Decker Walker
Managing Director & Partner
Chicago
Decker Walker is a core member of The Boston Consulting Group’s Industrial Goods practice, where he leads the global agribusiness topic, and the Corporate Development practice, where he leads the North America mergers and acquisitions topic.
Since joining BCG in 2007, Decker has worked extensively with public and private companies, governments, and nongovernment organizations on projects related to growth strategy, merger and acquisition strategy, strategic and private-equity due diligence, and postmerger integration. His experience has covered a wide range of industries, focusing in particular on industrial goods but also working in consumer, technology, health care, and financial services.
Decker has deep experience in food and agriculture, where he has helped clients develop corporate strategies, evaluate investment opportunities, and analyze industry and technological changes. He has worked in all major food and agriculture sectors (grains, softs, dairy, livestock, fertilizer, agrochemicals, seeds, and equipment) and in all steps of the value chain (crop inputs, farming, distribution, financing, trading, processing, and sourcing), on every inhabited continent. Decker is the author of BCG's agriculture publication Making Hay.
Prior to joining BCG, Decker was an economist at the World Bank in Washington, DC.
The challenges of automating agricultural processing are significant, but so, too, are the payoffs from getting it right.
Big companies are working together to foster regenerative practices, revive high-value ecosystems, and increase the diversity of raw materials in their product portfolios.
In the coming post-COVID-19 upswing, the global agriculture industry may finally bounce back. Here’s how to reap the rewards.
We must act decisively to secure the two most urgent pieces of the food chain—the first and the last mile.
The old innovation model at the big agricultural-input companies no longer works. To survive, they must go digital and focus on customer needs.
The companies that succeed will continue to focus on the fundamentals and exercise financial discipline.
The longer the nation’s many trade disputes drag on, the greater the risk to US farmers that they won’t be able to regain lost share in China and other critical markets.
No matter where a company sits in the value chain, transformation is essential for thriving in the competitive world of commodity crops.
Agricultural-input suppliers need to act fast because the rapidly increasing use of digital information will quickly sort the winners from the losers.
Sustainable farming could be a huge opportunity for agricultural companies—but most haven’t embraced it.
