Bernard Blum

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Bernard J. Blum (1938–2014) was a French agricultural scientist, industry manager, and the founding president of the International Biocontrol Manufacturers' Association (IBMA). He promoted sustainable farming with biological and integrated plant protection and used decision-making tools to guide actions.

Blum grew up in Besançon, studied in Besançon and at Paris’s Lycée Henri IV, and trained in agricultural science at the Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon. He became an entomologist and earned a doctorate in Tropical Agriculture. He began his career at the Agricultural Research Institute I.H.H.O. (now CIRAD) in the Ivory Coast and also studied at INSEAD in Fontainebleau.

In 1972 he joined Ciba-Geigy (today part of Roche/Novartis and Syngenta) in Basel, where he led entomology work and later managed plant protection markets in the Near East and Africa. In Africa he started using decision-support tools to reduce pesticide use in cotton, aiming to rely more on natural methods.

In the early 1990s, Blum helped found the Académie du Biocontrôle et de la Protection Biologique Intégrée in France. In 1995 he co-founded the IBMA and served as its founding president, later as vice-president. In 2008 he started the ABIM Konferenz to promote new biological products and technologies.

After leaving Novartis, he started his own company, AGROMETRIX – Integrated Crop Management, in 2005. He championed biodiversity and an integrated protection policy based on analysis and prevention. He also worked with weather-monitoring stations to create crop-specific computer programs that warned of insect or disease risks, allowing targeted interventions with fewer or alternative treatments.

In 2008 he joined the Académie d’Agriculture de France, working on precaution and bio-intensive plant protection methods. He also explored introducing the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) in Europe, including a project in the Southwest region.

Blum died of a heart attack in 2014. The IBMA honors his legacy with the Bernard Blum Prize for the best innovation in biological plant protection.