Want to improve your agricultural productivity?

So, start by changing procedures in relation to your soil. Take care of it with great affection, think about all the preparation and conservation practices that you are going to carry out and always adopt procedures that restore or preserve the life that exists in it. Living soil is productive soil.

How can we transform the soil into a living organism where plants can develop better? How can the roots make better use of the nutrients and water in the soil?

Our soils, for decades, have been punished by successive harvests and the movement of heavy machinery, from preparation to harvest, in addition to the use of various chemical products without the slightest concern for their biological fraction. Tropical soils lose organic matter quickly. The more you work with plowing, harrowing, stump destroying equipment, burning, among others, the faster the losses. Soil without organic matter is poor in microorganisms and nutrient exchange between the plant and the clay micelles; such soils are not very productive.

To begin with, I will tell you an unforgettable passage that marked my career: In the early 1990s, I received a call from the owner of a large plant, who, after reading an article on Dr. Joana Döhbereiner's research on identification and isolation of nitrogen-fixing bacteria directly from sugarcane, published in the former Agricultural Supplement of the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, showed interest in acquiring this technology.

The intention was to set up a large-scale production of these microorganisms, aiming to reach the market for sugarcane, corn, rice, sorghum and other grain-producing grasses (a futuristic vision that is now materializing). This entrepreneur envisioned this new market and a new agriculture with extraordinary economic and environmental results, intending to replace a large part of the “N” from chemical sources, by nitrogen-fixing bacteria of the Azotobacter genus , among other genera, directly on the roots of grasses in general.

He asked us to make contact with the researcher and present her with a tempting proposal to acquire the new technology exclusively. And there I went to meet Dr. Joana in Rio de Janeiro, where she was carrying out her research. Do you know what the answer I got? It was something like:

“My son, it is not necessary to set up a laboratory or isolate these microorganisms because they already exist in your soil and are already present in nature. You can activate them by just carrying out a few simple practices, such as avoiding soil compaction and stimulating microorganisms with phosphorus and calcium applications, which you already do, in addition to enriching the land with organic materials from leftovers. crop, plant residues or animal waste, but all this will only be possible if there is sufficient soil aeration and humidity. Thank your boss and tell him that I felt honored with the invitation, but I cannot accept the proposal, because the discovery we made belongs to humanity ”, he told me when closing the conversation.

I returned home with the same strength I went with, but with a thousand new ideas in my head for correct soil management. The words of that wise lady moved me and I spent a long time meditating on them and on the unknown world of a living soil. Since then, I have tried to understand a little more about the role of microorganisms in rebuilding soil fertility and their interactions with the plant. How could all of this improve overall crop productivity?

It was the beginning of my professional transformation as an agronomist. I realized that my masters taught, and very well, by the way, the fundamentals of soil chemistry and physics, but I lacked more information about soil biology. After that, the works carried out by our agronomic consultancy yielded excellent results in the reconstruction of the natural fertility of the soils, increasing its productive potential, mainly in poorer or depleted soils, taking into account the set of these three components.

In the last 30 years, all of this has taken on great proportions and has given rise to what we call Biological Soil Management, which has become a mandatory technology for the new agriculture and has given rise to a promising market for agricultural inputs, whose growth is greater than 30% per year.

Farmers currently have dozens of microorganisms at their disposal, such as fungi and bacteria isolated and tested in the laboratory, in addition to products that activate root development and organic substrates ready to improve soil fertility, such as humic and fulgic acids.

A perfect marriage of organic products and microorganisms can significantly contribute to the development of plants. With more biological activity, the soil will become better structured, favoring the formation of roots, absorption and retention of water and nutrients. In well-structured and even lumpy soils, these microorganisms multiply and settle around the sugarcane roots, forming the well-known mycorrhizae, in a perfect symbiotic relationship.

Under these conditions, the roots develop much better and release exudates that are important for the life of these micro beings, which, in turn, return the “favor”, favoring the absorption of nutrients. The intensity of these effects depends on environmental conditions and pre-existing or applied nutrients to the soil.

To activate this extremely complex world, made up of millions of living microorganisms that live on earth, and create a perfect association between these beings and plants, it is necessary to carry out management that is adequate to our climate and think about replacing life in the soil.

There are numerous species of beneficial microorganisms in the soil that play an important role in pest control and in the decomposition of plant remains left in the field. The best known and already being used on a large scale are: bacillus subtilis, azospirillum brasiliense, bacillus megaterion, in addition to the already familiar bacillus thurigiensis, beauveria bassiana and metarhizium anisopliae.

Many bioinputs (biological products used in agriculture) have emerged lately, and today they are applied at various stages of culture. In sugarcane production, this new technology is being used more and more, along with phosphating , deep liming, use of industrial waste and animal husbandry. Gradually, organomineral products are being rediscovered by farmers to replace part of the traditional chemical fertilization.

Just to illustrate, it is worth mentioning that in the early 1980s, I studied, practically in a pioneering way, in my master's thesis, the effects of filter cake (which until then was discarded by most mills) on twenty varieties and the results were fantastic. With 25 tons of wet filter cake in natura per hectare (source of organic material), applied in the planting furrow, in soil of the quartz sand type, classification at the time, today neosols, we observed average gains of 12 tons per hectare, per cut , in three consecutive cuts, when compared to the treatment without filter cake, only with chemical fertilizers.

Dozens of tests emerged after that and its use is increasingly improved, with several new technologies added. It has never been so important to use organic matter together with bio-inputs to restore life to the soil. Filter cake, for example, placed in the planting furrow, increases microbial activity and brings better results than when placed on the ratoon row, where a large part decomposes quickly, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Therefore, in the early 1980s, even if timidly, these works signaled that a new agriculture and a new management were emerging to increase soil fertility and agricultural productivity. Currently, this technology is consolidating and is expected to grow a lot. And write it down: there's no turning back.