Nearly 70% of farmers who participated in our recent Ag Biologicals Benchmark Survey said they’ve used a biological product on their farm. Biologicals expert Pam Marrone says although biologicals make up about 10% of the total crop protection market, there’s still plenty to learn about them. 

“If you look at the innovation in biologicals, there’s about 70-80 new active ingredients for crop protection going through the EPA and only about 8 or 9 new synthetic chemicals. That means there’s going to be fewer chemicals on the market. That will be replaced by biologicals. By 2040, the biologicals market will be as big as the chemical market if you look at the growth of the biologicals and the chemicals. But that said… about 50% of farmers still don’t know anything about biologicals, are not aware of them, don’t know how to use them, and if they’ve heard of them, they’re not confident in using them. So, there’s still a lot of work to figure out how to educate farmers and how to properly use biologicals because they have very different modes of action than chemicals.”

Just scratching the surface. Looking forward to Pam’s keynote presentation at the No-Till Conference. 

Watch the full version of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.