Agriculture is facing major economic, agronomic and environmental challenges. In Europe, it is meeting these challenges through an agri-environmental transition, which is leading to a rethinking of production systems with a view to sustainability. The development and use of biosolutions represents a promising alternative to the use of inputs for fertilization and crop protection. They provide a response to the limitation or even gradual ban on the use of numerous chemical molecules and encourage the implementation of agricultural practices that respect the environment and health, in a more systemic approach. Nevertheless, while biosolutions are gradually being deployed, they are coming up against several issues that are holding them back. In this article, Alcimed looks at the main obstacles facing this new sector.
Biosolutions today encompass natural alternatives to the use of chemical inputs in agriculture. They include biofertilizers, biostimulants, biocontrol solutions and adjuvants. On the French market, we mainly find products labelled biocontrol solutions or biostimulants.
Biocontrol solutions correspond to all methods of controlling insects and other pests, diseases and weeds, using organisms (macro-organisms, micro-organisms), chemical mediators (pheromones or kairomones) or natural substances of animal, plant or mineral origin. The purpose of biostimulants is to stimulate natural plant or soil processes, to facilitate or regulate nutrient uptake, improve resistance to abiotic stress, or optimize plant quality characteristics.
The development of these solutions makes it possible to respond to several key agricultural challenges:
Today, these solutions are marketed as manufactured products. It’s not so much a question of agronomic methods or practices, even if these are essential as a complement to the application of these solutions, as of alternatives formulated within a new emerging sector. Their ease of application and compatibility with other agricultural products or agro-equipment are essential criteria.
The development of biosolutions occupies an important place in the strategy for sustainable agriculture. The Potier report, the future law and successive Ecophyto plans encourage the development and use of these products to develop integrated crop protection. However, to date, their use has not been sufficient to meet our ambitions to reduce pesticide and fertilizer use. In 2023, it was estimated that biocontrol products would be deployed on around 8% of French farmland1https://www.terre-net.fr/biocontrole/article/865323/biocontrole-la-preuve-par-le-terrain, mainly in viticulture and arboriculture. Adoption of these solutions in field crops is still low, with only around 5% of wheat acreage, for example.
While these new solutions seem to be a natural fit with practices such as organic farming, permaculture and low-input management, it is in fact as an alternative to conventional agricultural inputs that they are mainly positioned. What’s more, their use faces the same challenges, whatever the type of farming, i.e. optimizing their efficacy and ensuring that they are harmless to the environment.
In 2022, the National Strategy for the Deployment of Biocontrol was published, targeting a 50% reduction in the use of plant protection products by 2025. Since then, other initiatives have begun to take shape. On March 1, 2024, the government officially launched the “Grand défi biocontrôle et biostimulation pour l’agroécologie”2https://www.terre-net.fr/publi-informations-farmi-vous-simplifie-lagri/article/867060/le-grand-defi-devrait-accelerer-le-deploiement-des-biosolutions. This program aims to accelerate and transform the way innovation is conducted, and to massively deploy these practices across the country. To achieve this, it seems essential to develop support strategies as close as possible to each of the industry’s players, to better produce and innovate, to give better advise, better apply and better measure the benefits and effects of these new solutions.
Unlike “conventional” crop protection or fertilizer products, the application and effectiveness of biosolutions depend on numerous agronomic and environmental parameters (plot context, soil and climate, crop variety, level of rotation, etc.). To be able to use them correctly, you need to reason on a case-by-case basis and adopt a systemic vision of your farm, without being systematic. For example, a biocontrol solution may be effective in some conditions and ineffective in others, if application parameters, the presence of beneficials, the level of parasitism, application methods, etc. are not analyzed in parallel. To judge the suitability of the solution and adapt treatment methods (frequency of use, dosage, etc.), the user must be able to adopt a more integrated treatment strategy. As such, these solutions are difficult to mobilize in “catch-up” or emergency situations, as they cannot guarantee drastic results in the face of a pest invasion or major failure. As some solutions have not been used under the right conditions, bad experiences have tarnished the image of biosolutions and called into question their effectiveness with end-users. Training and information are therefore key to establishing the right efficacy criteria and optimizing agricultural advice.
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The systemic understanding of agricultural production and the use of these biosolutions require real knowledge in agronomy, ecology and biology. Given that this knowledge is not always mastered within the user community, that the range of new products is expanding, and that application techniques are in full development, one of the major challenges is research and training. Until recently, the initial training courses taken by most of the agricultural ecosystem, whatever their level of training, did not cover these key agronomic elements or these solutions directly. It therefore seems important to make up for this shortcoming by reinforcing the content of initial training courses, but above all by providing access to the necessary knowledge through continuing education, and by stepping up experimentation and exchanges between farmers, companies, research laboratories, technical institutes and experimental centers to gain a better understanding of the conditions and methods for using these new solutions, in different systems, for different crops. It is only under these conditions that these solutions will be able to demonstrate the true extent of their effectiveness and potential, and that their limitations can be objectively understood.
Another limitation to the deployment of these biosolutions is the cost they can represent for manufacturers and, above all, for end-users. For manufacturers, development and production require heavy investment, with little return on investment to date. For farmers, these costs are not negligible either, since a basic volume/price comparison shows a factor of 10 between the cost of a conventional insecticide and a biocontrol auxiliary in strawberry crops3https://www.bayer-agri.fr/le-mag-du-biocontrole/le-mag-du-biocontrole-episode-7-le-biocontrole-coute-t-il-vraiment-plus-cher_5141/, for example. What’s more, farmers find it extremely difficult to promote these methods of protection, and therefore to amortize or pass on the associated additional costs, in the absence of an associated label or sign of quality. As a result, high value-added crops seem to be the most likely to benefit from these solutions in the first instance, and before any expansion takes place. It therefore seems important to be able to establish benchmarks and increase experimentation to structure a genuine in vivo cost-benefit analysis of these alternatives, taking all technical and economic parameters into consideration.
Despite the obstacles still to be overcome, strong biosolutions represent an undeniable opportunity for tomorrow’s agriculture. This means directing collective efforts towards wider adoption and, above all, facilitating their appropriation and valorizing success stories. By combining research, training, economic support and encouraging public policies, this sector should take off and develop ever more effective solutions. If you have a project in the agri-food sector related to biosolutions, Alcimed can help you. Don’t hesitate to contact our team!
About the author,
Elsa, Project Manager in Alcimed’s Innovation and Public Policy team in France.
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