More and more companies are offering some type of biological product as the sector continues to grow. As the industry develops due to increasing interest, the number of products and materials that are available can be overwhelming for growers. Founder and Director of Marrone Bio Innovations, and Founder and CEO of Chestnut Bio Advisors, Pam Marrone said the convergence of big data and smarter farming technologies is helping producers to make more informed decisions when it comes to biologicals. Farmers are beginning to demand more evidence that a biological product can perform the way that it is intended.
“The whole industry, just like the biopesticides had to do decades ago, the biostimulant/bionutrient companies are ‘sciencing’ up their information and you can’t put out a ‘bugs in a jug’ or a ‘bathtub brew’ anymore and expect to really scale your company,” said Marrone. “You have to have real science behind your products. That is a trend, but it’s accelerating.”
The increasing number of startups entering the market with a new biological product is helping push competition. Marrone explained that companies are working to respond to the market demand, with increasingly larger trials and demonstrations. Producers are becoming more discerning and product manufacturers are having to provide more supporting data to indicate the efficacy of new materials.
“Growers are looking for products in this competitive environment that give them those win rates and yield increase and quality increase, but also are very economical. So, these are some of the questions that are coming up,” Marrone noted. “The days of just saying ‘oh, it’s a biological and it increases yield by this percent,’ those days are over. You have to really know what you’re talking about.”
Listen to the full episode with Pam Marrone below.
‘Making Sense of Biologicals’ is a series from AgNet West that dives into various topics with unbiased experts in the field of biologics to help the industry better understand the product category.
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