With so many new biological amendments available, how should a grower choose what to use?
Here in the regenerative space, we want to do better for our soils at every single step of the process — including the products that we choose to use on our farms. Inputs can either help or hurt. It is a very binary function. Every pass we make across our field either helps or hurts our soil health.
Given how many options there are these days for amendments, how do we sort through which ones to use, particularly for biological products — biofertilizers, biostimulants and biopesticides? I’d like to share what questions you need to ask that sales professional in order to discern if their product is right for your farm.
Even though 63 percent of all farmers that responded to a recent survey said that they had tried a biostimulant of some sort, almost 100 percent of those people said they had little intention of using it the next year and were unclear as to the purpose of that product. There’s too many choices! And the effect those products have on the soil isn’t even a part of the conversation. That really makes me mad. It breaks my heart, actually, because I’m loyal to the soil.
So, I’m going to give you some questions that you can ask the person who’s trying to sell you a product for your farming operation. I want to make sure that product fits with whatever your soil health goals are, and with your profitability on the farm.
Can a biological product help to bridge gaps in our current production system? I think the answer is yes. I think there are a lot of really good tools out there, but we have to look at them as tools in the toolbox. You can use a wrench as a hammer in some cases, but if you need a tool to do something really important, you need to find the tool that matches the job.
Assuming you do believe that biologicals can help, the first question is What is this product’s purpose on my farm? If I’m even considering using a product, or I’ve given a sales professional the time of day to talk to me about a product, I need to understand what the purpose of the product is.
Does this product improve my soil fertility? Listen to that sales pitch, look at that marketing collateral, and see if there’s any documentation that says this product improves soil fertility or controls pests. If so, what pests? Is it a plant growth enhancer or a plant health enhancer? It needs to address a specific vulnerability that you know you have on your farm. Do a minute of self-reflection every time you go into a sales conversation. Just because you like someone or vibe with them doesn’t necessarily mean they have the right solution for you. Be cognizant of that.
Editor’s note: this is an edited version of Christie Apple’s talk from the 2023 Acres U.S.A. Healthy Soil Summit.
The next important question you should ask is, Is this product compatible with what I’m currently doing? What good is a product to you, even if it’s a biological product — even if it has a negative carbon footprint — if it doesn’t jive with your current practices? Maybe you need to reevaluate your practices, and this product might generate that process; but more importantly, is it compatible with what you’re currently doing? Can you tank-mix it? Can it go along for the ride with something you’re currently adding? Is it going to cause you to make a separate pass? Is it going to cause some other issue you need to be aware of?
There’s a nitrogen-solubilizing material on the market right now that’s really popular with conventional corn farmers. But you have to wear full PPE to use it. You don’t have time for PPE — it’s planting season! Does your current application equipment work with the way this product needs to be applied? If that product needs a specific application tool or something that you don’t currently have, there’s an additional cost to taking on that product. We shouldn’t be opposed to changing, but it’s important to think about all the specifics.
Also, will this product affect any other aspects of my IPM? We have a cover crop salesman in our neighborhood who’s been in business for a long time, and now that farmers are getting more and more educated about multispecies mixes and different goals for their cover crops, he’s becoming reluctant to answer questions. One of the questions that recently came up is, will this biological product affect any other aspect of my IPM? The grower wants to use cover crops but doesn’t want to eliminate herbicides. Well, then they might need to invest in a roller crimper and might need to completely rearrange the way he’s managing residue on the farm. This salesman wasn’t willing to be honest with the farmer; he needed the sale.
But there’s a huge impact for the farmer to buy that product, because he doesn’t know how it’s going work. He needs to have a further conversation about how that product is going to affect the rest of his IPM. This is very important with biopesticides; when we’re trying to attack a disease of some kind, and if we’re trying to build soil health and soil diversity, and we go and spray an insecticide or nematicide, we could be hurting our program.
Next, What is the scientific basis of this material? Every company has the side-by-side study with corn roots. Untreated on the left, treated on the right. I could show you that image for every single product I’ve ever worked with. But I’m more interested in studies outside of the marketing materials. Who are they doing research with? Can I verify studies outside of what’s on the flyer? You should be able to, and if you can’t, then maybe this isn’t a product you need to spend much time on.
Are the studies the company presents randomized and replicated? Is there third-party validation? What was the standard deviation of the results? A study that can show a one-bushel increase in yield might be enough to justify the cost of the product, but if that one-bushel increase wasn’t statistically different from any of the other trials, none of that matters. Ask the sales rep what other growers they work with in your area, and go talk to those farmers and ask what their experience has been. Do your due diligence. You’re your own farm’s best advocate.
Are the trials the salesperson is presenting in alignment with your current practices? Several years ago there was a new residue digester that was showing good results. A conventional tillage farmer bought it and was really excited about it. They gave him a great deal, and he was a demonstration plot site for the company. But the sales rep never asked what the grower’s tillage practices were. And so the following summer, when they went to the field day, there was no residue visible. But why was that? Was it the product, or was it the plow? The salesperson hadn’t explained that the product was designed for a no-till operation. The farmer didn’t need help digesting residue — he had iron to do that. So make sure you’re asking the right questions.
Another important question you should be asking is, How will this product affect the timing of your applications? This is especially true with biopesticides. These products require a very different paradigm compared to conventional fungicides and insecticides, where we have “economic thresholds of application.”
Say, for example, you’ve got Japanese beetles chewing on your crops, and that crop comes to sustain quite a bit of damage on the leaf tissue. In a conventional program, you can simply monitor the crop to see how far the damage progresses. Plants can sustain a significant amount of leaf damage before you’ll really see damage to the yield. And then you make an insecticide application if the damage reaches a certain threshold of damage.
But with biopesticides, it doesn’t work like that at all. You have to stay ahead of the insects and the disease. For example, in Michigan, where I’m from, we fight a lot of powdery mildew. We’ve got a lot of humidity. Conventional growers can allow the disease to set up camp and then spray it; it clears it out, and they’re good for another two weeks. If all you have is a biopesticide, though, you have to spray ahead of time, before you see evidence of disease — before the leaves start to collapse and start to collect the spores that produce the visual sign of the disease.
It’s the same thing with worm outbreaks. If you wait till you’ve got the worms and all you have is a biopesticide, you may not be able to stop the worm infestation. You need to be sure that you understand what the early stages of each disease looks like and the nuances of the timing of your applications. Be willing to do some trials on your farm. This is something we’re not doing enough of; it’s more convenient to just go with what the input companies tell us.
Also, take a few steps back and determine What is the cost/benefit analysis of using this product? Have you sat down and done the math? It takes a little bit of time and a little bit of pencil and paper and calculator work to see if this product is actually worth it for you. Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t.
Finally, Will this product benefit the environment — the ecosystem that I’m farming in? Is it helping you reduce your carbon intensity score? Carbon intensity score is something that many of the large businesses in the world agreed to at COP 27. It’s complicated, and it’s still in the works, but it’s coming. Agricultural practices — tillage practices and sprays and nutritional choices — will be assigned a carbon value, and that will become a cumulative carbon intensity score, which could then potentially be monetized into some type of carbon credit program that will look very different from the carbon credit programs we’re familiar with today, which are more carrot-and-stick oriented. This will have tax-code implications.
So, is this product minimizing your negative-ecosystem impact? Say, for example, you choose to go with bloodmeal for a nitrogen source instead of urea. That has a positive impact; it’s a different form of nitrogen that your plants can uptake better; it doesn’t cause nitrous oxide volatizing. Urea has a very high propensity to volatize and go into the environment and become part of the problem.
Does this product improve your water quality? Is it improving your soil quality? Is it improving your plant health? It has to do these things — if it doesn’t, don’t mess around with it. If it doesn’t add value to your soil organic matter in some way, either directly or indirectly, then you don’t need to bother with it.
Christie Apple is a Michigan-based agronomy and soil health specialist (@CappleChristie).
