Farmers test microbes to nourish crops as climate pressure grows, costs
rise
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[February 03, 2022]
By Rod Nickel and Karl Plume
(Reuters) - Tech companies are raising
hundreds of millions of dollars, including backing from agriculture
heavyweights like Bayer AG, in developing farm products that use living
things like microbes and seaweed to nourish crops and lessen the need
for synthetic fertilizer.
Microbes, including fungi and viruses, have been available for decades
as treatments to protect plants from insects and disease, with mixed
results. But developers are increasingly deploying them as natural ways
to nurture crops while maintaining crop production levels.
Such products could help farmers lessen applications of nitrogen that
can pollute waterways and generate nitrous oxide, at a time when farm
emissions face greater scrutiny. Canada wants to cut fertilizer
emissions by 2030, while the European Union aims to reduce fertilizer
usage.
Tech companies are attracting funding as commercial nitrogen and potash
fertilizers are in tight supply, inflating the costs of food production.
Investment bank Rabobank sees the $3 billion biostimulants industry
growing by 12%-15% annually over the next five years. Global investments
in crop biostimulant and control products more than doubled in 2021 from
the previous year, to $777 million, according to preliminary data from
venture capital firm AgFunder.
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But microbial fertilizers are largely unregulated, with few studies on
how effective they are at boosting crop yields. Only a handful of U.S.
states require companies to supply data on the products' efficacy. The
European Union will impose its first efficacy requirement for
biostimulants in July 2022, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
has issued draft guidance for public review.
"Unfortunately, there is an element of buyer beware out there," said Jon
Treloar, agronomist at Denmark-based Novozymes, one of the biggest
sellers of biological agriculture products. One contains a fungus that
grows alongside plant roots and releases phosphate, a crop nutrient,
from the soil.
Unlike some companies, Novozymes shares field testing results with
farmers, Treloar said.
"If growers have a bad experience, it can really tar the entire
industry."
Still, Iowa farmer Jeff Taylor likes what he has seen from biostimulants.
Taylor applied a new product from startup Pivot Bio and a reduced
fertilizer application on a cornfield last year, while applying a full
rate of fertilizer on another field.
He said the field with Pivot's product yielded slightly more corn per
acre.
"I was skeptical that there was a biological product that would help the
crop," Taylor said. "This is one that I personally feel is working for
me."
Pivot, a private company whose investors include oilseed crusher Bunge
Ltd, launched commercial sales of their microbial fertilizer in 2019 and
says farmers use it on more than 1 million acres. It raised $430 million
last year from DCVC and Singapore investment company Temasek.
The microbes in Pivot's Proven 40 consume sugar found in the roots of a
corn, wheat or sorghum plant, producing an enzyme that converts nitrogen
found in the air to ammonia, a crop nutrient.
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"Microbes that can fix nitrogen in the air into ammonia have been the
holy grail of agriculture for 100 years," said Pivot CEO Karsten Temme.
Pivot's products do not generate the high emissions associated with
manufacturing nitrogen fertilizer, nor the nitrous oxide emissions
created when synthetic fertilizer degrades over time, Temme said.
Joyn Bio, a joint venture of Bayer and biotech company Ginkgo Bioworks,
expects commercial sales of a microbial seed treatment in three to four
years, said CEO Mike Miille. Joyn engineers microbes in its Boston lab
that fix nitrogen from the air and deliver it to corn plants in a form
that they can use.
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![](../images/020322pics/news_k55.jpg)
A Pivot Bio scientist prepares samples of treated corn seed in
Berkeley, California, U.S., April 24, 2021. Picture taken April 24,
2021. Nancy Rothstein Photography/Handout via REUTERS
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Feb/03/images/ads/current/graue_preowned_013122.png) Midwest field trials began last year
of the treatment, which aims to allow farmers to cut use of
conventional fertilizer by 50% while maintaining yields.
FERTILIZER COMPANIES ON BOARD
Privately held Locus Agricultural Solutions says its microbial soil
treatments help crops absorb more nutrients and less water and
captures and stores more climate-warming carbon underground,
generating carbon credits. The credits, generated when carbon
capture claims are verified, can be sold to buyers looking to offset
their emissions.
The company, which sells its products in the United States and is
expanding into Europe, has seen revenues jump 50% or more year over
year, a growth rate that CEO Chad Pawlak says is expected to
continue for the next two to three years due to soaring farm input
costs.
"When you see the double-digit percentage increases in (fertilizer)
costs, the conversation around microbes is changing significantly,"
Pawlak said. "We're able to unlock some of those nutrients that were
bound up in the soil over the decades."
Fertilizer and seed companies are getting onboard.
Nutrien Ltd sells biostimulants in its farm supply stores and Yara
International produces biosimulants based on seaweed and humic
substances.
Seed company Corteva is launching a biological product this spring
that it says captures nitrogen from the atmosphere and converts it
into ammonium, a fertilizer that plants can use, a spokesperson
said.
Bayer's venture investment unit, Leaps by Bayer, has funded
microbe-focused startups Andes and Sound Agriculture.
But not everyone is convinced biostimulants work.
University of Minnesota soil scientist Daniel Kaiser tested Pivot's
Proven product on six sites over the past two seasons with
less-than-optimal nitrogen fertilizer applications and only one site
showed an improved yield.
"With a lot of these (biostimulant products) the scientific
principles are sound. But taking them from a concept to something
that will work in the field, that's where they tend to fall apart,"
he said.
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Europe accounts for half the global market, according to the
European Biostimulants Industry Council. Farmers there initially
used them mainly for organic production and on high-value fruit and
vegetable crops, but now increasingly deploy them in conventional
crops in response to the European Union's drive to make agricultural
production more sustainable.
Plants can also support crop growth. Acadian Plant Health harvests
seaweed from the Atlantic Ocean and uses extracts of its active
molecules in products to improve crop use of nutrients.
The global focus on curbing emissions and consumer attention to how
food is produced have given the biostimulant sector momentum, said
James Maude, Acadian's senior vice president.
"It had bad connotations of being snake oil. (Now) it's like the
stars are aligned."
(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg and Karl Plume in Chicago;
additional reporting by Nigel Hunt in London; Editing by Caroline
Stauffer)
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