Industry Insights: AMVAC’s Mason Bennett Shares His Vision As the New Vice President for North American Crop

Renee Targos By Renee Targos|31 July 2024

Mason Bennett is leading as a Gen Xer bridging and optimizing the strengths of two generations: the Baby Boomers’ strong work ethic and experience with the Millennials’ openness to new ideas and technology to expand AMVAC’s growth in the U.S. and Canada.

As AMVAC’s new Vice President for North American Crop, succeeding Scott Hendrix, Bennett brings his 23-years of agribusiness experience to oversee AMVAC’s national sales strategy, regional business units, and account management and customer service teams. He shared with AgriBusiness Global his vision for his new position and his insights into the crop protection industry.

ABG: What are your plans for the first two quarters of your new position?

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ABG: What are you seeing right now in crop protection market that concerns you? What opportunities are you seeing?

Mason Bennett: The crop input sector is really struggling. We all recognize that. I believe that it’s driven by commodity pricing, the continuing effects of carryover inventory, and just the fact that we have higher cost of money. Our interest rates and our carrying cost of inventories are much greater. These are challenges that the entire industry is going to have to work through until the commodities come back and the market grows.

Right now, the opportunities are to diversify across multiple markets to take advantage of growth segments such as the biologicals space. AMVAC’s focus in this area is around GreenSolutions, which encompass the company’s biologicals portfolio including biorationals, biostimulants, and seed inclusion products. There are also opportunities in post-patent AIs and creating a formulation strategy within the GreenSolutions space to bring unique solutions. There is also a focus on precision ag technology, such as AMVAC’s SmartBox+ and Ultimus technology, because the precision sector is going to continue to grow.

ABG: Do you think entering the ag tech sector is important for crop protection companies?

MB: For the ag technology sector, there is a certain segment of growers adopting the technology much quicker than other growers, but it’s happening. These ag tech adopters see the value of ag tech and will continue to invest in that space. Ag tech can help growers see a better return on investment by reducing the amount of crop protection and plant health products needed.

Companies offering ag tech need to prove some sort of return. This sector is forward looking and getting into it is getting ahead of the curve and giving your company a competitive advantage. So yes, it’s a space that is important.

ABG: What kind of research and development do you envision for biological products in the coming years?

MB: The development of biological products is a really different approach than for synthetic chemistries, because biologicals are naturally occurring. Biological products need to be optimally formulated with a longer and stable shelf life and proven efficacy.

If a biological product only lasts one to two months, or in some cases just a few weeks, the viability of that product is not sustainable. That’s not good for the retailer or farmer.

I see R&D for biologicals focused on longer shelf life, similar to synthetic products, where you can get close to two years of shelf life. AMVAC is introducing products like these already into the market. As an industry, we need to provide proven and reliable products that distribution retail can handle and know with confidence that they’re selling a quality product to the grower.

ABG: What’s your plan for expanding AMVAC’s territory in the U.S. and Canada?

MB: Over the last 10 years, AMVAC has had tremendous growth in part to the leadership we’ve had in place. I plan to continue that growth focusing on our traditional proven chemistries and GreenSolutions along with precision ag technology. We are positioned well as a niche and technology solutions provider.

We have AMVAC Academy to drive adoption of biological products. The Academy provides tutorials so growers can understand the benefits of AMVAC solutions. We also have dedicated sales and marketing people who have expertise in the ag tech and biological products to really drive into those markets.

ABG: What can businesses do to stay competitive?

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Renee Targos, as Editor of AgriBusiness GlobalTM Direct magazine, leads in content development, event programming, and managing the ABG Board of Advisors and strategic growth of the magazine. Renee’s professional experience covers more than two decades of national and international digital and print content development, editing, and journalism. She received a bachelor’s degree from Southern Illinois University and continued her education with master’s level courses in business administration and behavioral analysis. Renee has served as a board member for several Arizona-based non-profits and government commissions. See all author stories here.

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