STRESS ECONOMICS SERIES | AGRONOMIC PERSPECTIVE
Why tighter margins are changing how growers evaluate crop stress, input performance and return on every acre.
By Jason McGarrh | Vice President of Sales | Locus Agriculture
A Different Conversation With Growers
There has been a noticeable change in the conversations we are having with growers. It isn’t that growers have stopped being interested in new technology. They have become much more disciplined about what earns a place in their program.
With margins tightening and virtually every major production expense under scrutiny, the question isn’t simply whether a product works anymore. The question is whether it works consistently enough and economically enough to justify putting another dollar into the acre when growers are already scrutinizing every expense.
Protecting What Is Already Invested
That is an important distinction because by the time in-season stress occurs, the grower already has a tremendous amount invested. Seed is in the ground. Fertility has been applied. Crop protection programs are underway. Land, equipment, labor, fuel, and financing costs have largely been committed.
Then we enter the part of the season where heat, drought and other environmental stresses can threaten the yield potential that grower has spent months and a significant amount of money building.
That is really where the idea of Stress Economics begins. Instead of looking at another crop input simply as an additional cost per acre, we should be asking a different question: Can a relatively small incremental investment help protect the much larger investment already sitting in that acre?
That way of thinking is already familiar in production agriculture. Growers routinely make defensive investments when the potential cost of doing nothing is greater than the treatment itself. Applying the same economic thinking to crop stress expands the conversation around how and when in-season technologies can help protect crop performance.
Evidence Has to Come Before the Sales Pitch
Growers are also much less willing today to accept a story without evidence. That is especially true with biologicals. Our industry has occasionally created unrealistic expectations around biological technologies, and growers have every right to be skeptical.
There is no silver bullets in agriculture. Agricultural technology needs to solve a clearly defined problem, demonstrate repeatable performance, and ultimately provide an economic return. That is why Locus continues to believe the best starting point for any new technology is a very simple question: What problem are we trying to solve?
With Bombigro®, that problem is helping plants maintain performance through environmental and application-related stress during important periods of crop development.
Operational Fit Has Economic Value
Equally important is how the technology fits into the grower’s operation. If we can put a product into an application pass the grower is already making, we aren’t asking that grower to completely change the way he or she farms. We are adding technology to an existing pass rather than automatically adding another trip across the field.
That matters. Every trip has a cost, and simplicity has economic value.
Moving the Conversation Toward Field Performance
Four years of third-party Bombigro research have also changed the way we can have that conversation. We are no longer talking simply about a biological concept or what we believe should happen physiologically inside the plant. We can talk about what has happened in the field.
Across Locus AG’s trials, standalone Bombigro applications have demonstrated average yield responses of approximately 10 bushels per acre in corn, 3.4 bushels per acre in soybeans, 5 bushels per acre in wheat, 71.6 pounds per acre in cotton and nearly 2,500 pounds per acre in potatoes.
Those numbers do not mean every acre will respond exactly the same way. Anyone who has spent time in agriculture knows better than that. What they provide is a broader dataset that allows the discussion to move toward consistency, probability, and economics.
When did stress occur? What was happening physiologically in the crop? What was the application timing? What response did we see and, most importantly, was that response economically meaningful?
Give Growers a Way to Evaluate It Themselves
Grower objections are usually practical: “I’ve tried biologicals before.” “How do I know this is working?” “Why should I spend another dollar per acre this year?”
Those are fair questions, and they deserve better answers than a sales pitch. My response is to go back to the data and then encourage growers to evaluate the technology themselves. Put it into a field with a good untreated comparison. Apply it correctly. Document the conditions. Then take it all the way through harvest and measure the result.
Measure What Matters
The same should be true for dealers and agronomists evaluating Stress Economics. Don’t stop whether the treated crop looks greener or healthier. Those observations can be useful, but ultimately agriculture gets paid on production and profitability.
Measure crop stage, application timing, and environmental conditions. Measure yield. Calculate the value of the response against the cost of the treatment.
That is ultimately how I think we should judge emerging agricultural technology. Does it solve a real problem? Does it fit practically into the grower’s operation? Is the response repeatable? Do the economics make sense?
Stress and uncertainty are never going away, so our opportunity is to become better at understanding the economic consequences of crop stress and determining where technology can make a measurable difference. When stress arrives, the objective is ultimately much bigger than protecting the cost of one additional product. It is about protecting the much larger investment the grower has already made in the acre.
Related Stress Economics Content
- The Agronomic Perspective: Read Dave Dyson’s The Crop Stress Mitigator to learn how crop vulnerability changes by growth stage and why application timing matters.
- The Stress Economics Framework: Read Locus Agriculture’s announcement introducing the Stress Economics concept and four years of Bombigro field experience.