A Key Building Block in Regenerative Agriculture

Globally, farmers lose up to 30-40 percent of their crops because of pests and diseases. Keeping crops safe from pests and diseases through crop protection (biocontrol), and strong through crop nutrition (biostimulation), is essential for every grower. 

But crop protection products can also have an environmental impact when applied on fields, and although products on the market today have a much better environmental profile than those available in the past, the quest to make them even more sustainable and reliable never ends.

That is especially true as the agricultural landscape continues to evolve, and farmers are increasingly interested in regenerative farming practices that help produce food more sustainably while also benefiting nature – essentially, producing more and restoring more at the same time.

Biological solutions

This is precisely where biologicals come into play. Biologicals are derived from ingredients such as microbials, biochemicals, or semiochemicals that occur naturally in the environment. This makes them especially safe for natural habitats.

While beneficial microbes have co-existed with humans forever, recent advances in science are presenting new ways to bring biological solutions, such as microbial based seed treatments, pheromone-based pest controls or biochemical based bird repellents to the forefront of agriculture innovation. Biologicals could also help reduce nitrogen fertilizer use – of up to 20-30 percent – through technologies that fix atmospheric nitrogen into a useful form for plants to use.

To be sure, chemical crop protection and crop nutrition will continue to play an important role in the foreseeable future, but biological alternatives are proving to be effective and versatile complements.

Enabling regenerative agriculture

There’s never been a more important time for action on climate change in the agricultural sector, and scaling regenerative agriculture, a systems approach that marries the increase of food production with reversing global warming, is the way forward. And in a systems approach, where no one size fits all, how can we use biologicals most effectively in combination with other agricultural technologies to meet both goals?

The answer is that we need to embed biological products fully into regenerative farming systems as one of many other building blocks. This is because to harness the full potential of biologicals, they must be used as part of an integrated system that combines the best of chemical, biological, genetic, and digital technologies. The interactions among various technologies – including chemical and biological crop protection as well as crop nutrition – can lead to innovative outcomes that enhance sustainability and resilience in agricultural practices.

This holistic approach allows us to design highly selective solution packages tailored to individual farms, minimizing unwanted impacts while promoting the conservation and restoration of nature.

A growing biological ecosystem

The potential of biologicals in agriculture is just unfolding. The sector has seen meteoric growth, and it is expected to grow further, more than doubling in size to 30 billion euros by 2035. Bayer’s partnership approach to biological innovation aims to accelerate the development of an entire ecosystem of biological solutions in the coming years with some exciting innovations that support our regenerative ambitions:

• Vynyty PRESS: An innovative method that fights pests by interrupting mating behaviors to ensure that pest populations are maintained at manageable levels. Vynyty is in demand, and our partnership with M2i has enabled the product range to grow further.
• Serenade Soil Activ: An effective fungicide which helps speed up root formation, promoting nutrient uptake and more efficient plant growth with less incidence of soil-borne fungal and bacterial diseases, all while using less water and lower application rates than conventional solutions.
• Ibisio: A biological seed treatment based on black pepper oleoresin, an ingredient extracted from black pepper berries. By giving corn seeds a highly pungent smell and taste, it deters corvids and pheasants from making sustained attacks on fields – they simply cannot stand the seeds and quickly move on somewhere else. This gives European farmers a sustainable solution to a problem that’s becoming increasingly difficult to control due to fewer available crop protection products. 

Since 2017, Bayer has also been working on microbe-driven nitrogen fixation technology, first through the Joyn Bio joint venture and now through a full-scale partnership with Gingko Bioworks. This could give plants a more direct way to access atmospheric nitrogen reducing the use of synthetic fertilizer – and therefore a lower CO2 and water footprint overall. 

As the industry continues to expand its knowledge and co-create new solutions, we can expect biologicals to contribute to regenerative agricultural outcomes in increasingly diverse ways. What starts as individual examples will evolve into an integrated crop protection portfolio and ecosystem, enriching our agricultural practices and contributing to a more sustainable future.

Looking ahead

While we may not have all the answers today, we have enough to set our direction. The rise of biological solutions represents an exciting frontier in agricultural innovation. As we move forward, we will undoubtedly witness a deeper connection between biologicals and chemical solutions, paving the way for a more regenerative agricultural landscape. Together, they hold the key to a thriving ecosystem, ensuring that our food production methods are more sustainable and efficient.