Global sales of biostimulant cropping products are rapidly increasing and are expected to reach more than $2.5 billion by 2018.
Farmers who attend agricultural trade shows have likely noticed that many new agronomic products are being sold.
Canadian research organizations study the effectiveness of cropping products, but the information gleaned from this research is often proprietary and not released to the public.
If a study has favourable results for the company that paid for the research, we will likely hear about it from the company’s representatives as we wander the trade show floors.
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But the skeptic in me can’t help but wonder about all of the studies that are being kept confidential.
In the United States, a program called NutrientStar, which was launched earlier this year by the Environmental Defense Fund, is reviewing cropping tools and products to find out what actually delivers beneficial results for producers.
The group is composed largely of academics and agronomists that examine existing agronomic trial data and complete meta-analysis of the information.
However, the group’s analysis is restricted by the limited studies that are available, including those that companies chose to keep confidential. As well, it has no control of the trial protocols used in the studies that it can access.
Canada is a world leader in agronomic research and development, yet there is a void of publicly available independent research into new agronomic products.
In other words, there is a void of publicly funded research, which is not proprietary, into the many biostimulant-cropping products being sold across the country.
In the absence of independent analysis, the onus of testing has fallen to farmers. The Canola Council of Canada is trying to get farmers to follow specific research protocols so that these trials can be added to a larger analysis of products and growing techniques.
Meanwhile, independent groups such as PAMI and universities are well-suited to research new agronomic products.
Independent research would be well received by Canadian producers, but in the absence of public funding, the question always comes down to who is going to pay for it?
