OUTLOOK
Anticipating future challenges
The InVivo agricultural cooperative group is unique in terms of its history, its pace of development and its continued ability to meet the needs of cooperatives and farmers. To strengthen and maintain this unique positioning, InVivo relies on three pillars: differentiation, digitalisation and innovation.
BUILDING DIFFERENTIATED AND DIFFERENTIATING PRODUCTS
The group's agricultural offering will be structured into two areas:
- An area bringing together the services and products offered to member cooperatives and affiliated customers to optimise their efficiency. Incorporating the necessary changes in agricultural production patterns, these products and services include decision-making and farm management tools, easier access to agronomic experimentation and expertise, bulk purchasing and a dedicated online offer: aladin.farm.
- A "products and services" area for farmers, incorporating the Farmi omnichannel platform, which is to be developed internationally, starting with Europe.
These two areas will be supported by industrial development and production facilities around:
- inputs (with IS Seeds, created in July 2023 to bring together InVivo's seed origination and production activities), fertilisers, and plant health products ;
- collection.
ACCELERATING THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE SECTOR
The agricultural sector is facing numerous challenges, including tracking agricultural practices and production, measuring the technical and economic efficiency of farms and promoting sustainable agricultural practices. Digital technology can provide practical solutions to these challenges, in line with consumer expectations concerning transparency and food safety, environmental concerns and the reality on the ground. InVivo's role is to act as a bridge between digital technology – and all the possibilities it has to offer – and the agricultural sector, by providing the best in-house and market skills, and by developing a fully comprehensive agricultural online offer that is accessible, transparent and scalable. Fulfilling this role will require substantial investment over the coming years for the group and its subsidiaries.
MAKING AGRICULTURE A LEVER FOR ACTION IN THE FACE OF CLIMATE CHANGE
The decarbonisation of agricultural production, a major cross-functional issue for the InVivo group, involves using low-carbon fertilisers in particular. InVivo was involved in the creation of the FertigHy consortium (June 2023) to produce this type of fertiliser, which will result in the first plant being built in Spain in 2025. By 2028, InVivo should be able to distribute around 200,000 tonnes of low-carbon fertiliser to its cooperatives and farming customers. The group, which has made carbon neutrality a priority since 2020, is involved from seed to finished product via its inter-crop product range (Semences de France), its precision farming services (see p.20), low-carbon grain marketing (see p.29), the establishment of a low-carbon barley-malt supply chain (see p.35), and the distribution of low-carbon baguettes (see p.45). InVivo now wishes to step up its efforts, by developing a network of partners and strengthening its relations with the public authorities on this issue, so that the necessary investments can be made to ensure national energy and food sovereignty.