Technology is a great help to increase the crop production. It had happened with the fertilizers and later with the GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) Technology. We now face the biological agrochemicals as a new paradigm in the agriculture to control pests.
The technology gave us an increase in the production and brought its own problems. The GMO the las paradigm developed as a collateral result the weed species resistant to herbicides. No matter how much herbicide you use, the weed cannot be killed with the herbicide because the plant was adapted and mutated to a new variety resistant to the herbicide.
As an answer to this problem, we changed the herbicide: then we have the same plant species resistant to two, three, four and even five herbicides. It seems that going in this direction is a street without end. What is next?
Biologicals will bring new active ingredients as bio-herbicides to control all those weeds resistant to the actual synthetic herbicides. At the same time the biologicals need less time to be degraded in the soil. Then the contamination produced by the synthetic chemicals will be avoided with the natural based bio-herbicides. The next paradigm of pest control in the called “green agriculture” will bring effectiveness and environmentally friendly controls. A new model with a lot of promises of a better future is close to be a reality.
The next step.
I know it is an uncomfortable question. But let´s think in this: if we produce a bio-herbicide, just one good and cheap bio-herbicide, that kill the weeds all around the world, then are we going to produce once again weed resistant plant species to the new bio-herbicide. We are going to kick the same stone twice creating new weeds resistant to the new cheap and good bio-herbicide. The first time we created a resistant weed using a synthetic herbicide like glyphosate (and others). The second time we will create a weed resistant using a bio-herbicide. It does not seem very smart.
Will the market regulate the use of the new bio-herbicide or will be a governmental institution or private professionals-organizations (an ONG?) who will say which herbicide is going to be used in the farm by a farmer?
If we like to avoid kicking the same stone twice the question seems to have a place in our future. To answer this question, it is not far from now: if we want to avoid weed resistance to bio-herbicides in the next decades we should think it now. We need more than one bio-herbicide. We need to use a bio-herbicide in one region or group of farms for a few years and then change the bio-herbicide.
A company like the one that certificate “organic farms” can certificate that a farm is using the recommended bio-herbicide for same years, and it is changing the bio-herbicide after a time. Thus, the farm is working to control the weed resistance.
If we do not do the control changing the bio-herbicides after some time, then we surely will have weed resistant species in the following years. We will have a weed resistant to a biological bio-herbicide.
The potential situation is logical to be expected and we can anticipate it. If there is one bio-herbicide at good cost and effective, then all farmers will try to use it. We need to organize the following decades of production on the bases of bio-herbicides to control weeds. Other ways to control weeds may emerge in the following years. But for now, let´s think to not produce new weed species resistant to bio-herbicides.
We work developing new bio-herbicides. We may discover 10 bio-herbicides active ingredients or more in the following 4-5 years, then how are they going to be used? We are going to use ONLY those cheaper bio-herbicides to kill weeds, so that at the end of the road we know that weeds resistance will appear again. Or we will just pass the problem for the next generation and see what happen? Let´s think today in this scenario, please.
An ONG or a certifier company may write organic certification supporting that a farm is rotating the bio-herbicides so that they are not contributing with the weed resistance in its production. Sound it reasonable?
It is a matter of production beside the use in the farm.
A bio-herbicide from plants is like to prepare a cup of tea: just dried leaves and water. But the bio-herbicide must be trade in powder, not liquid. As a result, the “trash” left behind is only wet plant tissue. We can use this tissue to be mix with the soil to increase the organic matter. Then the trash “disappears” helping the soil.
The powder is stored in water soluble bags and sold in bags. Once the bags are in the farm, they are ready to be used dropping them in the water tank to make a mix. The formulated is added in a different bag, so that the transport is about the plant tissue, not a formulated bio-herbicide. The costs must be different.
In the farm there is again not trash left behind. This is called “Clean Agro-Technology”, we do not make the environment dirty. With the time the farms will be cleaner.
About weed resistant species: I prefer to think now what is next and not cry later because I do not think what a potential scenario may be present now or in the next generations. I do not like the idea to kick twice the same stone. Biologicals may be a second chance for a cleaner and a better agriculture, we must use it in the right direction.
Gustavo Sosa
Founder & President
INBIAOR GLOBAL LTD
