Nevertheless, the general drive for more sustainable farming systems is driving investment in biological products by individual farmers and large companies alike. WHAT IS A BIOLOGICAL? “Biologicals” can mean many things to different people. In the context of this article, the term refers to amendments added to the soil and crops designed to improve soil health and crop production. According to Greg Stewart, agronomist and biological field specialist with Syngenta Canada, biological products of this kind should be broken into several categories. This is a necessity, in part, because many products deemed to be a biological differ in function from what early biologicals were meant to do—improve the biological activity in soil. “Now we’re putting down bio-stimulants with fungicide at VT tassel,” says Stewart, referencing an example foliar product he would not consider in the same classification as something intended to support soil health. “I’ve found growers really needed it to be broken down. We’re talking about products that are soil-applied.” Stewart’s first category within the soil-applied realm includes “live microbes in the jug meant to provide an improvement or addition to the natural microbial community that lives in the soil already.” This could be phosphorus-solubilizing microbes, for example. Stewart says Syngenta partnered with Silicon Valley-based biotech company Intrinsyx Bio to develop and commercialize this kind of product. Significant effort in this case, and many others across private industry, is being made to find the right microbial populations to accomplish different tasks. Stewart’s second category includes humic and fulvic acid. He describes these products as akin to “taking your ton of compost and squeezing it to get the most important compounds out, and putting it in-furrow.” The goal is to foster improvements in organic matter, albeit with a product that itself is not alive. Interest in biological inputs for crop production is increasing across the agriculture industry—although the benefits they afford are not always clear. Concerns about less-than-effective snake-oil solutions also spur apprehension. Matt McIntosh Investments in biological inputs grow More analysis needed ONTARIO GRAIN FARMER AGRONOMY “We call them biologicals because they are of a biological origin,” says Stewart. The third category includes amino acids, peptides, proteins, and sugars—anything designed to stimulate existing microbial communities within crop root systems. While Stewart believes there is likely some value in every category, he currently considers soil-applied products with humic and fulvic acids to have the most significant potential impact on crop production. Regardless, he says it’s hard to claim that any biological will have a truly profound and noticeable effect on soil microbial communities. It’s for this reason Stewart focuses on achieving what he deems “more modest” gains, such as ensuring more seeds within a corn field successfully grow and mature. “You have to know your purpose…when you put one litre of anything into the furrow of a seed trench, you probably will never know exactly what is going on in there. But it’s good to know what some of the approaches are,” he says. “I want to just take plants on the margin, that are just not quite functioning, and get them to actually have an ear on it.” 10
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTQzODE4