Corteva Agriscience Field Day offers overview of new products, company plans

Attendees spent the day learning about the newest products from Corteva. Photo: Allison Barwacz

Seeing is believing, and that’s what attendees at Corteva Agriscience’s Future of Turf 2019 Field Day can attest to.

The event, which took place June 11-12 in Columbus, Ohio, offered its attendees an overview of the newly-formed company, as well as what products its planning to launch this year.

“We wanted to show our customers firsthand how the new products we’re launching actually work in the field,” said Karan Bansal, turf and ornamental category leader at Corteva Agriscience. “The Future of Turf field days take distributors, lawn care operators and golf course superintendents out of a classroom and take them through various educational stations during the day.”

Golfdom Publisher Craig MacGregor, Content Marketing Project Manager Grace Rybak and myself, Digital Media Manager Allison Barwacz, traveled to a surprisingly sunny Columbus for the event. We came back with these key takeaways.

What is Corteva Agriscience and what’s in a name?

While the event focused on new products, it also highlighted the Corteva Agriscience brand and how it came to life following the Dow Chemical-DuPont merger.

“The merger is a result of two major companies: Dow Chemical and DuPont,” said Mark Neterer, turf and ornamental business leader at Corteva Agriscience. “They formed one major company called DowDuPont. From there we then formed three separately owned companies that are publicly traded, and Corteva is one of those.”

Neterer also gave us a rundown on the unique meaning behind the Corteva name.

Corteva Agriscience hosted its Future of Turf 2019 Field Day June 11-12 in Columbus, Ohio, where the company discussed its new products. Photo: Allison Barwacz

“In our case, ‘Corteva’ actually has meaning. With ‘cor-,’ meaning the heart and ‘-teva,’ the heart of nature,” Neterer explained. “‘Teva’ means nature. It’s an agricultural chemical company that’s focused on the heart of nature, which has a lot of ties to what we do day in and day out.”

New products

Three groups of attendees spent time at eight stations dedicated to different aspects of the company’s two new products: GameOn specialty herbicide and Relzar specialty herbicide, which are currently pending federal registration.

Corteva representatives covered the educational aspects of the products, including their active ingredients, weed efficacy, volatility studies and the science behind them.

A couple of the stations also featured small plots of land that had been treated with GameOn and Relzar. Untreated plots served as controls for attendees to compare them with and see actual physical results after one and four weeks of application.

“Attendees visited eight stations, which demonstrated mixing and handling, turf safety, weed efficacy and buffer zones of these new post-emergent herbicides, which are pending federal and state registrations – GameOn specialty herbicide and Relzar specialty herbicide,” Bansal said. “We’ve been testing Arylex active, the active ingredient in GameOn and Relzar, for more than 10 years in turf to bring solutions to the market that are proven and effective.”

In line with the company’s goal of actually showing customers product effectiveness, once the products receive federal and state registrations, attendees will receive samples of GameOn or Relzar to test on their own.

“For our customers, seeing is believing. They want to hear from their colleagues and distributors that it works, then they want try it themselves,” Bansal added. “Getting samples into their hands lets them see that it works and helps them make decisions that way.”

When it comes to demonstrating product success and gaining customer trust, seeing actually is believing — an advantage you can’t get from a PowerPoint presentation.