The world's largest pesticide manufacturer by sales has today published a sustainability agenda. Swiss-based firm Syngenta, which is also a major seed and garden product producer, promises its new 'Good Growth Plan' will lead to increases in crop production whilst reducing agriculture's footprint.  

In what may seem like something of a counterintuitive move, the company is calling on farmers to adopt means of production that may use less pesticide and fertiliser. The Good Growth Plan promises to foster a 20 percent increase in crop productivity by 2020, without using more land, water or inputs.

The 20 percent figure is an overall target, and the focus is mainly on developing nations, but Syngenta executives said the approach will have benefits for production all over the world.

Alongside the productivity increase, the global agribusiness has set itself challenges relating to environmental protection, including boosting biodiversity and cutting waste. Syngenta hopes to achieve these seemingly disparate aims by adopting different approaches in different parts of the world, but has produced a list of six principal commitments:

• Make crops more efficient: Increase average productivity of the world's major crops by 20 percent without using more land, water or inputs
• Rescue more farmland: Improve the fertility of 10 million hectares of farmland on the brink of degradation
• Help biodiversity flourish: Enhance biodiversity on 5 million hectares of farmland
• Empower smallholders: Reach 20 million smallholders and enable them to increase productivity by 50 percent
• Help people stay safe: Train 20 million farm workers on labour safety, especially in developing countries
• Look after every worker: Strive for fair labour conditions throughout our entire supply chain network

Syngenta's Good Growth Plan presents the company's proposals for achieving global food security. Food security is possibly the major challenge facing the world today; the global population is currently increasing by 200,000 each day and humanity is using the planet's resources 50 percent faster than they can be replenished. 

At the same time, farmland is being depleted through urbanisation and soil erosion and water resources are under increasing pressure from overuse, exacerbated by the threat of climate change.  Worldwide, rural communities – those most often responsible for growing food – experience much greater rates of poverty.

The new Syngenta Plan was launched on Tuesday at a series of events taking place around the world. Syngenta executives met with policy makers to discuss the challenges facing those who produce food, those who need to eat, and the environment that sustains us. The company said it can contribute through ensuring its agents educate and advise farmers on how best to use its products and promote the benefits of its technologies. Syngenta also proposes to work with a number of key government aid agencies and NGOs.

Mike Mack, Chief Executive Officer of Syngenta, said on Tuesday, "We have always been acutely aware that our business can only grow if we ensure that farming is carried out in a sustainable way.  We continuously seek to bring this awareness to life through our focus on land, technology and people.  We now need to take our contribution to a new level and this is the driving force behind the commitments announced today."

Though he acknowledged, "Delivering on these commitments won't be easy given the conflicting views of society on agriculture and food production.  The Good Growth Plan represents our collective commitment as a company to do things differently and better." 

Mack said Synegnta is seeking to begin a dialogue between all stakeholders about the future of food production. The company denied sceptics' suggestions that the new campaign is a PR exercise, aimed to 'greenwash' the Syngenta brand.

Syngenta instead promised its new sustainability agenda will pursue "ambitious and measurable goals", but certain aspects seem to stand against its recent track record. In August Syngenta, along with fellow pesticide manufacturer Bayer CropScience, initiated legal action in the European Court against the EU Commission's decision to suspend use of neonicotinoid seed treatments, which have been found to pose a serious threat to bee health. The Commission decision was made in light of continued deadlock in the European Council, and in the face of intense lobbying against a partial ban by the chemicals' manufacturers.  

In terms of agriculture, influential policy organisations such as the UN FAO have said smallholder agriculture and equitable engagement with farmers on the ground, who have been shown to invest by far the greatest amount of money in development, are pivotal to achieving food security.

However, public aid and development spending have come under pressure in a number of countries and private corporations have stepped in to fill the funding gap, through public-private partnerships. These partnerships are not without their critics, who suggest that PPPs often entail "contractual complexities," change the scope of development work, and in many cases result in risk being borne by the public sector and profit reaped by the private financier.

The key question in this case may therefore be whether the business model of a multinational like Syngenta is compatible with the development of appropriate solutions for small-scale producers.