Whether potatoes, sunflowers or vegetables: Our broad portfolio helps both farmers and our company.
Diversification
Courage to
stay the distance
Long-term growth, not short-term profits – with foresight, KWS has built up a broad portfolio over many decades. This diversity has strategic reasons and benefits everyone at the company.
Seed instead of a tuber? KWS has conducted research into a hybrid potato for more than 10 years. One day, it will hopefully be an expedient complement in helping meet demand for seed potatoes worldwide. It is still not certain whether the vision will ever become reality. “But if it does, the hybrid potato will be a game changer,” says our long-standing Executive Board member for Research and Development, Léon Broers, who now heads the new Business Unit Vegetables with Paul Degreef.
He cites the potato as an example of KWS’ foresight, of the company’s “courage to tackle a project with staying power, even if the results will only be visible in 10 or 15 years’ time.”
And the potato is just one crop that KWS has gradually added to its portfolio. Léon Broers mentions corn breeding in Brazil, which has become a strong economic pillar. Or the wheat breeding program in the U.S., which was built up from scratch. Or the start of sunflower breeding about 10 years ago, which is expected to give the company a solid market position in the next five years. “That makes 15 years in total – and we accept such long time spans at KWS.” Lastly, Léon Broers also mentions vegetables as the latest addition to the ranks.
Strong in wheat, strong in barley, strong in rye, world market leader in sugarbeet, strong net sales from corn, and oilseed rape is making fantastic progress – “the fact that we have such a broad portfolio for farmers and are also expanding it is a strength,” states Léon Broers. “We can offer them a crop rotation with all the components for more sustainable farming.”
And this diversification is also a strength for KWS itself: “The breadth we have in our portfolio is our buffer. It gives us stability.” If one crop’s yield and net sales fall due to plant diseases, or if the competition catches up with a significantly higher research budget, “then you need other mainstays.”
Pillars for our independence
Decisions on new research capacities are made in a well-considered manner on the basis of growth prospects and trends. “That’s where we again see Andreas Büchting’s foresight,” says Léon Broers. “He never made himself reliant on just one opinion, but gathered diverse information to form a picture.” But once he was convinced of a concept, he took calculated steps with KWS – also with the knowledge that not short-term profits, but long-term growth could be expected.
Léon Broers expects that in 20 years’ time KWS’ vegetable business will have a similar size to that of cereals now. Léon Broers is convinced that the diversity of our entire portfolio will remain a pillar that upholds our independence. |
Our organic site in Wiebrechtshausen recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. However, organic breeding at KWS began back in the 1970s.
Organic seed
Unique wealth of organic breeding data
20 years ago, when our Executive Board paved the way for an organic site in Wiebrechtshausen, the proportion of organically farmed land in the European Union was still a meager three percent. But the decision showed foresight, as is evident today: The share of organically farmed land in 2020 was more than nine percent. That figure in all EU countries is expected to rise to 25 percent by 2030.
Strictly speaking, however, organic breeding at KWS began well before 2002, namely in the mid-1970s, recalls Walter Schmidt, a former corn breeder at KWS. “It is attributable to the initiative of Andreas Büchting, who in 1976 wrote a paper on the limits and bottlenecks of modern agricultural methods and the opportunities offered by organic alternatives. That was truly entrepreneurial foresight back then.”
The winter wheat variety BUSSARD, which was put on the market in 1996 and for which there was great demand among organic farmers, was a beacon of organic breeding. And the second beacon was organic corn breeding at the Wiebrechtshausen site starting in 2003. It built on the successes of low-input breeding from 1989 onwards, says Walter Schmidt. “The material from low-input breeding was so valuable for organic corn breeding because many traits of the low-input varieties were also interesting under organic cultivation conditions.”
The findings spurred strong growth in organic corn breeding activities. “Some years we had up to 3,600 parcels of land for performance tests in Wiebrechtshausen. These series of trials provided us with a wealth of data that is unique worldwide.” A broad portfolio of corn varieties for organic farming was developed from them. KWS now also offers several varieties of organic seed for other crops – from cereals, oil plants and catch crops to sugarbeet.
The company’s management saw organic breeding as part of the company’s diversification from the outset. “We at KWS pursue conventional farming, organic farming and also modern genetic engineering approaches alongside each other,” reads the 2001/2002 Annual Report. “In the area of research and development, different approaches from genetic engineering to organic farming are accorded a status commensurate with their anticipated market significance.” |
© KWS SAAT SE & Co. KGaA 2025
