Frontiers in Soil Science

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

There are a lot of challenges facing the current ag economy, but there are still exciting developments underway that will lead to the ag innovations in the future. One of these scientific frontiers is soil science, and Syngenta’s Matt Wallenstein says modern technology is opening up some interesting opportunities.

Wallenstein… “ Soil science has really gone through a transformation in the last couple decades. You know, soils are immensely complex. They're complex, biologically, chemically, physically, and for a long time we were uncovering that complexity and learning about how soils are formed and how soil properties then manifest in different functioning. Right? And then there were a lot of tools that allowed us to dig even deeper into that complexity. Understanding the microbiome in particular and how the microbes that live in soils can impact the way that soils function, the way they deliver nutrients to the crops, the way they allow crops to resist stress related to drought. And now we're in a really exciting phase where we're applying that knowledge and now figuring out how we can harness that knowledge into solutions for growers.”

Wallenstein called soils the next frontier in agriculture.