Bayer celebrates 10 years in Petrolina (PE) and strengthens the corn market

Bayer is celebrating 10 years of operation in Petrolina (PE). The company was the first multinational in the agricultural sector to set up shop in the municipality, located in the Sertão of Pernambuco, arousing the interest of new companies and contributing to the strengthening of the local economy.

Bayer's operation in Petrolina began in 2010 with tests to generate experimental hybrids and insertion of bitechnologies on a farm called Small Farm, measuring 54 hectares. Currently, the unit also consists of another farm called Big Farm, which has 165 hectares. The two farms are equivalent to an area of ​​approximately 306 football fields, where around 800 employees work, including employees, third parties and harvest workers.

Still during the first phase of operation in the city, the company carried out several experimental tests and analyses, between 2010 and 2013, to define and validate processes that would be implemented on site. During this period, Bayer also expanded its facilities and invested in a more complete and efficient infrastructure, with the aim of meeting the demands of the business.

“Petrolina was strategically chosen and acts as a key piece for Bayer’s development in Brazil. We are very proud to celebrate 10 years of activities in the municipality, a major technological hub that ranks among the highest agricultural GDPs in Brazil”, says Edson Kemper, leader of the Crop Science area at the Petrolina unit.

Since its official inauguration in 2013, there have been continuous and great advances. Today, the station is increasingly growing as an extremely strategic unit for Bayer Crop Science's business in Latin America. Annually, the Bayer de Petrolina site is responsible for generating around 23 thousand experimental corn hybrids that are subsequently tested in several Brazilian producing states.

To give you an idea, the station introduces specific genetic characteristics into corn lines, using modern biotechnology methodologies, with the aim of obtaining increasingly resistant seeds adapted to the different climatic environments in Brazil. This same process, which currently focuses on corn cultivation, will also be carried out for soybean production at the beginning of 2022. Since last year, the unit has been receiving new investments to increase its infrastructure and bring cutting-edge technologies to then support the development of products for the business's two largest crops: corn and soybeans.

In addition to exporting tissue and seed samples for genetic analysis, the Petrolina station is the main seed import center, undergoing necessary phytosanitary analyzes required by the Ministry of Agriculture. Finally, it is in Petrolina where the first activities in the pre-commercial area take place, where the materials developed by the research area begin to have a larger scale, already connected with the commercial vision and processes.