The next frontier in farming: Advanced Crop Nutrition
Sherry recently stopped by the Commodity Classic in Houston, TX, where she met up with Dr. Ross Bender, Director of New Product Development at The Mosaic Company to talk all things Advanced Crop Nutrition.
At Mosaic, we believe that advanced crop nutrition is the next frontier in farming. Crop production is moving in a direction that takes a closer look at the critical intersection between plants, soil and the microbiome, and then applying management practices, tools and technologies to magnify the capability of that ecosystem. Advanced crop nutrition can maximize soil potential, season-long nutrient availability, crop yields and farm sustainability. Farmers and their crop’s potential will flourish with the right products to support the interaction between the plants and soil, and the practices to unleash the power of this ecosystem.
“Advanced crop nutrition is pretty simple,” Bender said. ”It’s bringing together best-in-class mineral, granular crop nutrition tools with best-in-class biological [technologies] — together, that marriage is advanced crop nutrition.”
The perfect complements for a strong foundation
In addition to using performance fertilizers to ensure balanced nutrition is available all season, adding a biological fertilizer complement will support the microbiome and increase nutrient availability. This will result in healthy soil that supports increased long-term crop performance.
“It is the buzz in agriculture. What we have identified are different tools to complement a really strong foundation and that’s where biological tools come in, that can help improve the efficiency of the mineral nutrition that we apply to our soil.”
There’s a lot more to advanced crop nutrition than meets the eye, especially when science comes into play. That’s why our technologies deliver even distribution, superior nutrient uptake and season-long availability, resulting in higher yields and greater ROI year after year.
Science’s impact on fields and yields
“One of the things that makes us different is our commitment to science. Strong science is the foundation and the backbone of being successful in the ag space,” Bender said.
Putting advanced crop nutrition into practice starts with understanding the evolving science behind it all. Mosaic continues to uncover and analyze the connection of soil biology (the microbiome), chemistry (the fertilizer added or nutrients existing in the soil) and plant physiology.
“We have a three-part approach to R&D. We start off in the laboratory, do work in the greenhouse, and bring the leading technologies to the field,” Bender said. “Every year we’ll do somewhere between 200-300 research trials for the farmers that represent the United States. We do over 500 trials in the field every single year. That helps us with the confidence [to] know that we’re ready to bring something to the market. To feel certain that growers and retailers are going to have strong return on investment, strong agronomic support, strong marketing support that [they know is] going to work.”
Mosaic’s performance fertilizer products, like MicroEssentials®, are designed to provide balanced crop nutrition throughout the growing season to maximize performance in the field. When combined with Mosaic biological fertilizer complements, like BioPath® or PowerCoat™, retailers and growers can maximize nutrient availability, uptake and utilization.
“The best experiences that we’ve had [in field trials] occur when you start with a really strong foundation,” he said. “But there are ways that we can make them better. So we’ve developed [biologicals] to complement [fertilizers] and to use as part of a more comprehensive system and advanced prep nutrition system.”
Combining science, technology and innovation is how Mosaic innovates for the next frontier in farming. And we’re bringing it all together with advanced crop nutrition. To learn more about advanced crop nutrition and how biologicals fit into the bigger picture, check out biologicalswork.com
About Ross Bender: Rooted in the farming community
Bender’s background is in crop nutrition and crop sciences. So he focuses his time at Mosaic “helping farmers identify the technologies that can perform best on their farm and now more recently helping bring new technologies to the market.”
He found his way to agronomy through his love of the land. “I find agriculture to be a bit of an emotional sport. I love what we do. My family came over from Germany about 107 years ago and we’ve been farming just a little bit ever since. When somebody loves agriculture and loves farming, it’s just in their blood. And this is my way to sort of give back to the farming community and continue to farm in our area,” Bender explained.
Additional Insights
• Catch up Advanced Crop Nutrition with Sherry, check out her first and second episodes.
• Discover real trial results from real fields with TruResponse.
• Find out firsthand how biologicals benefit farms with Frontier Fields.