 

Extreme weather conditions are also impacting, of course, the region's farmers and their crops and making their jobs particularly difficult. I'm wondering, if we can get your perspective as one of the leading plant science companies around the world, are there certain steps you see as being critical for farmers to take and helping them, supporting them and being productive while adapting to climate change at the same time?

[01:48] Pramod Thota: So Duke, that's a great question and it's a very timely topic for all of us who are involved in agriculture. Look, the impact of climate change is very high in terms of how farmers produce their food, the kind of crop yields you produce, and more importantly, the kind of pests that impact a farm.


So, from our perspective, climate change is resulting in two detrimental impacts to the farmer. One is the loss of crop yields, and the second one is the destructiveness of invasive pests. So both of these trends are being exacerbated by climate change. 

Within FMC, we are doing a lot of work to help farmers counter these challenges. One of our key levers is to increase our investments in research and development to bring new technologies to farmers. And these technologies that we're investing in often are new modes of action which allows farmers to really combat the yield loss and do more with less. In fact, when you look at the investments that FMC is making over the next few years, almost 100% of our investments are being focused on technologies that help farmers fight climate change and the resulting yield loss. 

And the second element of what we are trying to do is to help farmers increase what I call resilience of their agricultural production activities. And what I mean by that is, how do we help the farmer make the right decisions in terms of when to intervene when pests attack his or her field and at what dosage and what timing of that application. So, for example, we have a precision agricultural platform called the Arc that we are finding tremendous success, which essentially uses a predictive AI based model to predict when a particular pest might attack a field and what sort of pest populations increase over the next several weeks or months. So what this allows the farmer to do is to make decisions in terms of when to intervene. And I think that's very important because the sooner you intervene when a particular pest attack is underway, the higher your chances are of protecting that crop, the output, and the higher the chances are you're able to counter the detrimental effects of climate change, which is usually around erratic weather, uneven rainfall, and things of that nature. 

So both from bringing new technologies to the marketplace, investing in sustainable R&D products, sustainable products, and then ultimately helping the farmer make the right decisions on the field, I think these are some of the ways that FMC is trying to help growers around the region combat climate change and its impacts.

[04:37] Duke Hipp: Yeah, thank you for that. We hear that over and over again, the role of innovation, and it's encouraging to hear some of those developments and things that are being coming online, at least again from FMC in that front. Second question, another difficult topic. We're going from climate change to talk to you a little bit about sustainability. 

Of course, that's growing even beyond a buzzword, with sustainability and food and agriculture around a growing societal interest, around where our food comes from, how is it being grown, is it safe? And all that goes into that along the way, the food supply chain in that regard, thinking about the role of the farmer producing safe, nutritious food, are there some examples of projects that you can think of with respect to FMC and how you're involved in that? And again, in helping farmers grow produce in a way that is really helping drive not only food security and food safety, but also sustainability?

[05:31] Pramod: Another great question, Duke. Look, the concept of food safety is very important to everyone in the world. As a parent of three children, it's as important to me as it is to anyone else. So a lot of what we do during our waking hours is to figure out ways to make our food safe and help farmers grow safe food. In terms of how we are involved with the farmers and the growers around the region, I can give you three examples. 

The first one is the amount of focus we have on stewardship programs. And what we mean by that is these are trainings and programs that we offer to the growers in the region which essentially train them on how to grow safe food. The agronomic practices that they should be following, how they should be applying products which are in accordance with the label instructions, what sort of dosage you're using, what sort of spray windows you're using, because all of this is important in terms of ensuring that the food that the farmers grow are not laced with any potential MRL residue levels, for example, and ensuring that the pests are controlled with the least amount of intervention. And that is really what we are trying to do. It's also about ensuring that the farmers themselves are safe while they're applying these products. So what we do is we conduct a lot of stewardship programs around the region. 

For example, last year we have conducted these programs in 13 countries in Asia Pacific. We had about 8000 people growers attendees in person, and we also reached about 200,000 people virtually through these programs. So a lot of effort in terms of making sure the growers have all the right knowledge to ensure that the products are applied in a safe manner. So that's one. 

The second thing is we cannot talk about food safety without talking about soil. We at FMC believe that soil is one of the most important concepts of agricultural productivity. So we have to ensure that the soil in which the farmers and the growers are able to grow crops is safe, has a full nutritional spectrum, if you will. And that means that the farmers need to know what state of soils they are in. So in a lot of countries around the region, we offer free programs, free capabilities to the growers to test their soils. So we have this program called Dr Soil, where we go around the region, around the farming areas, and we test soils, and we tell them, we tell the growers, hey, this is what your soil profile looks like. These are the nutrients that you're deficient in. These are potential interventions you might want to consider. So what that gives is a higher probability that the farmers are growing safer food with the right level of nutritional content. 

Then the third one is and I've talked about the precision agricultural platform that we have, the Arc platform in my previous response, another element of precision agriculture that we are doing quite a bit of work is spraying using drones. And this is what I call precision spraying. So that the kind of spraying operations you have are standardized. You're using the right dosage, and you're exactly applying where the product needs to go. So this sort of precision spraying prevents accidental overusage of product. It prevents accidental exposure to other non target areas for.

I think, you know, these are three projects at least that come to my mind where I think FMC is doing a lot of work to ensure that the growers are able to grow safe food. And as I said at the beginning of this response, it's important for all of us, everybody in this world, to ensure that we demand safe food from growers and we do what we have to to get there.

[09:04] Duke Hipp: Thanks for that. Another great answer. And around drones, it's really interesting to see how that's become so much more of an important tool that's being used across Asia. We hear about it a lot and you see a lot of developments there certainly. Well, moving from tough topic to another tough topic, unfortunately, we talk a lot about the smallholders in Asia. Understandably so because we have the smallest size farms, the most number of smallholders anywhere in the world here in Asia. They have so many issues they have to face every day, whether it's landholder rights issues, access, technology, availability of finance, and on and on. But one of the issues that kind of gets lost in the shuffle is what's happening around counterfeit, any legal pesticides that are too prevalent, frankly, around the region. And as you know, these negatively impact not just the farmers livelihood. But also, frankly, with respect to produce being rejected and other issues. Of course, it becomes a question of safety for themselves and also the environment and the produce as well. So we wanted to get your take on that. I understand the FMC has recently launched a campaign on that topic around, again, the prevalence of counterfeit illegal agricultural inputs. Maybe perhaps you could share more about that.

[10:15] Pramod Thota: Sure, happy to. Look, when I think about the issue of illegal pesticides counterfeit products in our market, I think this is probably one of the biggest challenges we as an industry are facing, the farmers are facing because illegal and counterfeit products pretty much impact everything a grower does and ultimately what a consumer is going to eat. In terms of the impacts that counterfeit products have, they impact production operations by not being efficacious or worse still actually crops being applied with product that have no business being applied. Right. It impacts yields significantly. We know of incidents where farmers lost their entire crop because they used illegal counterfeit products.

So it affects farmer economics and ultimately it has the ability to impact overall food production in the world. So we at FMC take counterfeit products very seriously. Again, a lot of effort we spend on in terms of educating farmers how to buy the right products. 

So as you mentioned earlier, this year we launched a pretty large social media campaign. We call it #Deal with Real FMC. And the whole thesis of this particular campaign is to educate the growers about using the right products and ensuring that the products they buy are legal, number one, and from trusted sources. And I'm happy to say that this particular initiative has gotten tremendous traction both within the Asia Pacific region, but also globally in Latin America, in Europe. And look, you know, the issue about counterfeit products is not just limited to FMC. I think it impacts every corporation which is trying to do the right thing for the grower. So I think there's a lot of interest in this and we as a corporation are committed in fact, through our brand protection efforts, through our counterfeit programs, anti counterfeit programs, we were able to seize almost 700 tons of spurious product just last year. And not to mention the thousands of smallholder farmers who unfortunately fall prey to these products, both from an economic standpoint, but also ultimately when they're trying to market the produce to entities that obviously look at MRL. 

So it's a very serious issue, Duke, and we at FMC take it very seriously. But I'm glad to see that there's a tremendous response to our program. And at the end of the day, I believe that illegal counterfeit products are known and they require support of everyone in the value chain. It's manufacturers such as our company, it's the channel that sells these products, our distributors, our retailers and ultimately it's the growers who have to make the right choices. But we are here to help. And my message is, look, always ask the question is this a legal product? Is this a real product? Right? I mean, that's very important for us.

[13:07] Duke Hipp: Yeah, thank you for sharing on that. It is an issue that disproportionately affects smallholders, as you said here in this region. So it's got many repercussions and thank you for sharing on that. Next question, we just recognized recently international Day of Awareness on Food Loss and Waste Reduction. And we know globally around 14% of the food that's produced is lost between harvest and going to market retail. So on that particular front and again, the issue around food loss and that sort of transport and transit from the farm to the market are things that we can be doing to promote with respect to agriculture technology and help reduce that numbering that number down. As far as food loss on the farm, and on the farm level.

[13:48] Pramod Thota: Look, agricultural technology has a big role to play here. And the issue of food loss, again a big challenge in terms of the amount of tonnage of food that gets wasted along the supply chain. Two things come to my mind. One is pre harvest. What interventions can you do pre harvest to ensure that you're minimizing food? Wastage and some of the things that we are working on is how do you use data, how do you use precision agricultural technologies to ensure that, again, the farmer has the right information on when is that last spray that you're going to do on your crop? When do you harvest it? The amount of fertilizers you're going to use and the kind of water usage patterns. So a lot of data is generated on the farm that we are trying to synthesize for the benefit of the grower. So you are harvesting your produce at the right time. So you minimize the losses as the produce is moving from the farm gate to the consumer. A second element is what do you do after the produce is harvested?


So when you look at your post harvest segment, there's a lot of new technologies that I'm frankly very impressed with in terms of your Internet of things, the IoT devices and sensors that you can use in your transportation, in your cold storage refrigeration warehouses where you can monitor the quality of what's happening with that storage. So again, then you can do some interventions to make sure that they're appropriately being stored. For example, if you're storing fruits and vegetables in cold refrigeration for six months, are you monitoring what the health of that particular produce is? If you're storing grain in a silo, are there humidity issues, are there pest issues? A lot of this has to come down to monitoring and what can we do once we have that data with us. So again, FMC is working with growers around the region to bring new technologies, new AG tech services to bear. So we'll be helping farmers make these decisions. Ultimately, it's about reducing even a 500 basis points of decrease in food wastage contributes tremendously to food security around the world. And that's what FMC believes that all of us should be involved, who are involved in the industry have to drive towards. And they're happy to say that we are getting there, but it's going to take time. But we are getting there.

[16:06] Duke Hipp: Thank you for that. It's another great answer. And these are all tough topics. I appreciate your insights on all of these. And we've come to the fifth question, and since we've talked about some pretty tough issues, we'd like to lighten it up a little bit at the end with a fifth question and just sort of course come down to the one thing that is a common denominator for all of this, and that's food. We are very fortunate here in Asia Pacific to have access to a lot of really good food. And so the exit question we'd like to pose this season is: are there any particular foods that you really are a big fan of that are unique to this region that you put at the top of your list?

[16:41] Pramod Thota: Probably the toughest question of them, considering the fact that I'm based out of Singapore and in Asia. Look, I'm a big foodie. A lot of my life is spent on sourcing the right food. It's a tough question because I do love variety and Asia Pacific has such a wide spectrum of really delicious food. Being born and raised in India, obviously the Indian cuisine is a big part of my life. I love the Sichuan cuisine coming out of China. The Singaporean cuisine has its own take on a lot of regional dishes. Indonesian cuisine, again, brilliant. So it's hard, Duke. But if I have to pick what my favorite cuisine is, or what would I want if I'm marooned on an island? I'd probably say the Indonesian Cuisine, the Nasi Goreng, especially, and some of the seafood they have. But again, like I said, I'll eat anything, and Asia has a lot to offer, but this is probably the hardest question of all.

[17:39] Duke Hipp: Well, you can't go wrong. You're right, those are all good choices, and we've heard quite a good variety so far, even just early into this season. So thank you for that, too. And with that, we're officially off the Five Good Questions hot seat. Appreciate your time. Thanks Pramod, thanks for doing this.