By Brian Hefty
Have you noticed how the big ag chemical companies have been buying biological companies lately? Monsanto bought Beeologics. Syngenta bought Pasteuria Bioscience. BASF bought Becker Underwood. Bayer bought AgraQuest and will soon be acquiring Prophyta GmbH.
Why do you think these huge multi-national firms would invest millions of dollars in something? Well, there’s always only one answer to that question: money. Their belief is the same as ours; biological products present the next frontier when it comes to improving crop yields.
Think about it for just a minute. It’s easy to see a weed, know you have to kill it, spray a herbicide, and the weed is gone. That helps yield. On the other hand, think about all the things that are going on in your soil that interact with your crop and affect yield: fungi, bacteria, and a whole bunch of different soil microbes we can’t see and don’t understand. Likewise, think about internally in the plant and all the functions that are occurring, including the activity of hormones, enzymes, and again – a lot of stuff we can’t see and don’t understand. With modern science, more of these processes in the soil and in the plant are beginning to get figured out, so the big companies are trying to bring you these new technologies as they are developed. It is certainly something you’ll want to watch for in the future.
Today, there are biological products on the market that farmers are using, including QuickRoots from TJ Technologies. QuickRoots is a combination of beneficial bacteria and fungi. We have used it on our farm for quite a few years now, but we only got excited about it after 3 years of testing on our farm. Each of the first 2 years, the results were good, so in year 3 we tested it on about 10 corn fields, each planted to a different variety, splitting the planter side-by-side in every field. Our average yield gain was 8 bushels per acre; not bad for a $6 investment.
Look, I don’t care whether you use QuickRoots or any other biological product or nothing. That’s your call. All I’m trying to tell you is that biologicals are growing quickly in popularity as better and more consistent products are developed. I encourage you to try some of these on your farm over the next few years, as I have no doubt that certain biologicals will help your yield and add profit to your farm.