Agriculture is forever evolving and so is the business of fertilizer and crop nutrition.
It’s been 20 years since fertilizer heavyweight, The Mosaic Company, was formed by a merger between IMC Global and Cargill’s crop nutrition division. The company’s mission is to help the world grow the food it needs, says director of new product development Ross Bender. For the first two decades the company tackled the food production challenge by focusing on traditional dry fertilizer sources, commodity products like potash, MAP and DAP, and differentiated products like MicroEssentials, Aspire and K-Mag.
“But really what we feel will take us through the next chunk of our life is optimizing the performance of that dry, granular fertilizer with bio sciences and biological technologies,” says Bender. His job is to lead a team that better understands what plants need and when, and then develop tools to meet their needs at key times of the growing season.
At the Mosaic Advanced Crop Nutrition Forum in Tampa, Florida, Bender sat down with RealAgriculture’s Bernard Tobin to talk about the changing nature of crop production and how crop nutrition products must evolve to meet these demands.
Mosaic’s global research spans five regions, focusing on core crops like corn, soy, wheat, and rice. Bender explains the growing focus on biologicals and biostimulants; how they can work in combination with traditional fertilizer products; and the goal to develop products with a three-to-one ROI, which ensures an adequate return for both growers and manufacturers.
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