“Regenerative” practices such as crop rotation, cover crops, conservation tillage and integrated pest management have been implemented, at some level, on many row crop farms for years.

I am an avid listener of several podcasts on many topics. I appreciate the diversity of people and topics that podcasters have on their respective shows. The UGA peanut podcast “All About the Pod” is a pretty awesome one.  

Sometime in the last several months, a few of my favorite podcasters have interviewed speakers addressing the concept of “regenerative agriculture.” Despite more than 42 years of working in production agriculture, I was a bit unsure of what that concept really meant. Generally, the take-home message that I heard from these specific podcasts was that this would be the only acceptable way to produce food in the future.     

The Noble Research Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to farm and ranch education, defines regenerative agriculture as “the process of restoring degraded soils using management practices,” such as adaptive grazing, no-till planting no or limited use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, based on ecological principles. Someone put a ton of thought into that one, but there is much to unpack here. 

I have worked as a row crop county agent and Extension specialist in three separate areas of the U.S. for 33 years and am pretty sure that every farmer that I have worked with did not have a “degraded” soil. Every grower knows that soil health is paramount to success. All plant life begins there. Other “regenerative” practices such as crop rotation, cover crops, conservation tillage and integrated pest management (IPM) have been implemented, at some level, on many row crop farms for years.  

There are three things that concern me in regard to this particular definition of regenerative agriculture that many might not be thinking about. These include:  

• Increasing U.S. and world populations 

• Loss of productive farmland 

• Yield reductions associated with “organic or no pesticide” farming 

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. population is estimated to increase to 383 million by 2054. OurWorldinData.org is predicting the world population to increase to 9.81 billion by 2054. That’s a lot more mouths that farmers will have to feed.  

Recent USDA surveys clearly show that the amount of U.S. farmland is on the decline. This acreage reduction trend should be a great concern to all because of these projected increases in population. Where are we going to grow all this food? As far as I know, the Good Lord is not making any more land with the possible exception of Hawaii, which has active volcanoes to potentially add land overtime.  

A 2023 meta-analysis of 105 studies that compared organic and conventional farming indicated that the crop yields of organic farming were on average 18.4% lower than the yields of conventional farming. In the future, our country and world will need more food, not less. Limited weed management options that are acceptable for certified-organic production are one of several factors that can contribute to reduced yields in organic systems.  

It has been my experience that growers have three main goals in mind:  

• Make a decent living 

• Leave their farm and land in way better shape than when they got it 

• Pass it on to the next generation 

This would be my simple definition of “regenerative agriculture.” 

Nothing in this world, with the exception of my wife and best friend of 42 years, is perfect. For sure, production agriculture can always do better. But, just about every person that I know who lives and breathes agriculture every day is more than willing to have an open discussion about any new science-based pest management strategies that might be available for practical use.  

However, this discussion must also include the use of pesticides. If not, I fear that many folks might get hungry? I am hopeful that the podcasters that I regularly follow will consider talking about all sides of this important story. There is much common ground.  

The post Is regenerative agriculture about growing food without pesticides? appeared first on IPNN.

Parasitic weeds are ruthless freeloaders, stealing nutrients from crops and devastating harvests. But what if farmers could trick these invaders into self-destructing? Scientists at UC Riverside think they’ve found a way.

Across sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia, places already struggling with food insecurity, entire fields of staples like rice and sorghum can be lost to a group of insidious weeds that drain crops of their nutrients before they can grow. Farmers battle these parasites with few effective tools, but UCR researchers may be able to turn the weeds’ own biology against them.

This trick is detailed in the journal Science, and at its heart lies a class of hormones called strigolactones—unassuming chemicals that play dual roles. Internally, they help control growth and the plants’ response to stresses like insufficient water. Externally, they do something that is unusual for plant hormones.

“Most of the time, plant hormones do not radiate externally—they aren’t exuded. But these do,” said UCR plant biologist and paper co-author David Nelson. “Plants use strigolactones to attract fungi in the soil that have a beneficial relationship with plant roots.”

Unfortunately for farmers, parasitic weeds have learned to hijack the strigolactone signals, using them as an invitation to invade.

Once the weeds sense the presence of strigolactones, they germinate and latch on to a crop’s roots, draining them of essential nutrients.

“These weeds are waiting for a signal to wake up. We can give them that signal at the wrong time—when there’s no food for them—so they sprout and die,” Nelson said. “It’s like flipping their own switch against them, essentially encouraging them to commit suicide.”

To understand strigolactone production, the research team led by Yanran Li, formerly at UCR and now at UC San Diego, developed an innovative system using bacteria and yeast. By engineering E. coli and yeast cells to function like tiny chemical factories, they recreated the biological steps necessary to produce these hormones. This breakthrough allows researchers to study strigolactone synthesis in a controlled environment and potentially produce large amounts of these valuable chemicals.

The researchers also studied the enzymes responsible for producing strigolactones, identifying a metabolic branch point that may have been crucial in the evolution of these hormones from internal regulators to external signals.

“This is a powerful system for investigating plant enzymes,” Nelson said. “It enables us to characterize genes that have never been studied before and manipulate them to see how they affect the type of strigolactones being made.”

Beyond agriculture, strigolactones hold promise for medical and environmental applications. Some studies suggest they could be used as anti-cancer or anti-viral agents, and there is interest in their potential role in combating citrus greening disease, which is doing large-scale damage to citrus crops in Florida.

Scientists still have questions about whether the weed suicide strategy will work in real-world fields. “We’re testing whether we can fine-tune the chemical signal to be even more effective,” Nelson said. “If we can, this could be a game-changer for farmers battling these weeds.”

This research was led by distinguished UCR professor and geneticist Julia Bailey-Serres.

More information: Anqi Zhou et al, Evolution of interorganismal strigolactone biosynthesis in seed plants, Science (2025). DOI: 10.1126/science.adp0779

Journal information: Science 

The post Triggering parasitic plant ‘suicide’ to help farmers appeared first on IPNN.

Signs of these financial impacts are already emerging. Bayer (BAYGn.DE), opens new tab shares fell sharply to a 20-year low on Tuesday, after the chemical company warned that weak global agricultural markets and a slumping U.S. farm economy are likely to pressure profits further.

Agrichemical competitors Syngenta, Corteva (CTVA.N), opens new tab and the agriculture unit of Germany’s BASF (BASFn.DE), opens new tab could also face challenges in the sector, analysts said.

Nearly one-third of all the pesticides and fungicides that Paul Butler uses on his Illinois soybean and corn farm are generic to help him cut costs in a tight year, he said.

Fellow Illinois grain grower Jeff O’Connor is doing the same. “It’s like if you grew up eating Fruity Pebbles and now you go to Dollar General and get Fruity Bites,” he said.

Despite the cost savings, farmers say there can be drawbacks to downgrading. Manufacturers of generic chemicals typically do not cover the cost of respraying if the product does not work, said Caleb Hamer, an Iowa corn and soy farmer.

Still, Midwestern distributors and grain elevators say they have seen customers cutting back their spring pesticide and herbicide budgets.

Some farmers are shifting away from branded products, said Matt Carstens, chief executive of farm cooperative Landus and agricultural financing company Conduit. Others are investing in equipment that targets and treats weeds and pests in their fields – allowing them to buy less herbicides and pesticides altogether, he said.

“It comes down to this: What does the farmer really need? Do they need a name brand, with protection insurance and complaint policies backing it? Do they need to pay for all of that?” Carstens said.

OFF-PATENT CHEMISTRY

When it comes to chemistry, a farmer’s buying decisions often are rooted in the seed.

Farmers typically base their chemical purchases with trait-specific seeds they want – such as ones that produce a drought-tolerant crop or can withstand herbicide applications that kill weeds without harming the plant.

If there is a generic option to brand-name herbicides, and the seeds that a farmer purchases can tolerate it, then it can makes sense to go with a less expensive product, said Mac Marshall, founder of agriculture advising firm Balcony View Consulting.

The number of generics available to farmers is growing. The patent for glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and the world’s most widely used herbicide, expired in 2000, according to Rabobank agricultural analysts Owen Wagner and Sam Taylor.

More than two dozen active ingredient patents have expired in the past five years – spurring a boom in off-patent use, which now accounts for about 80% of the agrichemical market share, they said.

Now, with farmers facing weak margins this spring, they’re more likely to look for cost savings among their fertilizer or crop protection chemicals, Taylor said.

Reporting by P.J. Huffstutter and Heather Schlitz in Chicago. Additional reporting by Karl Plume in Chicago; Editing by David Gregorio

By P.J. Huffstutter and Heather Schlitz

The post Cash-strapped US farmers switch to generic crop chemicals, in blow to big manufacturers appeared first on IPNN.

The post What you need to know about fungicides  appeared first on IPNN.