Sustainability is the subtext of just about every discussion involving agriculture today. Biological products will play an important role in the acceptance and success of these efforts. By Jackie Pucci | Senior Writer, CropLife
We received a funny (but true) t-shirt in the mail in a little gift package from Atticus LLC — the kind typically sent out by companies to media around the holidays. The back of the shirt reads:
Verb. (farm-ing): The art of losing money while working 400 hours a month to feed people who think you are trying to kill them.
Transforming the public perception of agriculture, says Darren Anderson, co-founder and chief executive of Vive Crop Protection, “is one of the most important goals in the entire industry. It should be something we are all thinking about.”
Speaking with CropLife from his office in Toronto, Anderson acknowledges how much agriculture has accomplished in feeding the world, and he also sees incredible potential for innovation to improve sustainability. Yet, “I worry that if we don’t improve public support for the idea of using science and technology to improve agricultural production, it kills our license to operate as an industry, and it will set humanity back a long time.”
“I think about sustainability a little differently, in the sense that you see some of these farms that have been in production for 100-plus years. To me, that’s sustainable practice and sustainable approach,” says Jason Kuhlemeier, vice president of marketing with the AgBiome, the microbials-focused biological R&D company. “Sometimes I think the perception is that farming is like strip mining or clear-cutting forests,” he points out. “It’s not the same, but we don’t tell that story very well.”
New chemicals coming to market today are so much more specific, with lower use rates, and designed with user safety top of mind, “that it is almost unrecognizable to what agriculture looked like 50 years ago,” Anderson adds.
Nevertheless, the future of the industry, he argues, depends at least in some part on biologicals in achieving the twin goals of more sustainable agricultural production systems and a changed public opinion of the industry.
The role of tried-and-true traditional chemistry, to be sure, will remain critical, and it’s this performance-first approach that has driven Vive Crop Protection to ramp up development of combination products for row crops. In May, it launched AZterknot fungicide, which fuses the plant health benefits of Reynoutria extract, azoxystrobin, and the company’s hallmark Allosperse delivery technology, and it expects to launch more synthetic-biological-Allosperse combinations in the coming couple of years.
With biologicals in the past, “what you have or how it works is a question mark. There’s been enough capital going into these (biological) companies from venture capital, that they’re now spending time and money to understand what they have and how it works,” through trials and independent third-party research, he says.
“In our case, because we can combine a biological with a chemical, now we are giving a baseline performance that they know and trust from the chemical, and by using our technology (which optimizes the biological and chemical both), they get the upside associated with the biological. I think technologies like that can really accelerate adoption.”
Anderson believes the answer to a more positive view of agriculture most likely lies in climate-related programs. Urban consumers passionate about climate change far outnumber those concerned about pesticides to the degree that it changes their buying behavior, he reasons.
AgBiome, known for its Howler biofungicide in the U.S., is focused on developing biological-synthetic combinations in its sustainability approach. It is working to expand the footprint of Howler to Europe and key countries in Africa and the Middle East through a deal it inked with BASF in the spring.
“We believe that the complementary combination of conventional crop protection and BioSolutions is the way forward for sustainable agriculture and we are convinced that strong partnerships in the industry are essential to bring more innovations to the market,” Marco Moorfeld, Vice President for Market Management in Europe, Africa, Middle East and Central Asia at BASF’s Agricultural Solutions division said in a statement.
AgBiome has submitted a second package to EPA for another biofungicide, for which it expects to receive registration sometime in 2022, and it has a robust pipeline of combination insecticides and fungicides. “We would love to be in bioherbicides, but that is a tougher nut to crack,” Kuhlemeier concedes.
Over the last year-and-a-half, he has witnessed biological companies come to market with far better products and data both, helping fight off the snake-oil reputation. “As that continues to happen and as products continue to get better, I think that we’ll see adoption continue to pick up not only in specialty crops where we’ve had success, but row crops,” noting that AgBiome will look to opportunities in the latter market as well.
Adam Litle, chief executive of Sound Agriculture, says he has observed a dramatic change within the last six to 12 months across all sizes of agriculture.
“Urgency [around sustainability] has ramped up, big time. It’s really hit a fever pitch in terms of, not just talk, but action,” he tells CropLife from his home base in the San Francisco Bay Area. His company has doubled its go-to-market team in the last six months to allow it to keep pace and expand its footprint as rapidly as possible.
Sound Agriculture’s approach to sustainability lies in Source, its bio-inspired foliar spray which activates the soil microbes that fix nitrogen in the atmosphere and unlock phosphorus in the soil, effectively manufacturing fertilizer right at the root zone of a plant and reducing the need for nitrogen application by 25 to 50 lbs. per acre.
Sound Agriculture has partnered with Syngenta in China, and most recently with The Mosaic Co., to co-develop a product for row crops that combines Source with micronutrients, “which we think will make it more effective and easier for growers, as you can accomplish two things at once in the same pass,” Litle explains. The product is expected to launch in the United States by 2023, before rolling out to additional markets throughout the Americas, with focus on Brazil, Argentina, and Canada.
“Ease and simplicity are something that we have as part of our values. We think that is important in such a complex and confusing space right now,” he says.
In what The New York Times called “a seminal moment in the global effort to fight climate change,” Europe in mid-July challenged the rest of the world by laying out an ambitious blueprint to reduce carbon emissions by 55% by 2030. Agriculture is a targeted sector for meeting the goals laid out in the proposal.
Litle believes it’s only a matter of time (meaning, politics) before the U.S. and others follow Europe’s lead.
Agriculture companies, from startups like Sound Agriculture to mammoths like BASF, have relatively long since laid out elaborate sustainability plans in keeping with such policies. Under its Good Growth Plan, Syngenta Group announced it is targeting investments of $2 billion in sustainable agriculture breakthroughs by 2025 and to deliver two sustainable technology breakthroughs each year.
Syngenta’s Seeds and Crop Protection business units have also committed to reducing the carbon intensity of their operations by half by 2030 to support the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Bayer Crop Science has committed to achieving a 30% reduction of the field greenhouse gas footprint of its farming customers by 2030, in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
“We firmly believe that economic growth and sustainability ought to go hand in hand, which is why sustainability is a key component of our business strategy,” says Matthias Berninger, head of Bayer Public Affairs, Science and Sustainability. How well sustainability targets are met factors into the company’s decision-making processes and the compensation systems of all managerial staff, including its board of directors.
While acknowledging that there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution, Bayer names biologicals as one of the strategies it is employing to reduce its environmental impact.
