A Brazilian “biological farm” is brewing up some hard-hitting bio-pesticides to deal to troublesome pests across its vast cropping estate.
The Maro Julio farm in the northwestern Mato Grosso state is a vast estate cropping 9300 hectares in cotton, 20,000ha in soybeans and 16,000ha in corn. It employs as many as 600 staff at the peak of harvest season in its family agribusiness operation.
The property adopts some standard environmental practices, such as fencing off all waterways, fully reticulated cattle water, and a reforestation policy on poorer quality land.
But it also includes cutting-edge tech in its sustainable practices, which the property’s sheer scale gives economic weight to.
The Maro Julio cropping operation is using 30% less synthetic crop treatments than several years ago since it installed a bioreactor facility in the farm laboratory. The bio-reactor is responsible for brewing batches of biological crop treatments, applied as liquids by the estate’s fleet of crop-dusting planes.
The bio-reactor’s pesticide brew is aimed at a wide range of common pests that afflict the crops, including spittle bug, stink bug, white fly and leaf hoppers.
The batch reactor is primed using commercially purchased inoculums and fungal spores, and the possibility exists at a later date of the property claiming IP rights to some batch brews.
Estate agronomist Osvaldo Arujo said the estate intends to increase the spectrum of pests and diseases the treatments can address, and ultimately push towards 100% bio-treatment use.
He said the region’s tropical climate with its reliable dry period over May to September with only 80mm of rainfall provides a stable period for the slower acting bio-treatments to work, without risk of being washed off before activating.
“There is no premium for products treated this way at present, but we believe over time, this will be the case,” Arukjo said.
The bio-treatments are cheaper than synthetics, and last longer in the right conditions. “For example, if it costs 80 real [$26] a litre for a synthetic, we can make an equivalent treatment in the bioreactor for 5 real [$1.66] a litre.
“But we are still some way before we can achieve 100% use, as synthetics tend to work quicker.”
The bio-reactor produces a fungi that infects the relevant pest and effectively feeds on it.
The use of bioinsecticides and treatments on Brazilian farms has grown in the past decade, largely driven by the growth in large scale family-owned operations that are now double-cropping with soybeans and corn over the growing season, putting greater demand on soil fertility and insect pest loads.
The global bio-pesticide market is estimated to be worth US$5.2 billion ($8.5bn) in 2020, and accounts for only 8% of the total global crop treatment market.
However, a compound growth of 13% a year is expected between now and 2030 as pressure mounts for alternative treatments, and the cost of developing new synthetics continues to rise.
Brazil’s portion of the world’s bio-pesticide market is small at only 5% but it has stood out for its rapid gain in the past few years, estimated at 42% between 2017 and 2020.
The bulk of the treatments are applied to soybeans, sugar cane and corn.
Uptake of on-farm biopesticides is expected to continue, but the rate of adoption will depend on factors such as the selection of safe, virulent microbial strains and implementation of sound quality control measures.
The Brazilian Congress has recognised the popularity of the crop treatments, and legislation is in play to simplify the registration process and create a framework that fits for “on farm” bio-reactor use, compared to large scale commercial production plants.
Rennie visited Brazil as part of an international delegation of agricultural journalists hosted by the Brazilian Association of Corn Ethanol Producers.
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