One of the key chapters in ‘Boom, Gloom and the New Normal’ is titled ‘Doing More with Less’.
It argues that the key need is to be practical. Companies should focus:
- In the fields of water/food, on reducing the amount of waste, and the output that is lost when product is moving to market
- In developing new products and services on core needs such as food, water, health, shelter and mobility
- In turn, this will enable them to ‘do more with less’. Carbon footprint will be reduced, and products will be more affordable
The blog is therefore delighted to welcome a major new initiative by Syngenta, the world’s largest agricultural company, that aims to do just this.
In its Good Growth Plan, the Swiss-based seeds to fertilisers group has set itself a range of targets including increasing average productivity of leading crops without using more chemicals, land and water. It will work with major NGOs in a 7-year initiative planned to run till 2020, which will use its tens of thousands of dealers and agents to educate and advise farmers on how to use its products and technologies.
New thinking such as the Good Growth Plan shows how today’s challenges can be overcome by adopting new ways of working. As CEO Mike Mack told the Financial Times, “For the world’s largest pesticide company to say do more with fewer pesticides is not intuitive”.