The third arc of modern agriculture

Jeff Dilbeck grew up near Decatur in central Illinois. He earned a bachelor’s degree in ag business from Missouri State University, followed by a master’s degree in agronomy from the University of Missouri in the mid-‘90s.

Since then, his career with different companies has spanned roles as a farmer and crop consultant, director of commercial business operations for northern Asia, and chief commercial officer.

This summer he started with Meristem Crop Performance as regional director of sales for Iowa and Minnesota.

“When I think about it, my career has covered three different arcs of technology impacting grain yields,” Dilbeck said. “When I came out of college and worked for American Cyanamid, hard chemistry had peaked and was on the downturn.

“Then traits had their great impact on yields, and now we have biologicals and plant growth regulators — this is the next arc of performance that will help growers win more often with bigger yields.”

This third arc of crop inputs is not new, but it has been dramatically expanding in recent years. As with all change, there is a learning curve.

In the case of biological crop inputs, there are many handling, storage and management considerations regarding on-farm implementation. Fortunately, farmers do have resources to help navigate the novelty of biologicals.

Industry specialists, like Dilbeck, and research institutions are rising to the occasion to help farmers through this third arc of yield-boosting potential.

This is part of University of Illinois Research Assistant Professor Connor Sible’s work as he looks at high-yielding corn and soybean production systems.

“Biologicals are not necessarily a new thing. Soybean inoculants, the original biologicals, have been around for decades, but the number of these products coming out is what’s changed. It’s the scale of the market that’s different today,” Sible said.

“A lot of our job is the education and training surrounding biologicals. What are these products? How are they designed to work? And you need to know your product so that you know how to handle it.

“You can’t just treat these things like fertilizer, put it in the shed and it’ll be good until spring when you pull it out. A lot of what we do through the research program is the education — not necessarily to always say which products are or are not working, but providing an overview of the options.

“And then we do the efficacy work, too. Then, based on what we’ve taught about the products, farmers can make the decision of which one might be the best for their farm.”

Successfully embracing the third arc — living biological crop inputs — requires some adjustments, but also holds great potential.

“The biology makes a lot of sense from the textbook, understanding the microbes and what they do. Now we’ve got to make that textbook work in the field by understanding what those interactions are with the different types of soils, planting dates and what biologicals may perform better in those different scenarios,” Sible said. “That’s where we start setting biologicals up for best chance of success.”

Matt Reese coordinates media and state relations and serves as the content creator for Meristem Crop Performance.