How Biologicals in Row Crops Are Increasing in Adoption (Part One)
12 April 2023
AgriBusiness Global Senior Editor Jackie Pucci hosts the AgriBusiness Global Report, a 10-minute show bringing you interviews with executives and experts working in the agrochemical, biological, ag tech, and plant health industries. In this two-part episode, Pucci interviews Tarang Srivistava, Head of International Business at Certis Biologicals, which is a subsidiary of Mitsui & Company, based in Columbia, Md. He has 26 years of experience in global crop protection and farm equipment industries with DuPont, Dow Agrosciences, UPL, and Mahindra. In his career, Srivistava has led several startups to scale up business operations in more than 50 countries and has served assignments in India, Japan, and now in the United States. For part one, Srivistava talks about the company’s path focusing on microbials, adoption of biologicals in row crops, and his predictions for the bio space.
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ABG: Can you give an overview of Certis Biological’s international business, and what your expansion plans look like?
Absolutely. Certis Biologicals operates in pretty much all continents in all the major markets around the world that are important for the biological industry, especially European Union, markets like Britain, Japan, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand, and all the markets that you can think of – it’s 50 plus countries. It’s growing pretty much every month.
ABG: Do you have a particular area of focus looking forward in a certain market?
Well, for us, the protected cultivation, the greenhouse markets, the export oriented fresh produce markets are really the big ones. European Union is always the number one, the most favorable, friendly to biologicals adoption. And of course, the export oriented countries like Chile, Peru, Mexico or New Zealand, Ireland, Malaysia. All those markets are very important to us. Morocco.
ABG: Earlier in 2022 Mitsui created a new biologicals company in Europe. Certis Belchim through a merger of Certis’ European business with Belchim Crop protection and has been developing programs using traditional chemicals alongside biorationals. Is this the same strategy Certis is using in the US?
Well, small correction. The joint entity created by Mitsui in European Union with the merger of Certis Europe and Belgium is not really a pure play biological company. It is a merger of 2 agrochemical companies, but both of them have a very responsible and robust biological portfolio. The difference between the European entity of Mitsui and Certis Biologicals is that Certis Biologicals, as the name suggests, is a 100% biological focused company people formerly known as Certis U.S.A. and the change of name was basically to emphasize that we purely play in the biological space as well as we are no longer just a US-based company. We are a very global biological company, and while we focus pretty much on microbial biopesticides, we do have a small portfolio of biochemicals products like Kocide, which come from our other group company called Cosaco. Those are products that are highly complementary to our biological portfolio. But we do remain a very microbial and biological centric company.
ABG: Can you talk about Certis Biologicals is approaching biologicals in row crops? How has adoption evolved in the US, and where do you see it heading in the next several years?
I think biologicals in row crops have become an increasingly important market segment and the adoption of biologicals in row crops, especially in the US market, has been very robust consistently growing in both corn and soybean. Our approach has been, you know, basically to work around educating our growers and channel partners, working with seed treatment technologies, and also with crop protection. We do have several partnerships arrangements in play, and there’ll be a lot more to come as we grow this business. But for us not just US, but our markets in Europe, Brazil, some parts of Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific are also growing in terms of biologicals in row crops.
ABG: Can you talk about some of the partnerships you have?
I think it’s slightly premature. So I’ll leave that for now. Let’s connect again as we are ready to speak about those partnerships.
ABG: Within the biological space, what are your areas of emphasis? And where do you see the most opportunity heading into 2023? I know biostimulants have been a huge area focus for so many companies.
Yeah, I think biostimulants has been an interesting area for the industry as such. We at Certis Biologicals really focus on the microbial side of technologies. And for us we are looking very closely at microbial based biostimulants. A lot of interesting work is ongoing with the several collaborative partnerships, not just internally with the various universities, but with also industry players.
We are of the opinion that, just as conventional pesticides, biologicals are very important for the industry. We will soon see biofertilizers becoming very important. We will see seed boosting technologies, seed treatment packages, products to improve soil health becoming important.
And we are looking at those areas very, very closely with our strengths in the fermentation technology and our capacity to do a large scale fermentation. I think we are in a very good position to cater to that growth segment.
ABG: How do you set yourselves apart?
Well, first of all, we are one of the oldest classical biological companies. Not many companies can claim a long history, whereas we go way back, decades back, and some of our brands are really pioneers in the biological industry in Bts like, Delfin, Thuricide, Javelin. Those are very well established, well known brands. You will see them in textbooks and our decades of experience puts us in a very reliable position within the industry.
Many of our partners, which range from large multinationals to regional players to country level large players, rely heavily on our expertise in fermentation and our ability to hand hold our partners, you know, in terms of understanding how a product or technology will perform against a certain test or disease. And I think that decades of experience is what really sets us apart, and we believe that with our robust formulation technology we are able to deliver consistent potency, consistent shelf life even in various hot and humid tropical conditions. And that makes us a very reliable partner.
ABG: How has the understanding grown? Do you think it’s more just experience with the products itself, and using it over time? What role does education play and how do you factor that into your approach?
Well, education, I think, for our industry is a very important element, because there are still a lot of growers, a lot of channel partners, and even industry colleagues who are really sitting on the fence. They’re still watching this, still trying to understand the reality. And the reality is that biologicals have become a mainstream segment in the crop protection industry. We focus a lot on educating our channel partners, our customers through a very large team of field development.
In fact, in the past year or so we have almost doubled the number of people we have in field development. We have very strong partnerships with various universities trying to develop information which is relevant and practical from a local understanding standpoint, and we consistently share with our partners, growers and channel partners both. We do a lot of seminars. We do a lot of educational sessions with our channel partners on teaching them how to how to incorporate biologicals in their conventional crop protection programs and how to work alongside conventional crop protection by incorporating biological in just the right places in their spray schedules.
ABG: Is the know-how on biologicals and the educational level strongest in the European Union?
You are kind of right. European Union has taken biologicals much more seriously for a very long time. They are highly committed to reducing chemical pesticides by 50% by 2030. So that makes it a huge commitment. And it comes, I think largely within the society. You can see it. And now we see that happening in the adjacent markets, countries that were serving the European Union from a fresh produce, export standpoint like Morocco, Turkey, even various Asian and Latin American markets. We see that growing very rapidly in our home market in the US. So overall. Yes, the trend is very clear. It’s very strong, and we do see microbial technology as becoming mainstream, reliable technologies for all growers around the world.
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