Manager of The Month - Matt Fryer to the Helm of Arysta LifeScience East Africa

Briefly discuss Matt Fryer (Background and Managing Director Arysta LifeScience East Africa)
I was born into a farming community in South Africa, and my love for farming, nature and the outdoors started as far back as I can remember. After completing my BSC Agric in 2002, I went on to work for a small crop protection company, Gap Chemicals, based in Kwazulu Natal and focused on Sugarcane. The small size of the company resulted in me being exposed to all aspects of running a successful business and this quickly revealed yet another passion I have for customer service.

In 2008 I joined Arysta LifeScience South Africa as a Key Account Manager and in addition to my deliverables I took on active roles in the S&OP process, demand planning and had a short stint of looking after the Southern Africa export business. In 2014 I was appointed Commercial Manager for South Africa, mainly as a support role to the Commercial Director, and was responsible for forecasting, pricing, stock distribution and allocation. In early 2015 I was offered the incredible opportunity to move to Nairobi. Having spent my entire career being based in South Africa, it was an easy decision to make to move here and embark on this new leadership challenge.

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Developing Nutritious Maize and Wheat Varieties

Maize and wheat biofortification can help reduce malnutrition in regions where nutritional options are unavailable, limited or unaffordable, but must be combined with education to be most effective, particularly as climate change jeopardizes food security, according to researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

Climate change could kill more than half a million adults in 2050 due to changes in diets and bodyweight from reduced crop productivity, a new report from the University of Oxford states. Projected improvement in food availability for a growing population could be cut by about a third, leading to average perperson reductions in food availability of 3.2 percent, reductions in fruit and consumption of .07 percent, according to the report.

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Farm Productivity Dwindling

Kenyan grain farmers have defied a long term decline in their terms of trade by making nation leading gains in productivity. Statistics show the average productivity growth for a cereal farming to have been losing in hectares to real estate. The cropping subgroup includes wheat and other grain producers and has out-performed despite the slow expansion.

In terms of the cropping operations, three quarters of these productivity gains have come technology. The magnitude of some of these changes is evident as you walk into farms.

The introduction of alternative crops such as canola has also been important as often such crops have a different planting and harvesting window to the cereals. Effectively this increases the amount of time labour and machinery resources can be used for a particular task in any given season.

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Dow Launches New Lancelot 450WG Herbicides

Win the Battle against your Toughest Broadleaf Weeds

Growers In Narok, Nakuru and Eldoret welcomed the introduction of Dow Agrosciencies new innovation with thunderous applause as presenter after presenter enumerated its benefits. “I am pleased to announce the introduction of Lancelot 450WG Herbicide to growers in the cereal sector. As Dow Agrosciences we are thrilled to add Lancelot 450WG to our expanding herbicide portfolio,” said Mr. Oscar Shilliebo, Business Development Manager, East Africar in the midst of applauses. “Lancelot 450WG offers unparalleled control of many hard-tocontrol weeds with impressive plant safety.”

The new post-emergent herbicide for cereal crops (Wheat, barley, Maize) containing a new active ingredient Aminopyralid and Florasulam delivers excellent control of many key annual and selected perennial broad leaf weeds.

Lancelot 450WG is effective against a very wide range of broadleaf weeds, including resistant Amaranthus and Emex australis. The product has a wide application window from tillering till the second node stage of wheat, it has soil residual efficacy, allowing control of late germinating weeds. In addition, Lancelot can be mixed cereal graminicides, insecticides, fungicides and liquid fertilizers. It has rain fast of one hour after application.

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