The life cycle of a crop protection product

Getting it Right at the Start

The aim of our R&D programs is to develop new products and improve the impact and safety of older products through better formulation, packaging and delivery. Advantages in technology focus on meeting sustainable development objectives as well as improving crop yields. We develop products that are biologically efficient, environmentally safe, user friendly and economically viable.

This all requires time and considerable effort and investment. To bring a new product to the market takes eight to ten years and costs around €200 million.

Commitment to Responsible Care

Environment, health and safety are priority values and business principles. Our involvement in the chemical industry's Responsible Care^® program reinforces the importance we place on corporate social responsibility and sustainable business practices.

This global initiative is designed to improve continuously the performance of all Responsible Care codes, namely Environmental Protection, Product Stewardship, Occupational Health and Safety, Process Safety, Distribution Safety, Communication, Security and Emergency Response. These codes focus in particular on expected management practices in specific areas of manufacturing, transporting and the handling of chemicals.

Walking the Talk

Preparing for the journey: we follow industry-leading guidelines for the preparation, loading, transport and unloading of our products. We provide extensive training for our transport contractors and regularly audit their performance against international and company guidelines. In the event of any accident, advice and emergency plans are in place to rapidly address the incident directly.

Making labels easy to understand: we use prominent, easy-to-understand symbols and pictograms on our labels and screw caps, which help to transcend language and literacy barriers. This minimizes the risk of instructions being ignored, mislaid or misunderstood.

Keeping our products in the right hands: full, partially full and empty crop protection product containers need to be handled and stored safely. We recommend industry-leading guidelines and standards for the storage of our products in warehouses, provide extensive training for our distributors/retailers and carry out regular audits to check compliance.

We also support industry-wide outreach and training programs to raise awareness of the importance of safe and secure storage on the farm and to recommend simple solutions, like creating storage boxes from local, readily available materials.

Efficient Crop Protection

Integrated Pest Management – or IPM as it is commonly known – is an environmentally sensitive approach for controlling pests that involves the use of the least possible amount of chemical crop protection products across the world. IPM uses the best available combination of cultural practices as well as biological and chemical control measures, including appropriate plant biotechnology. It also provides the most cost effective, environmentally safe and socially acceptable method of managing diseases, insects, weeds and other pests in agriculture.

Caring for the Farmer

The responsible use of crop protection products is the basis for protecting the health of farmers and consumers, as well as the environment. In the focus of these activities is the raising of awareness and training with regard to the correct and safe use of crop protection products. The understanding of and adherence to label requirements, the use of adequate personal protective equipment (PPE), and the consideration of specific product stewardship advice for the use of products by farmers are all essential elements to protect human and environmental health, as well as achieving an efficient crop protection.

BASF as a company, as well as via industry association activities, engages to improve the responsible use of our products. This means we promote the use of PPE and the uptake of best management practices in contact with farmers, product distributors and agricultural advisors.

Caring for the Environment

Listening to the farmer: the right packaging plays an essential role in the safe delivery of our products from our factory to their farm. One of the greatest problems facing applicators of crop protection products is how to properly dispose of empty product containers by meeting health and environmental standards. Empty containers in the field, unsafe re-use or disposal of containers without triple rinsing have unfortunately become common and pose a potential risk to the environment and public health.

We listened carefully to farmers to understand their concerns and issues. In response, we developed a unique container management system, Ecomatic^®, a solution for the safe handling of crop protection products during the mixing, loading and rinsing cycles. As it is a closed system, the farmer has no direct contact with the product during use and consequently the risk of human or environmental exposure is reduced.

Caring for the Environment

As part of our commitment to the life cycle approach of product stewardship, we work in association with governments to implement disposal and recycling programs. One initiative, for example, paved the way to the elimination of waste, as the empty drums – designed for easy transport and storage – are collected at the farms at the end of the season and recycled. Here, water is also conserved as growers do not need to rinse the empty jugs.

We recommend guidelines and standards for the storage and transport of crop protection products. In the case of storage, these guidelines address, for example, the location of storage facilities away from homes, schools and community areas.