4 billion years of R&D

The situation

Biological crop protection — products derived from natural organisms rather than synthetic chemicals — is one of the most important shifts happening in agriculture. Syngenta had a world-class range of biologicals to launch. The problem was credibility: in a category built on decades of trust in proven chemistry, how do you persuade farmers and agricultural specialists to believe that a product rooted in nature can compete with what they've always relied on?

Before any strategy was written, I was part of a major global research programme — deep qualitative work with farmers and agricultural specialists across multiple countries, exploring their relationship with the land, their worries about the future, and their scepticism about new approaches. What came back was consistent and clear: farmers don't distrust nature. They love it. They just don't trust that nature alone can solve the pressures they face.

The insight

Nature is the longest-running and by far the largest R&D department in history. Three point eight billion years of evolution means nature has already stress-tested and optimised solutions to almost every problem imaginable — including the ones facing modern agriculture. Biologicals aren't an alternative to proven science. They are the proof.

The approach

This reframed the entire credibility question. The concern with biologicals — "are they as proven as traditional chemistry?" — dissolved the moment you positioned nature as the most rigorous testing ground ever to exist. Evolution doesn't keep solutions that don't work. Every organism, compound, and mechanism that survives does so because it has been tested across billions of years and countless conditions.

Syngenta wasn't asking farmers to try something new. It was giving them access to something ancient. The creative territory this unlocked was genuinely unexpected for a technical product launch — something with emotional resonance, scientific credibility, and a connection to the very thing farmers had told us they cared most about: the land itself.

The idea landed powerfully with the agricultural audience precisely because it didn't talk down to them or ask them to take a leap of faith. It met them where they already were — in a deep, instinctive trust of nature — and showed them that the science agreed.

What made it distinctive

Every other player in the biologicals category was leading with technical credentials and regulatory approval. This was the only positioning that treated nature itself as the authority — and the only one that connected the product rationale to what farmers actually care about at a human level. It was unique to the category at the time.