How Sipcam Agro Works With Sugarbeet Producers

Sipcam Agro is a family-owned company that specializes in developing post-patent chemistry for their crop protection products. To put it in simpler terms, they take active ingredients that have been on the market for a while, retool them, and try to get better performances out of the chemistry.

Sugar beet growers might be familiar with Sipcam. According to Matthew Sibel, director of national ag sales, Sipcam has worked with researchers to address some of the challenges growers are facing.

“One of the unique features we have being the size company we are, we have a shorter go to market strategy,” said Sibel. “Where it might be five to seven years for a new product to make it to market, we can shorten that window up. If we find a solution with research or a lot of our co-operators which are growers, we can get that solution to market a lot quicker.”

Since Sipcam is a smaller company, Sibel says that specialty crops hold a special place in its heart.

“It’s a natural place for us to be when we work with sugarbeets and trying to be relevant at the end of the day,” he said. “If they’re not having success at the grower level, we’re not having success.”

In addition to protecting sugarbeets with their ag chem portfolio, Doug Phelps, senior director of value-added solutions, says Sipcam is also a leader of biosolutions and biostimulants. Since it’s important to have good quality with beets, Phelps says Sipcam has a team dedicated to help growers understand the portfolio of biostimulants and how to use them.

“The quality is affected by limiting factors and abiotic stresses, and growers are starting to use these biostimulants to help reduce those abiotic stresses to increase the sugar content,” said Phelps. “We’re working with them to help to understand the portfolio of biostimulants because there’s a lot of misinformation and ambiguity out in the market so we’re helping them become more educated buyers of the product, and also showing them how to use them agronomically.”

With the challenges that our competitors had out in the Red River Valley, Sibel says Sipcam is dedicated to helping growers earn profit.

“We’ve got to go back to the table and say, ‘What can we do to meet the market demands to increase profitability for these growers?’” he said. “What can we do? Can we shorten up our supply chain? Can we get better from a logistics standpoint? What can we do to be better?”

For more information, visit sipcamagrousa.com.