Ag retail actively explores opportunities to build on the promise of biological products in markets beyond specialty crops. By Paul Schrimpf | Group Editor, CropLife
At the end of the day, a retailer’s recommendation of any product on any farm field has to correlate to some measurable degree of value creation to the farmer. It’s true for the “traditional” crop protection and fertility products still prevalent in high-production-based agriculture, and it’s true for emerging biological products as well.
The challenge many biological products have faced is a lack of product performance depth at the local level. And without a foundation of provable value, it’s virtually impossible for a product to make its way to a retail shelf and become part of the crop production regimen.
But consumer preferences are shifting meaningfully, and downstream food production partners are more often demanding greater transparency in their quest to reduce carbon, champion practices that optimize nutrient use, and deliver on corporate sustainability goals.
Forward-looking ag retailers are keenly aware of downstream pressures, and they are actively looking for products that can maintain or increase production. And the widest “blue ocean” waterfront exists among biological products. To make the leap from a “has promise” technology to taking a prominent place in agronomic prescriptions, some retailers are taking matters into their own hands by partnering with suppliers and farmer-customers to put products through their paces.
“Interest in sustainability is increasing in row crops across the Midwest,” says Sherman Hollins, Key Account Manager at Certis Biologicals, a manufacturer of exclusively biological products for agriculture. Many family farms that have been reliant on traditional chemistry-based programs are looking at alternatives, he says, in particular those approaching a transition to the next generation of the family. “It’s a super exciting opportunity for us, and for retailers in the Midwest it opens up opportunities in biological products.”
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Back in 2012, ag consulting company Widmer and Associates started exploring biological products as a means to push past the 200-acre corn ceiling that so many of its grower-customers were experiencing. “We were asking ‘what was it going to take to get to 250 or 300?’” recalls Les Widmer. They explored a number of different non-traditional products in search of a real difference maker.
Their attention turned to soil health, and after doing some testing through specialized labs they came to discover that biological soil diversity was lacking. While many of the soil microbes essential to optimal soil health were present, they were not as active as they needed to be. “The soil structure, the water retention … everything was pointing to a need to improve our soil biodiversity,” says Widmer.
One of the products the company began exploring was SP-1 (called MVP in the western sales area), a formulated mix of soil microbes designed to improve soil health, manufactured by Douglas Plant Health. In 2018, Northwest Ohio cooperative Luckey Farmers acquired the firm and renamed it W & A Crop Solutions as the pursuit of soil improvement products continued.
SP-1 showed promise in small scale research, so Luckey Farmers decided to go “all in” on determining the value of the product to soil health. They partnered with progressive growers interested in exploring biological products, and got 26 of them to commit 20 acres to a three-year research project to test the performance and value of the product. Douglas agreed to provide the product to Luckey Farmers at no cost.
“We got a mix of production types among the farmers,” Widmer says. “Some of conventional till, some are strip tillers, some are no-till. We want to be able to evaluate it under a variety of conditions.”
Specialty soil labs are key to the process as well, providing analysis of specific soil microbes and their activity in the soil in addition to the more traditional Haney soil health test. Tests for water holding capacity and compaction are also conducted to determine any improvement in these soil variables.
“Testing can tell us the not only the species, but how much of specific microbes are in the soil,” Overmyer says. “It can also give us an idea of microbe diversity.”
It will be a long road to broader adoption of biological products for Luckey Farmers, but interest from farmers has increased, as has regulatory attention when it comes to soil and water quality in the western basin of Lake Erie. The time to put them to the test has arrived.
At the farmgate, interest and demand around biological products has continued to increase in recent years, driven by a number of factors from changing farmer demographics to a growing emphasis on sustainability in crop programs.
“We started exploring biologicals about 10 years ago, and the results of that early research were intriguing,” says Chuck Anderson, vice president and general manager, Innovation and Specialty Liquids at The Andersons, Maumee, OH. While work on product development continued, an uptick in demand over the last couple of years accelerated that effort. “Soil health is trending up, as is demand to improve nutrient efficiency. I think we're really just kind of on the cusp of this biological trend.”
Biological products have been around for many years, but on the industry side investment in the space in North America has increased significantly — as has the number of product options. Integrated ag retail-manufacturers like The Andersons have pared down the product possibilities by homing in on those that best match the strengths in their offerings and existing programs. For them, pairing microbials with liquid in-furrow fertilizer was the area to focus on and has yielded some compelling product offerings.
In a greenhouse study, the treatment with The Andersons GoldStart liquid fertilizer and Bio Pass emerged 5 days earlier and more uniform than the starter alone, according to the manufacturer. Additionally, they report that the average root mass of the plants was more robust, and the plants had an average dry plant mass that was double the mass of the starter alone.
Soil health building microbes in sporulated form delivered with a starter turned out to be just the ticket and two products — Bio Pass and Bio Pass LG — are currently available.
The starter fertilizer carrier provides solid consistency, and the sporulated formulation of the microbe is viable for two years,” says Anderson. “Once a product leaves the shop, you lose control of when it is used,” says Anderson. “To ensure that the customer experience is positive, stability is a huge factor.”
It’s also important to ensure the satisfaction of retail partners that are not affiliated with The Andersons. “Retailers guard customer relationships very closely, and they are not going to advise a grower to incorporate a product that they do not have total confidence in,” says Adam Lovelace, The Andersons’ Vice President of Farm Centers. “We’re shooting for a higher return on investment with these products, in the area of three to four times.”
A third biological product offering is focused on accelerating the degradation of field residue in no-till crops called Bio Reverse. The formulation is designed to compost and break down residue to improve seed-to-soil contact, reduce planter or tire damage from crop stalks, and reverse nutrient tie up in residue to provide more available nutrients to subsequent crop plantings.
