Biological products have emerged as game-changers for farmers seeking to enhance soil health, crop resilience, and overall farm productivity. However, with the abundance of options available in the market, navigating the world of biologicals can be a daunting task. Farmers may hesitate to adopt innovative biological products due to past skepticism about their effectiveness, consistency, and return on investment. Fortunately, advanced biological soil analysis can help.
A powerful farming tool like biological soil testing can reveal valuable insights into the nutrient cycling capacity, microbial activity, and overall health of your soil. By understanding your soil's specific needs, you can make informed decisions about which biological products are most suitable for addressing deficiencies or imbalances.
Biological soil testing is already being used by retailers as a proven tool to evaluate their customers’ soil health before prescribing certain agricultural inputs. This blog post aims to provide insights and strategies to help you make informed decisions when selecting biological products for your farm.
Biological products, such as biofertilizers, biostimulants, and soil amendments, offer a promising solution to address common challenges faced by farmers. These challenges may include soil degradation and nutrient deficiencies, as well as the need to reduce the environmental impact of farming practices.
One critical aspect concerning farmers is nutrient use efficiency. Biological products enhance a crop's ability to use available fertilizers and nutrients, minimizing waste and the need for overapplication–sometimes a result when chasing yields. Targeted biological products may support better yields, reduce synthetic fertilizer reliance, and promote more sustainable farming practices.
There is a major growing interest in biological input adoption. The biostimulant market alone is projected to reach $5.9 billion by 2033, reflecting the increasing demand for sustainable agricultural practices. Farmers are embracing various application methods for biological products, including in-furrow, liquid, and seed treatment applications. Corn, wheat, and soybean farmers increasingly adopt biological products to enhance crop productivity and sustainability.
Growers can take their farms to the next level by embracing biologicals while maintaining and improving crop yields and ROI.
Complete Guide to Choosing the Right Biologicals >>
Farmers have long relied on soil testing, including chemical and biological analyses, to assess the health of their soil. However, while these tests provide valuable data and metrics on various soil health indicators, it's not always clear what the next course of action should be on the farm.
For example, a farmer may take a soil sample, send it to a testing facility, and receive a comprehensive report indicating low potassium solubilization and a high risk of fusarium disease. While this information is crucial, it leaves the farmer wondering how to address these specific issues in a practical way. This is where BeCrop® Farm's innovative prescriptive approach comes into play.
In the above case, BeCrop® Farm may recommend a targeted solution combining a biofungicide to mitigate the fusarium disease risk and a biostimulant to improve nutrient cycling pathways, thereby enhancing potassium availability.
Unlike traditional soil testing services that merely provide raw data, BeCrop® Farm takes it a step further, by offering actionable recommendations tailored to each farm's unique soil conditions and challenges.
As you can see in the screenshot above, the results from BeCrop® Farm show precisely where nutrient deficiencies and disease risks are present on individual fields and parcels.
BeCrop® Farm is the first AI system to guide on-farm inputs. It features helpful needs maps that pinpoint and quantify greater or lesser needs in three areas:
This map provides an overall picture of the main nutritional requirements. It helps growers to estimate global nutritional deficiencies across their fields. It also determines which product would be the best fit to consider like a biostimulant.
This map provides farmers with an overall view of disease risks in their fields, acting as a global indicator not linked to any specific disease. It helps growers assess the intensity of disease risks across their fields. It also identifies whether the fields should apply crop protection and biofungicides
Brand-agnostic recommendations are then made to address identified deficiencies based on the product category.
This map offers growers a comprehensive overview of the impact of their management strategies, suggesting how changes through more regenerative and less intensive practices can enhance soil sustainability and quality.
Both BeCrop® Farm’s needs maps and associated recommendations employ complex AI mechanisms to predict the behavior and environmental evolution of inputs across different locations and crops. The results are then prioritized based on optimizing crop performance and soil health. Sound too good to be true? See for yourself!
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BeCrop® Farm's recommendations are backed by scientific research and field-tested expertise. They enable you to be precise and proactive when addressing issues like nutrient cycling pathway deficiencies and disease risks, preventing potential yield losses and minimizing the need for costly interventions down the line.
Going beyond simply providing data, BeCrop® Farm's recommendations empower you to optimize your soil health management strategies, leading to improved crop productivity and increased profitability.