Lawrence, Kansas-based PrairieFood, developer of an innovative approach to converting waste biomass, some of which is hazardous, into safe valuable high carbon products for agriculture and other sectors, has announced that Vern Hawkins, president of Syngenta Crop Protection, LLC, has joined its board of advisors.
Hawkins has provided innovation and commercialization leadership to Syngenta over a 35-year career to accelerate innovation, which supports United States farmers. When Syngenta was formed in 2000, he headed the product portfolio management team. He was responsible also for the Syngenta brand management, biological research and development, regulatory affairs and development planning teams in the North America region before moving on to lead the U.S. horticulture business unit.
Hawkins was appointed head of commercial operations for Syngenta Crop Protection in 2004 and promoted to president of Syngenta Crop Protection in 2010 where he continues to grow Syngenta’s longstanding market leader position in crop protection. Innovation has drawn Hawkins to view the future of sustainable agriculture through the lens of the farmer and building strong relationships with industry-changing innovators like PrairieFood.
Hawkins’ experience will lend support to PrairieFood by helping guide the plan to bring the benefits of its patented technology to life. This technology is a real solution positioned to accelerate global sustainability by transforming biomasses into micro carbons to feed the microbiome for all plant life.
“PrairieFood’s journey is targeted to have an enormous impact on solving many of society’s environmental challenges,” Hawkins said. “I am committed to providing support to Robert Herrington and the strong team he has assembled for the task of bringing PrairieFood to the enterprise scale.”
“We are very pleased to have Vern Hawkins, a long time internationally recognized ag industry leader, join PrairieFood’s strong board of advisors. His insight and long industry leadership are more confirmation that PrairieFood’s journey continues on the right path,” said Herrington, PrairieFood CEO and co-founder.
