Looking to reconfigure nature to organically do the job of man-made chemicals–and do it better–Monsanto, that worrisome Big Agra entity, has entered in earnest the field of microbials. From Sam Brasch at Modern Farmer:

“Monsanto’s partner in the new BioAg Alliance is Novozymes, a Danish company which knows a thing or two about putting microbes to work. They already offer farmers products like JumpStart, a strain of bacteria that grows along crop roots to help the plants take full advantage of phosphorus in the soil. Other agricultural biologicals – the umbrella terms for all living things that could protect plant health and productivity — include fungi that parasitically kills pests and bacteria that promotes root growth.

Each company has something to offer the other when it comes to making biologicals. Nozozymes has the experience and facilities to mass produces single microbes; Monsanto has the infrastructure to field test those products, which is crucial. Many microbes work great in the sterile conditions of the laboratory only to fail in the complex soils of real farms. Novozymes also gets a nice $300 million dollar bonus for opening a joint pipeline with Monsanto.

Such living pesticides and crop enhancers hold enormous promise for worldwide agriculture. A report from the American Academy of Microbiologists (A.A.M.) estimates that engaging the living world in and around plants could increase yields 20 percent in the next 20 years while at the same time reducing pesticide use by 20 percent. Right now, biopesticides only make up a 2.3 billion dollar industry — only 5 percent of the 44 billion dollars supporting chemical pesticides.”