All Agriculture Companies are Plant Health Companies
6 July 2020 The United Nations declared 2020 the International Year of Plant Health at a time when we are learning more about plant health science than ever before. The plant’s microbiome has been an under-researched part of agronomy, but our increasing understanding of its relationship to plant health and its ability to help fight pest pressures and abiotic stress should be changing the way we think about plant protection and fertility.
All input suppliers and applicators must realize that inputs are simply a means to plant health. Crop protection’s end goal is to control disease, weeds, and insect pests as mechanisms to improve plant health. Fertility products, too, bolster soil health and serve as a means to improve plant health. We undervalue this end goal in our daily responsibilities that require us to specialize in our core segment, but all our businesses work toward the same goal.
It’s become clear that all components of an agronomic system are more interrelated than we widely understood, and it’s important to look at each input outside of its silo so we understand the interconnectivity of each part of the agriculture system, the environment, human health, and socio-economic development.
Nitrogen fertilizers are credited with bolstering yields that enable farmers to feed billions of people who would otherwise be food insecure because of lower yields, yet there is a distribution problem with those fertilizers. Overuse in the U.S. and Mexico has contributed to runoff and water pollution. Overuse persists in China and India, where government subsidies encourage massive and widespread application of fertilizers without needs-based testing. Meanwhile, fertilizer use in Africa and parts of Southeast Asia is far below global averages, and yields suffer as a result of poor soil fertility.
Agriculture systems are asked to produce more with fewer inputs, and plant health products and the science behind holistic plant health science are the linchpins to sustainable food security amid changes in climate, consumer preferences, regulatory scrutiny, and global trade.
Just a couple of the factors driving change:
According to the FAO, cropland soil degradation due to natural vegetation removal, intensive agricultural operations, and erosion are among the main factors causing declines in soil health and crop yields, and a recent report says one-third of soils in the world are infertile due to unsustainable land-use management practices.
A 2004 study published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition compared nutrients in crops grown in 1950 to those grown in 1999 and found declines in protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, vitamin B2, and vitamin C, largely thought to be a result of degraded soils.
As our monocultures give way to polycultures, cover crops become more widespread, and no-till strategies become a new best practice everywhere, we’ll be creating a more regenerative agriculture system that is less reliant on chemical inputs and more resilient to abiotic stresses.
Already almost half of farmers in the U.S. say they are no-till compared with about 30% in 2012, and cover crops in the U.S. and around the world are on the rise, too. Regenerative agricultural methods are making our production systems stronger, and it’s no wonder that biological products are the fastest-growing input segment in line with sustainable production.
Fully integrated agronomic systems that pull products out of their silos and evaluate the interdependence of all aspects will continue to propel biological innovations into the forefront of agronomic solutions, and they will provide farmers, processors, and retailers the tools needed to adapt to new pressures on agriculture whether agronomic, economic, socio-political, or regulatory.
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