Mumbai, March 5, 2020: Most farmers in India are smallholder farmers who farm on less than two acres of land. These farmers are vulnerable to challenges such as pests and crop diseases, lack of finance, adverse climate impacts, irrigation management, rural migration and fluctuating commodity prices. Because of these challenges, they are unable to realize their full farming potential.

Through its Crop Science business, Bayer works closely with smallholder farming communities to help them progress from subsistence farming to commercial farming and earn sustainable incomes from their small family farms. In 2018, Bayer formed the ‘Better Life Farming’ alliance that brought together global and local partners across the agri value chain to help smallholder farmers unlock their farming potential. In India, the Better Life Farming alliance is led by Bayer, International Finance Corporation (IFC, a member of the World Bank Group), Netafim, Yara Fertilisers, DeHaat and Big Basket.

In addition, Bayer has roped in Agribazaar, an Indian agritech platform as an alliance partner for Better Life Farming projects in India. Agribazaar will provide market linkages to smallholder farmers through its e-marketplace and help farmers get better prices for their produce. Bayer will also work independently with Agribazaar to improve access of crop advisory and enable transfer of agri technologies to smallholder farmers.

Speaking about the partnership, Simon Wiebusch, Chief Operating Officer for Bayer’s Crop Science division in India, said, “At Bayer, we want to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. When farmers get the right remunerative price for their produce, they are encouraged to adopt good agricultural practices and can afford modern agricultural technologies. However, no company can achieve this change alone as it requires the right eco-system, massive capacity building and meaningful collaborations along the agri value chain. With Agribazaar, we aim to enhance our reach to smallholder farmers and offer personalized solutions, enabling them to achieve better harvests more sustainably.”

Sharing his views, Amith Agarwal, Co-Founder & CEO of Agribazaar, said, “Agribazaar’s digital platform, along with Bayer’s expertise in providing crop advisory and inputs, will help address Indian farmer’s problems - be it timely availability of advisory, inputs, price discovery, crop traceability or quality assurance. This partnership will help both buyers and sellers transact in a transparent and trusted ecosystem and provide integrated, cost-effective and timely solutions.”

Bayer is also working with a network of smallholder farmers who practice agri-entrepreneurship under its Better Life Farming projects for rice, corn and horticulture crops. With its growing network of agri-entrepreneurs, Bayer aims to serve 2.5 million smallholder farmers across India by 2025.

About Bayer

Bayer is a global enterprise with core competencies in the life science fields of health care and nutrition. Its products and services are designed to benefit people by supporting efforts to overcome the major challenges presented by a growing and aging global population. At the same time, the Group aims to increase its earning power and create value through innovation and growth. Bayer is committed to the principles of sustainable development, and the Bayer brand stands for trust, reliability and quality throughout the world. In fiscal 2019, the Group employed around 104,000 people and had sales of 43.5 billion euros. Capital expenditures amounted to 2.9 billion euros, R&D expenses to 5.3 billion euros. For more information, go to www.bayer.com.

About Agribazaar

Agribazaar is an electronic marketplace for agri commodities, which offers a bouquet of services for every stakeholder in the agri value chain. Launched in 2017, it is a full-stack agri tech platform that has traded over 2.2 million metric tons of commodities, worth Rs. 8,150 Crores. Services on the platform can be broadly classified as pre-harvest and post-harvest services. Pre-harvest services consist of crop advisory to farmers, geo-tagging of farms, weather information, yield estimation and input sales. Post-harvest services comprise of buying / selling of agri commodities, warehousing, quality testing, financing services, transportation and international trade.

Media Contact

Saswati Panigrahi

Communications, Bayer Group in India

Tel: +91-22-25311097

E-mail: saswati.panigrahi@bayer.com

Forward-Looking Statements

This release may contain forward-looking statements based on current assumptions and forecasts made by Bayer management. Various known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors could lead to material differences between the actual future results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and the estimates given here. These factors include those discussed in Bayer’s public reports which are available on the Bayer website at www.bayer.com. The company assumes no liability whatsoever to update these forward-looking statements or to conform them to future events or developments.