The Use of "Biologicals" in Agriculture
This phrase ‘biologicals’ described as an input for cultivating crops initially confused me. After all, isn’t crop production by its very nature a biological process? Plants basically need water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight to grow, a process known as photosynthesis, and plants need soil or some other growth medium to hold its roots and feed water and other nutrients to the plant.
Modern crop agriculture has emerged as a process in which farmers supplement the ingredients provided by nature with chemicals and other inputs to help improve yield and reduce losses due to crop pests and diseases. The scientific process to produce liquid ammonia from natural gas and pressure was developed in 1909 by two German scientists, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, but it wasn’t until after World War II that widespread commercial production of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer was launched, as the United States needed to find a peacetime use for the facilities it had constructed to produce nitrates for bombs. Previously, animal manure and animal-based compost had been applied to cropland to improve plant nutrition and promote growth, starting with Native American tribal members using small fish for that purpose in their corn fields long before Christopher Columbus was a gleam in his mother’s eye.
Similarly, the pesticide DDT was initially used by the U.S. military to combat malaria-carrying mosquitoes to protect troops fighting in tropical regions during World War II. This chemical was approved for commercial use by farmers in 1945. Prior to the development of DDT and subsequent chemical pesticides, pesticides derived from animals and plants (like pyrethium from chrysanthemum flowers) had been used starting in the mid-19th century.
Biologicals are defined as products that contain beneficial, naturally occurring microorganisms, minerals, or microbial derivatives as active ingredients. These products can be generally divided into two categories:
• Biostimulants (or enhancers) are substances that enhance plant growth, health, and productivity or provide other direct or indirect benefits to a plant’s development, and
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Biopesticides are protectors, products that protect against or are used to directly control fungal and bacterial pathogens, insect pests, or weeds. These products are generally subject to regulation and registration by the Environmental Protection Agency, while biostimulants are not.
These products are used to enhance the efficacy of other chemical inputs used by farmers, such as nitrogen fertilizer or seeds, and can be applied either in the factory in modes such as seed treatments, or applied during initial cultivation in the spring as part of a tank mixture with other liquid inputs. They can also be applied during the vegetative (growing) stages on the plants’ leaves (called foliar treatment) by spraying.
An early biological product used in agriculture was bacillus thuringensis (BT), a bacterium whose pesticidal properties were discovered by a Japanese scientist named Shigetane Ishiwata in 1901 working to determine why silkworm larvae were dying in his country. A commercial pesticide based on BT was approved by the EPA in 1961, and is used widely by organic crop farmers because it meets their requirements as a natural, non-pathogenic bacterium that is found naturally in the soil. Its use allows them to remain certified as organic producers. That same bacterium was incorporated into major row crops such as corn, soybeans, and cotton through genetic engineering starting in the mid-1990’s, and can be designed to target specific pests, such as the European corn borer.
Driven by the emergence of a distinct organic crop sector in the 1990’s after USDA established official standards under the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, biological products began to acquire a foothold in the U.S. agricultural sector, first catering to organic farmers who sought additional crop protection products that they could use without running afoul of their certification requirements. More than 100 biological products have been registered as biopesticides with the EPA since the mid-1990’s. A significant driver of the demand for these products by row crop farmers using conventional agricultural practices is the resistance to chemical pesticides that typically emerges among most pest populations after several years of use. Its use by fruit and vegetable producers is motivated in part by objections to consumers over the presence of pesticide residues on products in retail outlets.
According to Fortune Business Insights, the products sold in the global agricultural biological products market was valued at more than $10 billion in 2021, and is projected to nearly triple in size by 2029, to more than $29 billion. These products are being produced and marketed both by major multinational agricultural seed and chemical companies, such as Bayer and Corteva Agri-Sciences, but also smaller independent companies such as Pivot Bio (headquartered in Berkeley, CA) and Certis Biologicals (headquartered in Columbia, MD).
In a study released in April 2023 by the Stratovation Group that was commissioned by the Fertilizer Institute and the Agricultural Retailers Association, they found that more than one-third of the U.S. farmers surveyed were currently using one or more biological products on their crops. On average, those farmers rated their use of these products as being positive, citing increases in fertilizer efficiency or reduced fertilizer expenses.
On the other hand, a group of Midwest experiment station directors recently summarized the results of a number of field trials that their staff members conducted using nitrogen-fixing biological products in 10 Midwest states. They found that out of 61 separate field trials, 59 of them showed no significant increase in crop yields in fields using the biological product. While the sample size for this study was fairly robust, it is important to point out that the results apparently represent only a single year of field trials. We know from farmer experiences that the adoption of many new agricultural practices typically generate discernable benefits after three or more years, especially those focused on improving soil health, such as no-till and cover cropping.
