Acadian Plant Health is a leading provider of sustainable crop care solutions. Director of Global Regulatory Affairs David Hiltz talked with AgriBuisness Global™ on Acadian’s experience seeking approval under the European Union’s Production Regulation and the future of plant based biostimulants.
ABG: Acadian Plant Health was one of the first biostimulant companies to be approved under the new European Union Production Regulation. How did that come about?
APH: The new EU regulation was a landmark decision in world agriculture concerning plant biostimulants. It formally defined plant biostimulants in an official regulation, and it created a regulatory category for plant biostimulants as a subset of fertilizing materials, which is exactly what industry has been asking for. However, the new regulation did come with its challenges. It’s an imperfect regulation, considering it doesn’t fit all existing variations of biostimulants, but fortunately the seaweed biostimulants that we manufacture do fit very nicely into the new regulation. But it certainly was a learning process.
David Hiltz, Global Director, Regulatory Affairs and Intellectual Property
Acadian’s membership in the European Biostimulants Industry Council (EBIC) allowed us insight into the development of this regulation and the subsequent technical standards that came along with it. While we didn’t know everything about what was going to come, we did have a good knowledge of what to expect because EBIC was so closely aligned with those Commissions that were putting the regulation together. Companies that were members of EBIC certainly had a better overview of what was coming than those outside of this industry association.
ABG: What challenges did you face to achieve this?
One of the initial challenges around the new regulation was that your product or company needed to be assessed for conformity to determine if it complied with the requirements of the regulation. To do that, the EU had accredited several conformity assessment bodies who would look at a company’s dossier and determine whether it complied. Last summer, there were very few of these conformity assessment bodies with the ability to evaluate plant biostimulants. Acadian had to decide which of the four conformity assessment bodies we would use, as they are spread across Europe. We chose to work with the Hungarian body.
The second and largest challenge was the unknown surrounding how these bodies would evaluate our product. The actual technical standards for the plant biostimulant category had only recently been published just prior to the regulation coming in force.
Acadian has been manufacturing our products for nearly 30 years, now, and much research and quality testing had been done. We were confident that our historical studies would allow us to demonstrate the composition, safety, and efficacy of our product. But anytime you’re working with a new regulation you’re never sure about the outcome.
We were pleased to find that this was a collaborative process ― a collaboration of the conformity assessment body where they looked at the information we submitted, came back to us with questions, and allowed us to augment the dossier. It was a relatively smooth process after that. We were pleasantly surprised and pleased with the outcome.
ABG: The biostimulant market is anticipated to grow at over 12% CAGR by 2028. Do you think the industry will be able to keep up with this demand?
APH: Leading companies like Acadian Plant Health are poised to meet the increased demand for biostimulants and we actively welcome it. Historically there has been relatively low adoption of plant biostimulants by the entire global agricultural sector. Many of the challenges contributing to this revolve around the lack of regulatory clarity, like we just overcame in Europe. Questions around what benefits plant biostimulants could provide, the science proving what plant biostimulants can do, and discussing how they could work. Now that we are starting to see clear regulatory pathways in Europe and other areas around the world, it allows companies like Acadian to highlight scientifically proven benefits that our seaweed-based biostimulants can provide to the market and use that information to better demonstrate that these products are a viable choice for growers.
ABG: The industry seems to be moving to more sustainable supply chains. How does Acadian approach sourcing?
APH: Acadian is frequently asked how we ensure the seaweed we source is done so in a sustainable manner, and if we’ll run out of raw material to make these biostimulants. Acadian has always used a sustainable model to harvest our seaweed and we manage that natural resource very carefully. We only utilize a fraction of the available Ascophyllum to manufacture our plant biostimulants. As we see more demand coming from the marketplace, Acadian continues to expand our harvest of seaweed to more geographic areas around the North Atlantic. We resist the urge to take more out of the ocean in the areas where we currently harvest because we know the method we use has proven sustainability. To avoid over harvesting an area, we accommodate the demand in growth by going to new areas not yet harvested and implementing the exact same harvesting platform to ensure we sustain the seaweed and the ecosystem in which it grows. With this process, Acadian is confident that we will meet the inevitable growing demand for seaweed-based plant biostimulants, given some of the challenges facing modern agriculture.
ABG: What role do biostimulants play in achieving Europe’s Green Deal?
APH: The Green Deal presents a unique opportunity for biostimulant manufacturers to help the agriculture industry in Europe, who are being asked to reduce synthetic chemical use, reduce fertilizer use and yet continue to feed Europe and the rest of the world. If you look at the actual regulation itself, the Green Deal calls for a reduction of about half of the pesticide used in Europe right now, and targets a 20% drop in the use of fertilizers to grow crops, in a bid to prevent nutrient loss. A lot of growers in the agricultural community in Europe believe this will be catastrophic. If we all of a sudden limit the amount of synthetic chemicals and fertilizers that farmers are able to use to grow crops, they fear we are going to see decreased yields. Plant biostimulant companies are in a unique position where we can promote our products, which we know can help overcome some of the challenges that we’ve just described. It’s critical that the agricultural community embrace these more natural products and solutions if they want to try to maintain traditional crop yields and continue to supply food to the world.
If you look at Acadian’s biostimulants as an example, there are scientifically proven crop inputs that can help mitigate some of these mandated reduction in crop inputs. How can they do that? Plant biostimulants can help improve nutrient use efficiency. That means when a farmer is using fertility in the field, a plant biostimulant applied will help that farmer ensure that the nutrients he’s providing through fertilizer are being used properly, and taken into the plant. In the case of the Green Deal where they’re being mandated to use less fertilizer, it will allow them to make sure every kilogram of nitrogen or potash or micronutrients they are allowed by law to use, is actually available and utilized by the plant.
ABG: What other benefits do biostimulants offer?
APH: The other big benefit I see with plant biostimulants, like Acadian extracts, is that they are able to help crops overcome abiotic stresses. Abiotic stresses mean things unrelated to pest and disease — environmental stress like temperature extremes, drought, flooding events, or increased salinity in the soil due to using poor quality water for irrigation. All of these abiotic stresses can have a very negative effect on how a crop grows and the overall health of the plant. The use of plant biostimulants, like Acadian extracts, show a demonstrated benefit on helping plants overcome those abiotic stresses, producing a plant that is bigger and healthier. Diseases and insects like to prey on plants that are in a weakened state. While biostimulants do not have a direct impact on pest and diseases, they are able to help with the overall health of the plant, which then theoretically allows a grower to be much more precise in the timing of the use of pesticides. A 50% reduction as mandated by the Green Deal may not be as impactful as what it sounds on paper.
ABG: Acadian biostimulants are seaweed-based – what benefit does this hold in the overall market?
APH: Seaweed-based biostimulants are one of the most traditional plant-based biostimulants. When we think of plant-based biostimulants, we typically think of seaweed extracts, humic acids, and protein hydrolysates. More recently, we’re starting to see a lot of attention around microbial biostimulants. Seaweed extracts have been long used in agriculture and are well understood as biostimulants that have a variety of benefits. If you look at the emerging challenges to agriculture globally, where we talk about increased abiotic stress from climate change, we talk about increased need to show nutrient use efficiency either because of regulation, where like in Europe’s Green Deal, farmers are being mandated to use less nutrients, or use less of them because of the rising cost of fertilizers. Many farmers can’t afford to apply what they have in the past where nutrients were often applied in luxury. Growers are much more diligently applying less products, and plant biostimulants like Acadian’s can help get maximum use of the fertilizer that is applied.
ABG: Do you have anything else you’d like to add?
APH: Acadian has been manufacturing Ascophyllum-based extracts and plant biostimulants for many years. We use it because it’s backed by science. It’s been used in agriculture in some form for literally hundreds of years. In its daily life cycle, it grows in the north Atlantic’s intertidal zone where the tide rises and covers it with water, and falls twice a day, leaving seaweed exposed to the environment. That seaweed is put under incredible abiotic stress. When we make an extract of it, and use it on crops, it confers some of that stress tolerance to the crops. This is critical as we go forward. As we see climate change occurring, we see increasing levels of these abiotic stress events around the world. We’ll see periods of drought, periods of high temperature, periods of flooding, or freezing temperatures. Plant biostimulants, like Acadian’s products, are critical to helping growers and the agricultural industry overall overcome these challenges going forward.
Traditionally agriculture has been envisioned as a three-legged table – you have plant breeding — over the last hundred years we’ve bred the very best variety of seeds and plants to get the most resilience and yield. Over the last 50 or 60 years we have also developed some of the best crop protection products to help with disease and pest. At the same time, we’ve learned much about plant fertility, about what nutrients to give at what times and in what doses. What is becoming clear now is that the table needs a fourth leg. That fourth leg is plant biostimulants. Other sectors haven’t addressed one of the single biggest emerging challenges to agriculture — abiotic stress due to climate change. There are many solutions for biotic stress with pesticides. Emerging technologies around plant biostimulants for use to help overcome abiotic stress have only just recently emerged. Crop loss due to abiotic stress is higher than the loss to insects and disease every year. It’s a neglected area of agriculture, one that companies like Acadian are excited to see growing. Acadian continues to research the benefit of these products, where we challenge some of the original positions to understand how and why they work. As we learn more, we are able to go to the marketplace and make better recommendations, ultimately seeing better outcomes for growers.
Acadian participates in industry associations, like EBIC in Europe and BPIA in the U.S. Despite the companies in these associations being competitors, we come together for the good of the industry. It’s great to see these collaborations. We recognize the overall good for the industry is to grow this sector and get the broader acceptance of biostimulants. Instead of being thought of as a luxury, they should be thought of on the same level as proper fertility to grow crops and plant protection to prevent disease. Similarly, biostimulants are needed to negate abiotic stress.