BioSolutions: Emerging options and opportunities - Learning from French Ecosystem

BioSolutions: Emerging options and opportunities - Learning from French Ecosystem Webinar  March 30, 2023, Thursday, 9:00 - 10:30 AM, EDT (Washington DC time)Click here to convert to your local Time WebEx (information enclosed below)

Moderator: Christian Le Roux, General secretary, M2i Life Sciences

Opening Remarks: Parmesh Shah, Global Lead, Data, Digital Agriculture, and Innovations, Agriculture and Food Global Practice, The World Bank

Speakers: 
Benoit Jimenez, Sustainable Transformation Director, ROULLIER          
Baptiste Soenen, Head of Agronomy, Innovation & Tools Department, RAGT Semences          
Anthony Bugeat, CEO, AXIOMA and Board member at LA FERME DIGITALE          
Alexandre Versigny, Southern and Central Europe BU Director, Bioline Agrosciences from Invivo Group

Discussant:         
Diego Arias, Practice Manager, Agriculture and Food Global Practice, Latin America and Caribbean Region, The World Bank         
Malte Plewa, Junior Professional Officer, Climate Smart Agriculture, Agriculture and Food Global Practice, The World Bank

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The recent increase in fertilizer prices has been an opportunity to discuss the relevance of chemical inputs as the solution for ensuring food security for a growing population. It is increasingly evident that an over-reliance on chemical inputs has had detrimental impacts on the environment, from pollution and soil degradation to GHG emission, it is also a source of vulnerability with a dependency on a few large suppliers as the war in Ukraine highlighted. The agriculture sector should rethink its relation to soil fertility it is to significantly support the effort towards mitigating climate change and getting more out of our shared resources.Now more than ever, we need answers to the world’s climate, health, and sustainability challenges. BioSolutions can provide a powerful contribution to addressing these issues. A more integrated approach to farming and using innovative biotechnologies can provide a more sustainable option for supporting crop yields, reducing GHG emissions, and capturing more carbon in soils in the longer run. Nevertheless, moving away from a world where chemical fertilizers dominate as the solution to soil fertility, to a more balanced approach integrating BioSolutions in the mix of options comes with its own set of issues. Regulatory frameworks, approval processes, and how to deal with the perceived risks and costs associated with changing production practices need to catch up with the new biological possibilities. And yet we are in a hurry. Incentivizing a rapid change will require fast-tracking approval processes and encouraging to move to combined approaches.To find solutions to tackle the crisis triggered by the Ukraine war and for building more resilient Food Systems in the longer term, the French Administration rapidly brought together two initiatives, FARM (Food Agriculture Resilience Mission) and Save the Crops. The latter specifically focuses on how to deal with the fertilizer crisis, and which proposes to look in the longer term into ways to decrease the dependence created by the current soil fertility and fertilizer market. Nature-based solutions for soil fertility are an important tool to achieve this goal and the French ecosystem has put a lot of investment into identifying suitable solutions. As such, this second iteration of the “Fertilizer Disrupted” webinar series is bringing to you actors with complementary approaches from the French BioSolutions ecosystem, committed to accelerating this journey towards more resilient food systems and convinced that there is a way to leapfrog the transition to more sustainable soil fertility approaches thanks to BioSolutions.

About the participants:

Founded in 2012, M2i is a French industrial group, expert in the design, formulation, and production of complex molecules. M2i designs, develops, and produces high value-added organic molecules for the life sciences and organic agriculture through its research laboratory in Lacq (64), associated with its plant in Salin de Giraud (13) and its manufacturing center in Parnac (46), one subsidiary in Chile and one in Argentina. M2i has developed its own expertise in pheromones for biological protection of crops and animal welfare. It designs, manufactures, and markets a new generation of natural products that can replace traditional pesticides efficiently and cost-effectively. As such, it has received more than 23 awards, such as the 2015 Prix Enterprises & Environment from the French Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Development, the 2015 Green Chemistry Award, the 2016 RMC PME Trophy and in 2017 the European Commission's European Business Award for Environment, then the Pierre Potier Prize for Chemistry in favour of sustainable development.

The Groupe Roullier is an independent family-owned group active on 7 markets and characterized by a unique innovation and industrial know-how: fertilizers, animal nutrition, food industry, algology, magnesium solutions, phosphorus solutions, renewable energy and packaging – through 123 countries. The company has a consolidated turnover of 2,65 billion euros in 2021.

RAGT Semences is a 100-year-old French seed company that breeds, produces and commercializes all over the world seeds for 32 major field crop species: corn, sunflower, sorghum, rapeseed, cereals, forages, soybeans. Each year, more than 200 new varieties are registered in national lists on the 5 continents. Constant innovation in Research is the key of RAGT successes throughout the world: Solid RAGT team fully dedicated to the seed: 900 people of which 300 breeders and Research technicians scattered over 17 research stations. RAGT Semences is the only European multispecies seed company able to supply the whole field crop seed needs, except potatoes and sugarbeets: corn, sunflower, sorghum, rapeseed, all cereals (soft wheat, durum wheat, malting barley, forage barley, triticale), all forages, soybeans, peas. RAGT’s goal is to bring the adequate agronomic training and back-up thanks to teams of agronomists (PhD’s and MS) specialized in crop development all over the demanding farming areas: Asia, Africa, Europe, North & South America and Oceania.

AXIOMA is an innovative and industrial French Agtech that contributes to the improvement of agricultural practices. For 10 years, their R&D team has been designing and approving unique “low carbon” bio stimulant and biocontrol products. These innovations are made up of blends of active ingredients derived from plant extractions which, once combined, allow crops to better resist the effects of climate change, such as droughts or sudden variations in temperature. They have obtained marketing approvals in France, Austria, Germany and Spain in 2020. They signed exclusive distribution contracts with major partners in France and Europe in 2021. They are also recently awarded the “FrenchTech Agri 20” label which aims to identify and accelerate scale-ups with the capacity to become French unicorns by 2030.  La Ferme Digitale is a community of French start-ups and agricultural companies that develop technical, technological or digital solutions to improve the agricultural sector.

Bioline Agrosciences belongs to Bioline Group part of Invivo Group. Invivo group since the acquisition of Soufflet Group in 2021 is one of the European Leader in Agri/agro business, including first and second transformation. Also strongly invested in retail and wine industry. Bioline Agrosciences (BAS) is a worldwide producer of macrobials, nematodes and entomopathogenic fungies. With 5 BU spred worldwide (North Europe, SC Europe, South Europe, North America and eastern Africa). BAS has its own R&D centers to develop innovation for the biocontrol market.BAS puts a wide range of biocontrol solution (on top of its own production) in the raw and protected crop markets: Macrobials (predatory mites, parasitoids, predators…), Pollinations, Microbials (EP fungis…), Pheromone, Traps, and Biostimulants.

Parmesh Shah is the Global Lead for Data, Digital Agriculture and Innovation at the World Bank. He provides leadership to Bank’s work in these areas and supports the development of global knowledge and learning in these areas to offer solutions to clients and other development partners. His current areas of interest are making markets and public services work for the poor, social entrepreneurship, digital and data-based innovations in agriculture and rural development, climate smart agriculture, Agriculture and technology enabled start-ups, venture and patient capital for innovation, promotion of on-farm , off-farm and digital jobs and public-private and people partnerships for rural poverty reduction. He is currently involved in developing a global program on scaling up data driven digital agriculture involving data platforms and establishing ecosystems for innovation, entrepreneurship and incubation. He holds a D Phil in Development Studies from Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and B Tech degree in Agricultural Engineering from Pantnagar in India.

Christian Le Roux is General secretary at M2i Life Sciences in charge of legal affairs, regulation, public and governmental affairs, and communication. He is also a lawyer at the Bar of Paris.  He is also former Chief of staff of a French Minister and in various institutions.  

Benoit Jimenez is sustainable Tranformation Director at Roullier. He is an engineer specialized in biochemical engineering. After a first experience in strategic marketing consulting, he joined for 4 years a subsidiary of the Paris-Saclay University dedicated in financing the development and technology transfer phases of academic inventions. He joined the Groupe Roullier at the beginning of 2019, with the desire to join an industrial group in touch with the challenges of the agricultural and agri-food sector, first in the innovation department before taking on the role of Director of Innovation Financing. At the beginning of 2022, he joined the Board of Directors and became head of the newly created Sustainable Transformation Department, with the ambition of structuring and accelerating actions related to sustainable development throughout the Groupe Roullier.

Baptiste Soenen is the head of Agronomy, Innovation & Tools Department at RAGT Semences. After graduating from an agricultural engineering school in 2010, Baptiste Soenen joined a French agricultural technical institute (Arvalis) and quickly specialized in agronomy: soil fertility, fertilization and irrigation management, carbon storage... In 2019, he took over as head of the Agronomy, Economy & Environment Department, and coordinated all the institute's R&D activities on these topics.In 2022, he joined RAGT Semences, as the head of Agronomy, Innovation & Tools Department. This department must drive and coordinate the development of solutions in our genetic range by combining agronomic, genetic, seed technology and digital approaches.

Anthony Bugeat is the CEO of the company AXIOMA which he created in 2012. After having worked in large groups such as total, engie and vinci, Anthony embarked on the entrepreneurial adventure by joining a first company then by creating two more. In 2012, Anthony became a father and created AXIOMA to solve an equation: Better agriculture for healthier food taking climate change into account. Anthony is also a board member of LA FERME DIGITALE which is the French AgTech ecosystem. AXIOMA is an innovative and industrial French Agtech that contributes to the improvement of agricultural practices. 

Alexandre Versigny is the Southern and Central Europe BU Director at Bioline Agrosciences from Invivo group. Graduate with an engineering degree and an MBA, working for agriculture markets for 19 years (cattle equipment, chemicals) and spent the last 5 years working for Bioline Agrosciences in the beneficial market in protected and raw crops. Has been in charge of a production site in the UK for 4 years and now in charge of the southern and central Europe BU for Bioline AgroSciences. 

Diego Arias is Practice Manager at the World Bank. His work has focused on innovative agriculture development and risk management projects and advisory services in Latin America and Africa. Previous to the World Bank, he worked at the Inter-American Development Bank as Natural Resources Economist and as a commodity trader for coffee, rice and petroleum products.  Diego holds a PhD in Agribusiness and Environmental Economics from Polytechnic University of Valencia, an MBA from Sacred Heart University in Luxembourg and a Masters in International Development from Harvard University. 

Malte Plewa is a Junior Professional Officer in the Climate Smart Agriculture Team of the World Bank’s Agriculture and Food Global Practice. In his current role, he contributes to the World Bank Global Flagship on Decarbonization of the Air and Recarbonization of Landscapes through Agri-food System Transformation. Prior to joining the World Bank, Malte worked for more than four years and an advisor in the Climate Change Unit of the German Development Agency GIZ where he oversaw a portfolio of bilateral cooperation projects on the production of climate friendly fertilizer. He holds a B.Sc. in Environmental and Resource Management and an M.Sc. in Disaster Risk Management and Climate Change Adaptation.