Midwestern BioAg recently partnered with Trace Genomics in order to adopt the most advanced commercially available soil testing in the industry. Trace Genomics is a soil testing company that provides a full chemical as well as 21 biology and pathology analyses. Midwestern BioAg will be implementing these analyses to improve our scouting and recommendations to our customers.
Midwestern BioAg has been promoting biological farming for nearly 40 years. We’ve known from our extensive time as crop and soil consultants that biology is equally as important as soil physical and chemical properties. However, until recently, measuring and demonstrating our effects on soil biology has been mostly recognizable through improved crop performance. Most changes to soil biology happen on a longer timeline and are sometimes not immediately apparent or have been historically difficult to detect. With improvements in soil analytics, we can better understand the impact that management practices have on soil biology.
By partnering with Trace Genomics, we can now track numerous soil health metrics on our customers’ farms such as changes to soil bacterial populations, nitrogen and phosphorus cycling, active soil carbon, and total organic carbon among many other important parameters. Through measuring populations of Anthracnose, Rhizoctonia, and other significant soil-borne diseases, we can more accurately scout and predict disease pressure. Total organic carbon is an important component of soil quality and health and will increasingly be used for verifying soil carbon accumulations, leading to other sources of revenue for our customers through carbon trading.
In summary, Midwestern BioAg can now quantify and characterize the positive changes to soil biology our customers have come to appreciate. This will equate to improved soil biology and health for our customers’ fields, making their farms more resilient and profitable.
Speak with your BioAg representative about how to get your field sampled and analyzed using the power of Trace Genomics.