Good afternoon everybody. Welcome. I'm Jamil Andolini. I'm the regional director of Politico in Europe and it's such a pleasure to be here in the rainforest in Belém, Brazil with you all. Before we begin, I'd really like to thank Bayer and Bill Anderson, CEO and chief sustainability officer of Bayer. I'd like to thank Bayer for welcoming us to Casa Bayer in this beautiful old mansion in the rainforest in Belém. We're so happy to be part of the program, to be partners with Bayer in this incredible place. The eyes of the world are on Brazil this week as we look to see what comes out of COP 30. We've got some major challenges. We shouldn't ignore the challenges. It looks like we are definitely going to exceed the 1.5 degrees warming threshold that we originally as humanity were hoping to avoid. 2024 was the hottest year on record, and we obviously have growing geopolitical challenges, let's say. We can maybe talk about those a little bit later as well. So to help us unpack all of this, Bayer CEO Bill Anderson is with me here today. You're not only the CEO, but you're also the chief sustainability officer. You're really working yourself very directly on these topics of sustainability, and you've really taken the lead inside the company and across the world in this. We're going to talk about quite a few things, but before we dive into why we're all here in the rainforest, I'd love you to tell us a little bit about this building and maybe a little bit about Casa Bayer and what your plan is for this space that we're in, this beautiful space.
Sure. Thanks, Jamil. And thanks all of you for being here. About Casa Bayer. We had to decide what was the best way to participate in COP 30, and this is a really amazing city that is right on the edge of the Amazon in the midst of the rainforest. But there weren't so many facilities available. The standard thing on offer would be to buy some sort of modern buildout. There even for some of the COPs there have been like prefab buildings and things. River boats. Yeah. But we had an opportunity in this case. We found this old, kind of glorious old house that was built in 1925, I understand. But it needed some tender loving care, and we decided, hey, we're going to renovate the house. I think that was actually a cost-effective solution. We upgraded the electrical system and everything. But when we're done, we're going to basically leave the house much better than we found it and leave it to the people of Belém for use as a cultural center and a resource to the community.
It's so cool. You can't see it on the live stream, but it's really a beautiful old mansion. It's really charming. So tell us, Bill, what you think is so important this year about COP 30. Why have you turned up in such a big way as Bayer, and what is it that this one means? This is the 30th one obviously, so what is the significance?
Well, I'm an engineer and I don't get excited about three-letter acronyms and all the fancy talk about sustainability. For me, and I think this embodies the spirit that we have at Bayer, this needs to be really practical things that impact ordinary people. If we want to do something about the disappearing rainforests or climate change, then we have to do it through common sense products that represent good choices for ordinary people. We're doing that, for example, through our agriculture division, our crop science division. Things like seeds that can produce higher yields with less water, less chemicals, less land. That's the kind of sustainability that we think the world needs. It's not talk. In fact, right now we have in the fields in several places around the world something called short stature corn. This is corn that is identical to regular field corn except that the plants, instead of growing 3 meters or more, they grow to about 2 meters in height. That has substantial advantages because for severe weather events, which are becoming increasingly common at harvest time, they can blow down a whole corn field. Farmers can lose 50 to 70% of their crop due to a late severe weather event. Our short stature corn is much more resistant to these kinds of effects. But perhaps even more significantly, it can be planted more densely, and so we're seeing yield gains of 30 to 40%. If you want to stop clearing forests to make room for food, this is exactly what you need: more food from less land.
One of the big topics here at COP 30 is definitely about adaptability as well as mitigation. What you're talking about there is exactly the sort of thing that's needed when more severe weather events come. You need crops that are resistant to those effects of climate change.
Exactly. It's adaptability and mitigation in the same product. And it's good for farmers because they can basically grow more crop on their given piece of land.
I'm a cynical journalist. You're a cynical idealistic engineer, and I'm a cynical journalist. So I'm with you on the three-letter acronyms and all this stuff. But you arrived, I think you and I both arrived a couple of days ago. Can you tell me about... your staff told me you went a little off track today, so maybe you could tell me a bit about what you saw today?
I went to the Agra zone that's been developed by Embrapa. Embrapa is the Brazilian agency that has been driving a lot of the science in agriculture that has allowed Brazil to go from being a net food importer to now feeding many of their own citizens plus many other countries. It was great to see, and by the way, that's been a partnership with Bayer on a number of seed technologies. In fact, at the Agra zone, I hope a lot of visitors to COP this year will make it there because it's incredible. There's all kinds of test fields showing modern agriculture techniques and technologies for these very things we're describing. From reforestation to basically more environmentally friendly planting practices, crop rotations, cover crops, all kinds of ways to put more carbon in the soil and less carbon in the air.
What's your feeling? There's been some people who say, 'Oh, why would you hold it in a place like the Amazon? Because it's hard to get here.' But do you sort of... once you arrive here, I totally get it. There's something different from sitting in a conference room talking about climate change, and something very different when you can come and feel it and see it in the actual rainforest. Do you agree with that?
Yeah. I think also it brings the human element in because you can see the communities that are living in the rainforest areas, and they have choices they have to make. These are not wealthy communities. If you have people in poverty and they have to choose between clearing the rainforest and remaining in poverty, that's not a great choice. So it puts a focus on a range of efforts that are needed to create good alternatives for the residents of the rainforest and the rainforest countries. I'm optimistic about what we can do. We signed a letter of intent today with Honduras and Suriname, in partnership with Deutsche Bank and Siemens. This is about developing more robust carbon markets. That's important because, for example, we have millions of farmers around the world who have ways of putting more carbon in the ground and less in the atmosphere, but there's no actual incentive to do that today. So we need to make sure that the incentive structures align with those practices. We have to do this step by step.
