For The Love of Agriculture: Lisa Tiang’a
Our hybrid maize varieties have something to offer farmers in all regions and cropping environments across Kenya.
Lisa Tiang’a is more than just the Seed Category Lead, Africa and Middle East, Corteva Agriscience. She’s empowering farmers in the region to be the most powerful people of tomorrow, one lesson at a time.
Lisa Tiang’a is the marketer you always wished you’d had. You know the type – bright, breezy and approachable. She also knows stuff, lots of interesting and quirky stuff, which she draws on randomly to emphasise a point. The Seed Category Lead, Corteva AgroSciences has been the Seed Category Lead, AME for the last one year.
The decade and half before, she has been a corporate marketing professional in the FMCG, oil and healthcare subsectors. Before joining Corteva Agriscience, the University of Nairobi MBA holder had ironed her agricultural skills and gained the relevant experience at Monsanto. This is the time she realised she had the passion of working with farmers to ensure food security in Africa and Middle East. From then, she has used her advanced marketing skills to develop and grow the seed business in Corteva AgriScience. Lisa spoke to Cereals Magazine.
Briefly describe your role as the Seed Category Lead, Africa and Middle East
By combining conventional and new seed and trait technologies, Corteva Agriscience™ is delivering more ways to meet the needs of a growing population. It is my duty to develop and support growth of the seed business in the region and ensure the company achieves its mission in Africa and Middle East.
Briefly describe your products and services to the farmer
As demand for food increases, so does the need for seed technology. The world’s leading developer and supplier of advanced plant genetics, providing high-quality seeds to farmers is currently offering two brands in Kenya. The Pioneer brand has a high yielding hybrid maize portfolio and Pannar not only offers the best maize varieties but also a range of multi crops.
The two brands boast of white and yellow maize varieties for both human consumption and silage.
Our varieties are developed and tested in local conditions to ensure they represent superior products to what is currently available. Our hybrid maize varieties have something to offer farmers in all regions and cropping environments across Kenya. As with all our products, there’s always a Corteva Agriscience representative in your local area to help you choose the right hybrid maize seeds and provide on-farm backup and technical support — we’re committed to providing helpful management advice and support to assist local farmers in making optimum profit from our products.
Beyond product we also offer farmer support services such as yield insurance that we are currently extending to farmers in certain parts of the country this year.
How do you adjust working cross-culturally, and how has it influenced the way you lead?
My position requires I traverse and work across Africa and Middle East. The region has different people, cultures, food, religion, economy, climate etc. Having lived in UAE, a multicultural country, this is not a major problem. But let me say that cultural fluency in leadership is critical for building trust, and is a competency that has offered repeatedly better performance. Building long term cross cultural relationships leads to increased creativity and out-of-the box thinking. It is an essential ingredient for driving productivity and innovation while also staving off the kind of uniformity that can lead to “groupthink” (which can limit a company’s ability to reach a global customer base).
Like any other leadership competency, cultural fluency is a muscle that can be strengthened, but not built overnight. I have learnt that, to win the hearts and minds of staff in a multicultural setting, the secret is to stay humble, remain curious about learning diverse perspectives, and be willing to adapt my communication approach. Only then will I tap into the power cultural differences and bring success to Corteva Agriscience.
How has Corteva evolved since you joined?
After two years in the making, I witnessed the merger between global companies Dow AgroSciences, DuPont Crop Protection and Pioneer Hi-Bred complete, on Monday 3 June at 9.30am, when the New York Stock Exchange bell rang and Corteva Agriscience officially became a publicly listed company. This led to the formation of a company that is squarely focused on agriculture and the needs of our customers. Am eagerly looking forward to the journey ahead.
In reference to the merger, briefly describe its advantage to the farmer
We are the leading one stop shop for Seed and Crop protection solutions for the farmer. We also pride on years of expertise from our commercial, regulatory, research functions and all our supporting functions which are focused on enriching our farmers and consumers lives while doing it safely. This makes the new company quite distinct from other players and different from our legacy businesses.
What are some of your goals/vision for the company?
My vision is to see Africa feeding the world in future not only because of its land mass but its increased use of new innovations and rich soil. I purpose to enrich lives of the AME farmer by ensuring we provide the right products and imparting the right agricultural knowledge.
What drives you?
Will power, Courage, Persistence, Hard work and thirst for Knowledge. I have always been ready to try out new ideas and live in different places, my motivation is from within and am continuously seeking knowledge to improve myself.
What is your biggest challenge?
Ensuring that the smallholder farmer will access the newest innovation and technology to increase their productivity despite the challenges they face. This is curtailed by lack of purchasing power and enough information on solutions. Corteva Agriscience is continuously working on the latest technology and providing multi-crop solutions to meet farmer needs. We invest a lot in farmer education.
What is your work ethic and how does it inspire or affect your subordinates?
I focus on results, customer centricity and shared vision. I also accept people with diverse personalities, valuing individuals with their differences.
As a woman in leadership, what challenges would you be going through?
With the evolving world, women are still not fully represented globally when it comes to leadership roles in agriculture. My biggest challenge has been juggling family and career with travel requirements of a regional role, there’s also opportunity for women to be accepted and respected within this industry but it gets better by the day.
Describe Corteva Agriscience in the next five years
There is some really exciting stuff coming through. On the seed side we have some exciting technology in development which is well suited to meet our farmers needs, fitting into all the environments in our region and a wider seed portfolio of other crops.
We are also looking to leverage our growing digital platform to see where and how this can help African growers be more productive and profitable.
Your three tips for a successful strategy
Understanding the farmer and his needs, ensuring we have the right product to meet evolving farmer needs and ensuring our people are motivated to perform.
Your final Remarks
There’s is a shift taking place in agriculture with changing climate patterns, shifts in consumer food needs and purchase behaviour, trends towards digital farming, increasing demand by farmers for solutions that meet these changing environment and we need to invest in organizations that are adapting to the changing environment, continually innovating and invest in talent that seeks to improve themselves whilst providing sustainable solutions. Such an organization is Corteva.