- Precision technologies could strengthen biologicals by targeting inputs at plant level.
- Biologicals can help chemistry be used more surgically, not replace it outright.
- Fewer available chemistries are increasing the need for integrated crop management.
As biological products become more advanced and better understood, the industry has an opportunity to focus less on developing new products and more on how they are delivered to plants, said Stephen Pearce, chairman of Accumont, an agriculture and food technology advisory firm.
“I think we should spend the majority of our time coming up with new ways of being able to deliver active ingredients and nutrients and biostimulants at the plant level in a far more precision-based way,” Pearce said.
He added that the industry’s long-term success will depend on integrating biologicals with chemistry, agronomy, genetics and data-driven farm management.
“We have to be able to accelerate to a more data-enabled biological systems management with more targeted chemical intervention,” he said.
Pearce was speaking at an industry event in Singapore hosted by Pacific Agriscience on 9 July.
Precision ag in biologicals
As growers face increasing pressure to improve efficiency, reduce chemical inputs and maintain productivity, technologies that combine AI, robotics and plant-level application could become an important part of the industry’s future, said Pearce.
“Biologicals should be there to enable chemicals to be used more surgically, not broadly,” he said.
He highlighted Norwegian agtech company Kilter, which uses technology originally derived from the printing industry to deliver ultra-targeted field applications.
Pearce recounted how the company initially approached investors with a biologicals-focused proposition.
However, Pearce believed its potential impact extended beyond biologicals.
“They were trying to build an investment thesis around something that actually had a much bigger impact in reducing the chemical footprint than it did enhancing biologicals, and it can do both. This is a good example, and probably one of the best-in-class examples of technology really helping chemistry be used in a highly surgical and precision-based way.”
A shrinking roster of chemicals
Pearce’s comments come as agriculture faces a shrinking roster of available crop protection chemistries.
He stated that approximately 1,000 to 1,200 crop protection chemistries have been developed since the beginning of modern crop protection, but only around 500 to 600 remain globally today.
“Most of those chemistries have been lost due to toxicity concerns, environmental fate issues, resistance, commercial obsolescence or, in many cases, because the regulatory costs have become too high to sustain the product,” said Pearce.
At the same time, many biological products have emerged to replace these chemistries.
However, there remains a mixture of genuinely effective products and products supported by questionable claims, especially around biostimulants, he said.
Pearce believed the future of crop protection is not a choice between biologicals and chemicals. Instead, success will depend on integrating biologicals, chemistry, genetics, agronomy and data into comprehensive crop management systems.
“There is an overuse of chemicals, and actually biologicals, in my view, can play a key role in actually extending the life of the good chemistries that we have.”
