Syngenta Canada names David Hoar as head of sales, crop protection

Jan 09, 2026

Syngenta Canada has named David Hoar as head of sales, crop protection, effective immediately. In his new role, Hoar will lead the national sales and account management teams from the company’s office in Calgary, Alberta, and will serve on the organization’s leadership team.

Hoar will be responsible for guiding his team across nine provinces to deliver a best-in-class customer experience and innovative solutions for Canadian growers.

“David is a natural leader, strong communicator, and keeps the customer at the heart of everything he does,” says Shaun Vey, president, Syngenta Canada. “His strategic mindset, talent for building strong relationships both within the company and with customers, and his commitment to continuous improvement have made him highly effective. These strengths have enabled David to consistently deliver outstanding results while fostering the growth and development of talent for the organization.”

Hoar brings 23 years of dedicated experience with Syngenta to this leadership position. Most recently, he served as Head of Key Accounts, where he was instrumental in shaping the company’s retail strategy. In this role, he continually sought opportunities for improvement, embraced change to enhance service offerings, and actively listened to customers to ensure their needs were met and exceeded.

“I’m honoured and excited to lead our sales team, with a clear focus on delivering value to our retail partners and farmer customers,” says David Hoar. “I’m committed to continuing to grow and support our talented team through coaching and mentoring and using my voice to advocate for Canadian agriculture.”

Hoar began his career with Syngenta in 2002 as a territory manager in East-Central Alberta. He advanced through the organization with roles in marketing and was later promoted to district sales manager, marking the start of his strong focus on people development, leadership, and sales optimization. He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Agricultural Sciences from the University of Alberta.

This appointment follows a recent leadership transition at Syngenta Canada, where David succeeds Shaun Vey, who was appointed president of Syngenta Canada in December 2025 following the retirement of Trevor Heck after a 34-year career with Syngenta and its legacy companies.

Source : Syngenta.ca

Video: From Students to Solutions | On The Brink: Season 2, Episode 14

Ask Canada’s most decorated soybean breeder his favourite part of the job and he doesn’t name a single variety. He names the students.

Istvan Rajcan is a professor of soybean breeding and genetics in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph, where he has run the soybean breeding program for 28 and a half years. In that time he has developed 87 soybean cultivars, published 140 refereed papers and trained 51 graduate students. In 2025 he received the Public Sector Impact Award from the National Association for Plant Breeding.

He is also worried. In this episode he says Canada is at a crossroads, pointing to recent government cuts to plant breeding programs and to the facilities that support them. His prescription is structural. "Plant breeding funding formula has to be a long-term one," he says.

The formula he is defending is the public-private matching arrangement his program runs on. Private seed companies fund the work, provincial or federal money matches it, and the combined pool stretches each dollar further than either source could alone. At the National Association for Plant Breeding annual meeting in June, he says American public breeders were often surprised at how well that collaboration works in Canada.

He also describes how the people entering plant breeding have changed. His early graduate students came mostly from farms. More recently they include, in his words, "city kids who just became excited about genetics."

Topics covered:

Why public-private plant breeding funding in Canada needs a long-term

commitment rather than a larger one

How matching private seed company investment with provincial and federal

dollars multiplies research capacity

How the graduate student pipeline into plant breeding has shifted from

farm kids to city kids