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1. Meeting with Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

2. Speaking at ‘Just Power – Aligning to the New Economic World Order’ in New Delhi, India, on the important role agriculture plays in fostering development. 

1. 

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## Chairman’s letter 

The challenge: How to ensure food security for such an enormous and rapidly growing population on a planet that has finite natural resources. 

At the beginning of 2011 there were hopes that the nascent economic recovery in Europe and North America would mark an end to the anxiety engendered by the financial crisis of 2008. However, the financial health of governments and the banking sector deteriorated through the year, which created a somber backdrop to economic activity. In the emerging markets of Asia and Latin America, growth was more robust but failed to maintain the pace seen in previous years as the global economic slowdown affected export markets. 

Against this volatile background, Syngenta performed extremely well in an agricultural market that, despite weakness in the broader economy, was generally buoyant across the world. Relatively high crop prices encouraged growers to invest in technology, and the geographical breadth of the company, notably our strength in emerging markets, meant we were very well placed to capture these growth opportunities. 

2011 also witnessed a significant milestone as the world’s population reached 7 billion. To put this in context, the world’s population reached its first billion in the early nineteenth century. In the subsequent two hundred years the population has grown by 6 billion and is predicted to reach 9 billion by 2050. These stark figures highlight the challenge: how to ensure food security for such an enormous and rapidly- growing population on a planet that has finite natural resources. 

The pressures that this challenge creates are felt most acutely in countries whose populations spend a large percentage of their household income on food. These people are particularly vulnerable to large moves in the price of food, which can rapidly make the cost of living simply unsustainable. Algeria and Mozambique are two examples of such countries. In the former, yields are some 70 percent lower on average than in France, a highly productive country. This is not as a result of inherently poor soil or an unhelpful climate, rather that access to vital agricultural technologies is restricted. Moreover, in a country whose inhabitants spend more than half their income on food, this is a worrying state of affairs. In Mozambique, according to the FAO, nearly half of its land is potentially available for cultivation but less than a sixth is actually used. This means that it is precariously and unnecessarily reliant upon the importation of food and highly susceptible to commodity price movements. 

2. 

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