Where Strategy Meets Biology

Because even the best-laid plans need a little faith.

Written by: Steve Holloway — Technical Manager, SFS

Farming has always involved a slightly uncomfortable relationship with certainty. Plans are made, varieties chosen, nutrition calculated, forecasts watched, and everything is put in the right place at the right time. Then a seed goes into the ground and, however good the plan was, a surprising amount of control is handed back to soil, weather and biology.

That is not the same as simply crossing your fingers and hoping for the best. Farming's been built around reducing uncertainty wherever possible: measuring, comparing, learning and making decisions from the information available. But there is still a point where the plan meets a living system, and living systems have never been particularly interested in behaving with mathematical precision.

That becomes even more relevant when ‘biology is introduced into biology’. A product can be manufactured to a specification, applied at a known rate and timed carefully, but what happens next depends on the environment it enters. Soil condition, moisture, temperature, rooting, existing microbial populations and previous management all play a part. The input may be controlled, but the system it enters is not, and that is probably why some  responses can be so different. Areas can change surprisingly quickly, while others seem to take much longer before the difference becomes obvious. I have seen both, and the frustrating part is that it is not always possible to know which one you are dealing with at the start.

That is where the commercial side becomes important. A few tramlines or a small block can be given time to show what is happening. Changing several hundred hectares and then finding that the wider system takes two, three or more seasons to respond is a very different proposition. Time has a value, and so does lost opportunity.

The answer does not have to be all or nothing. Something like the Vitaplex V8 can be introduced during the season without turning the rest of the programme upside down. It can be a first step rather than a complete change of direction, helping to support the crop and begin influencing the wider biological environment while the rest of the system remains familiar.

The evidence behind biological products is important, but it is only part of the conversation. The same product can be used in two places and enter very different starting conditions. Soil structure, nutrient balance, moisture, temperature, rooting and the existing biology all influence how quickly the wider system responds. That doesn't make the product less reliable; it means the surrounding system isn't identical from one field to the next.

This is why a measured first step can be so useful. It gives the grower a chance to see how that approach fits their own ground and their own programme, without needing to make a wholesale change on day one. From there, confidence can build around what is already being seen and measured on that farm.

Perhaps that is where hope has been given a slightly harder time than it deserves.

Not hope instead of evidence, and not hope instead of strategy, but the recognition that biological systems still contain more moving parts than can be controlled exactly. The product, rate and timing may all be known, but the field it enters still has its own starting point. Even with a good plan, good products and good evidence, there is still a point where biology has to do what biology does. Hope, apparently, springs eternal.