So, the overall Ag market fundamentals are healthy. And maybe, Tim, you can talk about — go around the regions in seed and then we’ll do the same thing in CP.
Tim Glenn: Yes, Chuck. So EMEA, as you can see from our results this year, a lot of volume pressure in EMEA, really strong pricing. So excellent results considering how the volume was down, but take rush off the table as that was a big chunk of our volume decrease in Europe. We saw a general reduction in the planted area this year for corn as a lot of, what I’d say, stranded corn in Ukraine was migrating into Europe and put a lot of pressure on the local commodity price, farmers planted less corn. As we go into next year, we see that situation, I would describe it as stabilizing. So, not necessarily a recovery, but stabilization is the way I think about it from a European seed standpoint, which is a positive step. That was — that’s a very positive step.
We talked about North America, so I won’t touch on that. Latin America, obviously, this year, heavily influenced by the, I’ll call it, [indiscernible] corn in Brazil, reducing the summer and safrinha area. And I’d say sort of a recovery in Argentina, although they’re still dealing with a little bit of weather issues. And as we go into 2024, 2025, we get past this season. Our assumption is that Brazil, we will absorb that stranded corn that’s been putting pressure on the commodity and that they’ll be back to more of a typical, call it, a recovery kind of a flat. We’ll assume more like flat to slightly up low single-digit on corn area next year. And in terms of Asia-Pacific, very small for us in Seed. We do business in specific countries there.
I’d say in the ASEAN countries, heavy dependence upon the El Nino effect and what that does, local weather conditions, markets are generally strong, just sort of weather-dependent. Asia-Pacific — or excuse me, India or South Asia healthy market, I’d say, good demand for corn and oilseeds there, which is hybrid mustard. And again, a little bit of weather dependence there as we go through, but fundamentally strong and businesses are in a good spot for us.
Chuck Magro: Robert, CP?
Robert King: I’ll walk around CP. We will start over in EMEA this year and moving forward, we’re seeing a good pull on our high-technology molecules and the new products over there. And with the challenges that you see from a CP, I guess, regulatory environment, social pressures in Europe, they have a special challenge that we don’t have everywhere else yet. And our products are doing very well there. When you think about some of the products like [Indiscernible] that is that is a herbicide that is in the cereals area. There is one that’s doing very well. And the low use rate of that is something that plays to the environmental regulations there. This is the one you think about a sugar pack, it covers two hectares and the technology that’s going into that.
The other thing in Europe that is going to be an opportunity for us as we move forward is the acquisitions around the Biologicals and the growth that we’ll begin to see in Europe as we progress over the next few years with registrations and new products there. It plays right into the need there, especially in the fruits and vegetables market of Europe, there is a big need for new technology for these growers. And so we’re seeing good progress in Europe. We expect we gained market share this last year, and we’re positioning for a good year this next year as we move forward. Shifting over to Asia, as Tim said, the weather there has been a challenge shifting from — into El Nino from La Nina. And that has put India planted acres this year down, but those will recover.
This is a shift in weather, and we will see that rice planted acres rebound this next year. The thing about Asia is that we have some really good products going into the rice market. Rinskor being a new one that has been launched that controlled herbicide in rice and then mix that with our Brown Plant hopper product Pyraxalt. And we’ve got leading technology products there that will grow in this rice market of Asia that we have. When you look at the inventory in Asia, we’re in a pretty good spot. Despite the weather despite the slowness that we’ve seen in some places I would say that we’re in a much better position than others that have some pretty hot inventory in the channel. And we expect as soon as some of the things shift there, we’re going to be in a really good position moving forward.
Finally, I’ll leave you with Japan. And as you think about that market, we don’t speak about it a lot because it’s not huge for us. But again, large fruit and vegetable market, Biologicals plays well into that area, plus some of our low use rate new products. And so overall, in Asia, we expect a continued growth. We expect that technology is going to continue to play a big part, and we’re well positioned for both.
Operator: Thank you. We’ll take our final question from Joshua Spector from UBS.
Lucas Beaumont: Good morning. This is Lucas Beaumont on for Josh. So I was just wondering if you could please expand for us on your comments regarding the flow-through of the Seed and Crop Chem costs next year. So, you mentioned sort of more of a lag of higher costs sort of flowing through inventory and into the P&L. So, I mean if you could sort of disaggregate some of that for us into like whether you expect costs to be sort of up or down next year between Seed and Crop Chems and maybe overall, like if you need to split it between first half, second half to help us kind of highlight the lag impact, that would be great. Thank you.
Dave Anderson: Okay. So, this is Dave. Yes, thanks for the question. So, we’re starting to see, as you know, we’re seeing the price — cost of raw materials fall. We indicated in our prepared remarks that we are seeing continued inflation in the third quarter for the Crop Protection business, but that’s going to now start to come down in the fourth quarter. And we anticipate, again, early, but we anticipate favorability in 2024 on a year-over-year basis. In both Seed and Crop, it’s going to be influenced by inventory turns, which as a result of inventory then translating into cost of goods sold and the timing of that. That’s going to be a little bit of a buffer, if you will, against just either spot, ingredient or input costs or spot commodity costs in the case of seed.
It will be a little bit also slower to actually translate in terms of cost benefit in the first half of the year just because of that phenomenon. It just takes a while. But overall, we’re heading in the right direction. I feel very good and more to come in 2025. So we’ll see another lift, another improvement as we look out to 2025.
Operator: Thank you. I’d like to now turn the call back to Ms. Kim Booth for any final remarks.
Kim Booth: And that concludes today’s call. We thank you for joining and for your interest in Corteva. We hope you have a safe and wonderful day.
Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today’s conference. You may now disconnect.
