Biologicals have recently been added to a farmer’s crowded toolbox of products to maximize crop production.

“It’s not just living organisms,” says Jeff Carr, strategic marketing manager of biologicals for WinField United, of the definition of biologicals. “It’s actually the living biological organisms, bio-stimulants, biocontrol products, and anything that would fit under that overall umbrella of biologicals that we call biologicals.”

Label claims on these products can leave producers scratching their heads as biologicals and bio-stimulants are not regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency. This allows companies bringing such products to market to fly under the regulatory radar when making marketing claims.

Carr has heard that today, more than 1,200 companies are in the agricultural biological space; “So, if you think about that, that’s companies, that’s not products. Every company has between one and who knows how many products — you can do the math quickly and figure out it’s a big space today.”

That big space creates questions and confusion. “As more products come in the marketplace, there’s all sorts of claims,” he says. “You can make claims, put a label together and you can start selling and marketing to the industry.”

Silence the noise

To help producers cut through label claims to bring validity to the surface, WinField United has designed BioVerified, a testing platform to reclaim trust and confidence for farmers purchasing biological products.

Over the last four years, the WinField team has tested 75 products from about 56 different companies, and eight of those have gone to distribution.

“It’s giving that retailer and grower confidence in a product or a portfolio that they can start with within the biological space that’s been tested, it’s been vetted. We understand how the product works with a mode of action. We know where to position it, when to position it, and where not to position it at times,” Carr says. “Those are the key things to think about when we think about BioVerified — just to understand the product inside and out. It may not work 100% of the time, but we understand when it does work, why it works.”

Carr says the birth of BioVerified came out of WinField United wanting to preserve the reputation built by the company and its retailers. “We want to make sure that the products that we promote are not just here today or tomorrow, but we’re here for the long term.”

Products are evaluated and rated based on four key criteria.

Uniqueness. This is compared to other products on the market.

Agronomics. This includes identifiable mode of action, performance and placement.

Operational compatibility. Compatibility with standard application methods, products and inventory.

Economic return. Return for growers and retailers.

Carr says more than 70 products are in the WinField biological portfolio, each with a specific purpose, “but that purpose may not be on broad-based acres. It may be on specialty crop — maybe on corn, but not soybeans, maybe not on wheat. It really depends on where they’re utilized. This program was developed to try to cut through all that noise.”

In other words, BioVerified breaks down that large portfolio of overarching biologicals to a group of products “that we have the most knowledge about how they work, where they work, when they work, and what their mode of actions are,” he says.

11 BioVerified products

Currently, 11 products that are distributed through the WinField United retail network have received the BioVerified designation. “All 11 products serve a different purpose within the agronomics,” Carr says, “In other words, we have products that do things from a nutritional standpoint, products that are for abiotic stress. There are different things going on within that portfolio — they’re not just 11 products that do the same thing necessarily.”

Similar to how each farm based on soil type, cropping system and environment requires different management, so does the use of biological products. “These are going to fit a broad range of acres,” he says, “but it still goes back to that localized acre, that localized recommendation to make sure that it’s the right fit for that acre.”