A New Role for Plant Health Product Providers (and Researchers)
By Dan Jacobs, Senior Editor, AgriBusiness Global and CropLife
Today’s crop protection and plant health product manufacturers play an important role that goes beyond simply delivering effective solutions that offer efficacy and return on investment. Grower education is just as critical.
Formal education might end when an individual crosses a stage and picks up a diploma, but the savviest members of the ag supply chain know learning continues long past walking out of the classroom.
“There has been no discipline of agriculture that has not changed in the last several decades,” says Ross Bender, Director, New Product Development with The Mosaic Co. “We use 21st century equipment, 21st century crop genetics, 21st century crop protection practices. Our job is to provide 21st century crop nutrition technologies to maximize the yield of that cropping system. Because fertility accounts for up to 60% of yield, we feel there are lots of opportunities to do crop nutrition better.”
“Innovation is too hard to do on your own. Innovation in solving some of the world's toughest challenges requires teamwork."
And the responsibility for teaching growers about all these changes in plant health technology often falls to the manufacturers and researchers providing and researching them. While complex, huge advances have been made to plant health products. Yet, because the challenges are intricate and the understanding how these tools work is still a learning process in many cases, new solutions are rarely identified in isolation.
“We do that [through] collaboration with other industry companies, with the academic space, with farmers and retailers, etc.,” Bender says. “Innovation is too hard to do on your own. Innovation in solving some of the world's toughest challenges requires teamwork.
“One of our strategies for innovation relies on the premise that that knowledge really knows no geographical bounds,” he continues. “We're tackling problems that have literally never been tackled before, and we need the very best experts, regardless of where they exist around the globe. So, we work with partners all over, some in Europe, some in Australia, some in Asia, many in North and South America. I think that gives us the best shot to be successful.”
The Historical View
Despite a history measured in millennia and the notion that it’s a mature industry, agriculture experiences constant innovation.
“For the last 30 years, agronomy for crops has focused on biotic control and fertilizers,” says James Maude, Senior Vice President, Acadian Plant Health. “The toolbox for a grower included a synthetic fertilizer, a fungicide and herbicide, plus an insecticide to gain a yield and a return on their investment.”
"We need to be able to demonstrate to a grower their use of plant health products has a much bigger impact than they currently believe. And that piece of education is limited in agriculture.”
That has been the business model for decades and the adoption of biostimulants as plant health products has been an add-on to that program, not as a core product, Maude says. But that main economic program is still those key inputs of fertilizers and synthetic pesticides essentially.
“That means the adoption of plant health products has been quite hard at the grower level,” he continues. We need to be able to demonstrate to a grower their use of plant health products has a much bigger impact than they currently believe. And that piece of education is limited in agriculture.”
In other words, education about the benefits plant health can only happen if end-users are willing to “take the classes,” learn how they differ from traditional inputs, and set the correct expectations. A critical lesson with plant health products, particularly biostimulants, is that the indicators of success or failure may not always be as cut and dried as with other types of materials.
For traditional herbicides, for example, effects are clear and nearly immediate. Dead weeds are pretty obvious.
“With biological products, we typically evaluate their success as an increase in yield," says Fred Below, Professor of Plant Physiology, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “That’s a very high standard. The product may actually do what it's supposed to, but something else might be limiting yield that year that prevents the product from expressing itself.”
The inability to see immediate results, the fact that plant health products might be effective while still not delivering the hoped-for yields (i.e., a 2% crop yield loss might have been 5% if the products had not been used), and the fact that early on many plant health products didn’t live up to their promise (or flat out didn’t work), led much of the ag community to disregard them. Especially because they were often compared with their synthetic counterparts.
“Biologicals never met that kind of standard. So, they were always the lesser technology in that kind of comparison,” Maude says.
Manufacturers have learned their lesson and Maude expects plant health product providers to take a different approach.
Changing Attitudes
Despite the challenges plant health products have experienced in the past, the attitude toward them — and therefore the market for them — has become more positive in recent years. There are a few reasons for that.
“There's a lot of optimism for this new market,” says Dr. Connor Sible, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “There's a lot of opportunity there and I think farmers see that potential, but they are a little cautious, and rightfully so. With a lot of different types of products coming from all different areas — start-ups all the way to be well-established Fortune 500 companies, it can be difficult to know what may offer a real solution.”
While some skepticism certainly remains, he says, “Overall, the idea of plant health products is of interest to growers, and they want these things to work, and are willing to try them on their farms.”
“With a biostimulant, what you're doing is you're ensuring that the crop’s going to be able to produce [closer to] its potential yield. It's not one plus one equals three. It's just making sure it doesn't go below the one. It's a different type of value proposition."
The industry has been constantly focused on more and more productivity, Maude says. “We want more and more yield, right? We put on more nitrogen or more phosphorus. We put on more herbicides and fungicides, and we bump that yield potentially.
“With a biostimulant, what you're doing is you're ensuring that the crop’s going to be able to produce [closer to] its potential yield. It's not one plus one equals three. It's just making sure it doesn't go below the one. It's a different type of value proposition. And that's really important, but the key here is, we're not just promoting the crop’s productivity but also sustainability. Biostimulants have a central role in soil health and the carbon cycle making them a different type of one plus one, in this case the critical sum of crop health and planet health at the same time.”
Welcoming the Multinationals
One reason plant health products have grown in acceptance is the investment from multinational companies (MNCs).
“The products have traditionally been an add-on for a grower, not a central part of their agronomy program,” Maude says. “The multinationals will position these as a central part of the program. It's a completely different positioning, and they have the ability to do it in a stepwise fashion. Their initial positioning will be alongside their own technologies.”
Biostimulant offerings, for example, will be paired with biocontrol products, which gives the solution a better chance of success. Growers will see the combined benefits of a reduction in pests and healthier crops.
“When you combine a biocontrol with a biostimulant, you [help] the crop induce its own natural defenses, plus, you apply the biocontrol and it closes that gap,” Maude says. “So now you have parity between the old synthetic, and then biostimulant plus biocontrol product that's a 100% biological technology and is a direct replacement for the old synthetic technology. It is a significant win. And you'll see more of that style of innovation coming through in the next two or three years. That becomes a real focus for agriculture.”
It's not just manufacturers that play a role in educating users. Extension agents like those at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign contribute to the understanding.
“We think we play a role in validating and finding the additional usefulness — how or where they're most effective,” Below says.
"They're a relatively inexpensive option for a grower to try and it's one they can dabble with. They can try multiple products on a few acres without needing a massive investment. That also helps open the market a little bit on farmers ability to try new things.”
Making Plant Health Products Easier to Try
“Most of these products are quite economical,” Sible says. “In corn and soybean production systems, a 2% to 3% yield increase will pay for that product almost every time as many of these products have a ‘free ride’ with another pass [planter-applied or with an herbicide]. They're a relatively inexpensive option for a grower to try and it's one they can dabble with. They can try multiple products on a few acres without needing a massive investment. That also helps open the market a little bit on farmers ability to try new things.”
Educating growers on use and expectations will continue to be a role that both manufacturers and Extension departments can play.
“They need to treat them like more than just another jug on the shelf,” Below says. “There has to be education that comes along with them. And [manufacturers] really must understand the production practices of the grower. If you want to destroy the market, sell the product to somebody that doesn't need it.”
Education is critical not only because these products work differently than traditional crop inputs, but also because the products are continuing to evolve.
“We've been able to put these products in categories of what do they do or what their main mechanism of action is,” Sible says. “By being able to categorize products, we can educate growers. Do they have the conditions where there is a greater likelihood that they need these products? Do they have a need that the product fulfills? This is part of the education that’s happened.”
Manufacturers need to do more than just provide new products. It’s about viewing a bigger picture about what growers need to get the most out of their crops.
“We need to partner multiple solutions and technologies together,” Mosaic’s Bender says. “So, we believe best-in-class mineral nutrition, like the fertilizers we've come to know, can and should be complemented with best-in-class biological tools. We call that advanced crop nutrition.”
