Stratus Ag Research Report: 2023 Tracking Biostimulant Use and Satisfaction Survey Highlights and Analysis

Mar 23, 2024

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Introduction
Biostimulant Usage Increased in 2023
Category Usage
Farmer Satisfaction Ratings and What it Means
Satisfaction by Brand: Implications for the Lowest Rated Company and Product
How does Satisfaction Compare to Mainstream Crop Protection Products?
Top Brands and Companies by Usage
Final Thoughts
Further Biostimulant and Company Reading

Introduction

This week I went through a publicly available survey from Stratus Ag Research called “Tracking Grower Perceptions of Biostimulant Products in North America” (download it for free here) where they surveyed thousands of farmers from Canada and the USA to breakdown farmer views, sentiment and experience with/towards biostimulant products that are available in the market place.

A couple house keeping comments:

For simplicity, I ONLY highlighted the USA based results below.
This survey was specific to biostimulants, which includes biofertilizers and general plant health promoting biostimulants and NOT bioherbicides or biofungicides.

Biostimulant Usage Increased in 2023

Usage of biostimulants increased across North America in 2023:

Canada is a bit below the United States, as the USA specifically had almost 28% of farmers say they used a biostimulant in 2023.

The United States is not a monolith, though. The geography breaks out as the following (numbers indicate number of farmers in the survey from that region):

The Southern regions tends to have a lower usage of biostimulants:

In aggregate, more than 50% have a positive view of biostimulants:

In Biostimulant Battlegrounds: The Legitimacy of a Program and Market Implications I highlight that a factor surrounding this is the fact that large, trusted crop input companies have begun to endorse their utilization, along with include them in their programs (more on this later):

The trend is ramping up too, with significantly more growers stating that they are open to trying biostimulants compared to the previous year:

Notably, the larger the farm and the younger the farmer, the more open and positive they are to biostimulants— this trend tends to hold across many new technologies, and product segments within agriculture:

Category Usage

There are different types of biostimulants.

The first is the type of molecule itself:

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And then they can be categorized by what they do— some increase N fixation or phosphorous solubolization and some elicit a physiological response from natural sources such as organic acids, seaweed extracts or amino acids to help overcome abiotic stress.

The category of biostimulant used the most in 2023 was N fixing biologicals, however, their usage was down from 2022 whereas beneficial organisms increased:

Farmer Satisfaction Ratings

The “satisfaction” by category type varies drastically. Overall, about 50% of users were “satisfied” with their biostimulant products in 2023:

Organic acids were the product type that farmers were the most satisfied with in 2023, up from being #2 in 2022:

It’s worth it to consider: What makes a farmer feel “satisfied” with a product?

The general answer is performance.

Did the product produce a yield increase? Did it make them more profitable?

There are other aspects to satisfaction, such as handleability of the product when putting into the sprayer or handling the jugs, but overwhelmingly it comes down to performance.

Then we have to consider expectations of performance vs. reality.

N fixing products remained the product category with the least satisfaction, declining in terms of the number of satisfied users and increasing in the category of dissatisfied users— a bad sign overall for the category.

The interest surrounding N fixing products is immense. Just consider the dollars raised by companies that are primarily N fixing product companies:

The maker of nitrogen-fixing product ProveN 40, Pivot Bio has raised over $617 million to date.
Sound Agriculture, the maker of Source, has raised over $170 million.
Kula Bio (an organization that is pre-commercial), has raised over $74 million.
Corteva Agriscience purchased biological company Symborg in 2022 ( for an undisclosed amount), a company whose most prominent product, Utrisha-N, has the active ingredient Methylobacterium symbioticum, a nitrogen-fixing bacteria.

(*All numbers according to Crunchbase)

Expectations can vary by how the products are positioned.

When a farmer uses a bacteria or a fungal based product, they tend to emphasize less tangible benefits— plant health such as greener plants and bigger roots. This may lead to a lower expectation for return and be viewed more as a form of “insurance” (against abiotic stress) compared to other biostimulant segments like N fixing products.

When a farmer uses a N fixing based product, they expect yield.

This gets even more specific when you look at a product like PROVEN 40 (the “40” is based off their positioning of 40lbs of N per acre fixed) or Sound Agriculture’s Source product which states a similar N number for increased availability.

Nitrogen availability can be quantified into more specific yield outcomes.

If I am a farmer growing corn, I know one bushel of corn needs access to about one pound of nitrogen. Through basic math we can begin to see that if I am a farmer, I might begin to expect 40 bushels more (this is unrealistic, but we can see why expectations may get out of whack). Even if a farmer assumes that equates to 10 more bushels because they are getting 40lbs of nitrogen, that’s still a large expectation, something that often isn’t the case with other biostimulant categories.

(To be clear, I am not saying Pivot Bio or Sound Agriculture claim these level of yield increase, I am just illustrating why expectations can increase when stating “40lbs fixed ” can hinder the overall satisfaction)

Satisfaction by Brand: Implications for the Lowest Rated Company and Product

One of the most notable slides from the report is the one surrounding the satisfaction of the largest brands:

It’s worth emphasizing Nitrogen fixing products— this category leaves the most to be desired by farmers.

Most N fixing products stayed relatively flat from 2022, with two standing out:

Utrisha-N from Corteva increased in aggregate satisfaction year-over-year.
Pivot Bio’s newer wheat focused product, Return, had no “very dissatisfied” users and the most “very satisfied” users— this is a good sign for Pivot Bio as they expand beyond corn into small grains and other crops.

One other thing stood out:

Source from Sound Agriculture.

In 2022, Source was the N fixing product with the lowest rating from farmers for “commitment to use again” and the lowest rated biological product in terms of “satisfaction.”

In 2023, it remained a laggard in farmer satisfaction, just like in 2022. The “n” number (total respondents) of singular products is not large, so it’s important to call that out, but the year over year trend seems to be a signal.

I am cognizant that this is farmer perception data, not performance data. It is not quite right to question performance of a product based on farmer perception.

However, it does draw to the forefront how Sound positions, sets expectations and supports its Source product, along with the overall brand perception in the market place. For two consecutive years their lone product in the market has performed poorly in this customer survey from Stratus.

Farmer perception is a big concern— products can be improved and new products can be launched, but if the Sound Agriculture brand is not viewed positively, or the company is not consistent in establishing expectations and supporting customers in the successful usage of a product, that’s an even bigger concern for the long term viability of the organization.

Farmers talk amongst one another. Agronomists and trusted advisors share their experiences. Word spreads. It is unlikely that the unit economics on Source’s product are positive with their customer acquisition costs likely being high, meaning Sound needs positive experiences so that farmers not only become repeat users, but additionally expand the acreage they use the product on so that over time the lifetime value of that customer exceeds the customer acquisition cost.

Even if we assume that perception is lower not because of lower support or poor expectation management, but because Sound Agriculture is not a house-hold company compared to others like Syngenta or Corteva, or they aren’t selling through traditional large retailers, it illustrates that the real customer acquisition cost over time is very high, decreasing short term prospects for organizations selling through the non-traditional distribution channels, like Sound is.

There are implications for other N fixing providers, too.

One negatively perceived product can hinder openness to other products in the same category.

Before I first started as an agronomist in western Canada cereal leaf disease fungicides were very low on a list of priorities for farmers and openness to try wasn’t high. However, one of the commonly used tactics to get farmers to try a fungicide out was to suggest a cut rate (one-half to three-quarter rate) of the product known as Tilt (propiconazole) as a tank mix with herbicides in crops like wheat or barley.

Unsurprisingly, results weren’t usually positive.

What was interesting to me though, was when it came to recommending to farmers the usage of a full rate of fungicide in wheat, or other crops under higher disease pressure conditions, I often heard “I’ve used fungicides before, they don’t work.”

When I would dig in further, their fungicide experience was often from years ago using a cut rate of Tilt at a suboptimal timing— not using a full rate, high end fungicide product at the appropriate stage, under higher disease pressure.

These farmers experience with one product had soured the entire category in their minds. Regardless of whether this is the “right” way to think about it, this was their perception.

Similar scenario’s are very real risks for other N fixing product companies, meaning, not only is there a need to illustrate that your product works compared to an untreated control, there is a need to have ample data to reinforce that your product is superior to others across a wide range of regions.

How does Satisfaction Compare to Mainstream Crop Protection Products?

The numbers for biostimulants are definitely not optimal, however, it is worth contextualizing the numbers with products that are used on most acres, most years, such as fungicides and herbicides:

Biostimulants have a long way to go, but there is still commitment to use these products in the future:

Top Brands and Companies by Usage

The most commonly used brands included varying segments:

The breadth of product types used reinforces there are many different use cases for biostimulants, and if farmers and trusted advisors approach them with a structured view of when and what to recommend, they can have even more success.

To me, the framing for usage decisions should be the same as a crop protection product. There are nuanced challenges, but the starting point is the same, along with much of the process.

Why do agronomists recommend crop protection products (herbicides, insecticides etc) and why do farmers apply them? Because they have identified a problem or risk in the field that needs to be eliminated or mitigated.

Biostimulants should be no different.

It starts with understanding the problems and risks in any given field that will hinder profitability, and using a product that will manage accordingly as part of the crop production system.

Is the concern a high pH leading to a lack of P availability? Does the farmer plant early knowing soils are cooler than ideal and need to manage cold stress?

If you know what the concern is, you know where the economic upside can come from in applying the products.

Overall, usage by company looks like the following, with Novensis and Pivot Bio being the most commonly used:

Final Thoughts

After Stratus Ag Research’s launch of the survey last year, there were not many surprises for this year.

While there are many challenges yet to overcome with biostimulants, there is positive momentum and optimism among growers in using biostimulants on their farm.

As I talked about in last year’s survey highlights and analysis along with above, there is a need to evolve how biostimulants get used and thought about— they are not silver bullets and they need to be integrated effectively with systems thinking and a strong support approach to ensure they get used effectively.

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