United Kingdom
October 27, 2022
Edith Bousquet was appointed RAGT Seeds UK’s new marketing manager in September. Her agricultural background and passion for the seed sector suggest she is ideally suited to the role, as Robert Harris found out.
What sparked your interest in agriculture?
I was born into a farming family near Rodez in the south of France, and my mother still farms there, rearing beef cattle.
I have always wanted to have a career in agriculture. To me, it is the most important industry we have. Food production underpins everything humans do, so we must be able to produce enough of it.
Agriculture is continuously evolving and I believe it offers an exciting and rewarding future for young people like me.
How did you get into the seed sector?
I decided to study agronomy when I left school. I knew quite a lot about beef production and I was curious to learn about a new area of agriculture.
I took a two-year honours degree at Auzeville Tolosane, an agricultural college near Toulouse, which included soil studies, learning about crops such as wheat, sunflower, alfalfa, and peas, analysis of crop rotations and conducting trials.
After my first degree I studied Agribusiness at Tecomah College, near Versailles. As part of my training, I worked on a placement with merchant Sarl Cazottes NeĢgoce, Villefranche-de-Panat, where I became involved in trading animal feed, chemicals, nitrogen and seeds with farmers.
I really enjoyed it, especially the seed side, so I decided I would focus in this area as a career.
I spent a further two years at Tecomah studying agribusiness development management.
How did you become involved in marketing?
During this two-year degree I had to do a training period. I chose an apprenticeship with RAGT, where I was involved in developing an RAGT Growers Club, supporting external communications through newsletters and technical articles, improving social media strategies, helping with RAGT’s presence at agricultural shows and analysis of competitor companies.
Why RAGT?
RAGT is based in Rodez, near where I grew up. I knew the families behind the company, and I like their values. They are really interested in improving agriculture for farmers, and that’s what I want to do.
RAGT is very personal – it is integrated with its farmer base, and it’s a European company first and foremost – some global companies don’t concentrate on this market in the same way. It is not involved in ‘Hollywood marketing’ like some companies – messages are based on hard facts, and that’s important to me.
We are Europe’s largest plant breeder and I believe we are right at the forefront when it comes to developing crop production.
When did you start working in the UK?
I applied for a full-time job and was appointed marketing manager of RAGT Seeds UK in September. I’m really looking forward to the challenge – it’s a great opportunity to discover agriculture over here, and the job takes on the work I did during my apprenticeship to a new level.
What developments have grabbed your attention?
RAGT is working on a range of traits. While yield and quality remain a vital focus, the plant breeding sector holds the keys to reducing crop inputs through improved disease and pest resistance, both of which are become increasingly important as the choice of chemistry shrinks, resistance builds and environmental pressures increase.
Barley yellow dwarf resistance in wheat is a good example – we are the first plant breeder to introduce this trait into wheat in Europe. RAGT will also very soon have commercial varieties with unique resistance to Septoria.
We are involved in drought resistance, a real concern in southern France that will become very relevant elsewhere. Other traits such as tolerance to frost and high salinity soils and better nutrition scavenging will become key as climate change intensifies.
Our aim is to help growers improve the management of our varieties to help optimise performance and production. Our UK Growers Club is proving very valuable in helping to assess our varieties in the field early on and to develop best practice in managing them.
We have so many interesting things going on at RAGT and sometimes we do not talk enough about it. I’m really looking forward to help get those messages out, for the benefit of all our farmer customers, seed trade partners and end users as well as the company.
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