One Of The Oldest Industries Must Embrace Sustainability. Can Agriculture Get There?
For the past 30 years, the agricultural industry has been obsessively focused on one thing – yield. A transformation has occurred over these years with advances in machinery increasing speed, scale and productivity along with crop genetics to overcome the biggest of challenges. All have helped farmers increase yields.
Now agriculture is in the early days of another revolution – sustainability. Without the yield performance however, the very idea of sustainability won’t be possible.
The words “either/or” were once an acceptable part of the conventional agricultural conversation. They suggested that, because performance and sustainability were two solitudes, we had no choice but to choose one at the expense the other.
Short term performance almost always won out.
Until that is, the world itself began telling us that trade-offs were not an option anymore.
Our population had surpassed 8 billion – 811 million of whom faced hunger in 2020. Climate change was affecting global food production with increasingly unpredictable swings. Stricter regulations inevitably followed. As if that wasn’t cause enough for change, global supply chains were in perpetual disruption. All together, they presented this challenge:
How do we meet our massive immediate needs without ignoring the issues that will compromise future generations from meeting theirs?
What’s certain is that the luxury of either performance or sustainability has passed. We now see the two as inextricably linked and critical to our survival. So, our real mission is to attain the “&.” To bring our expertise in biostimulants, crop protection and fertilizer industries together, to finally bring performance and sustainability together as one.
Now here’s the encouraging news. Through cutting edge science and inspiration from an unlikely source, we at Acadian Plant Health have done just that. Creating performance driven, sustainable and scalable technologies to meet global food demand amid increasing climate stress.
Performance and sustainability together. A big idea born from the most unexpected places.
The aspiration of meeting the world’s agricultural challenges has long been the stuff of big conferences and even bigger pronouncements.
But ironically, we at Acadian Plant Health have pioneered a technology uniting performance and sustainability in the smallest of things – molecular science. A breakthrough that has led to game changing biologicals and regenerative biostimulants now being used as part of crop input practices in over 80 countries across every continent.
It’s game changing. The result of seeing so beyond conventional thinking, that our inspiration came from the North Atlantic Ocean.
The vision to see beyond the sea
Ascophyllum nodosum is a legendary seaweed that grows in the inter-tidal zone of the North Atlantic. Despite cycles that alternately expose it to frigid salt water, searing sun, pounding waves, snow, and other rapid fluctuations, something freakishly resilient in the plant’s DNA helps it survive – even thrive in harsh conditions.
This set our Acadian Plant Health’s scientists to wondering if Ascophyllum nodosum’s elements couldn’t be extracted in their most active form and applied to agriculture on land; specifically, to help plants withstand the abiotic stressors that threaten them.
Acadian’s unique Asco biochemical compositions are proving their worth with crops from wheat to soy to fruit. Improving root and plant establishment. Nutrient uptake. Soil health. Stress tolerance. And enhanced quality and yield across the board.
Climate change demands real change
Here’s a startling fact. Global temperatures have diminished farming productivity 21% since 1960.
This, among a slew other equally alarming facts, has woken us up to the fact that climate change is not only real, but the single biggest threat to life mankind has ever known.
Regenerative Biostimulants are a great result of meeting this challenge with urgency, innovation, and science.
By applying them alongside existing crop inputs, Acadian Plant Health is transitioning biostimulants into important new markets. Something we are so committed to, that we have built The Formulation Centre of Excellence in the UK to accelerate novel and proprietary solutions for all our global partners.
Optimism from plant to planet
Cliché as this sounds, we’re all in this together. The farmers, the businesses that support them, the people who count on us to put food on their tables.
But some amazing thing happens when you decide to run at your challenges, not from them. Innovation and passion help you find a way.
In bringing performance and sustainability together, we have ended the trade-off that has mired our industry in status-quo, conventional thinking for years. Now, when plants grow stronger, so do the businesses that support them, so again does the supply chain grow healthier.
This second, sustainability-led revolution is asking mankind’s oldest – and inarguably most important – industry to do better. Let’s support that ambition with new ideas, a curious spirit and the collaborative power of &.
Let’s act upon our optimistic belief that despite our challenges, the best days of agriculture are squarely ahead of us.
Everything’s possible when you choose to Sea Beyond.