With today’s rising agricultural input costs narrowing the already razor-thin profit margins that producers face, many are looking for innovative ways to ensure a healthy and high yield for their crop.
So some growers are exploring biological products, naturally derived substances that have been used for centuries to control pests and ensure crop productivity. These products can be as simple as homemade compost, or more commercialized products like Advancing Eco Agriculture’s suite of offerings.
The rise in popularity of biologicals means that growers today have an overwhelmingly long list of products to choose from. Biologicals is an umbrella term for products that include biostimulants, beneficial microbes (aka “bugs in a jug”), and plant growth regulators.
As specialty crop growers based in Lodi, California, brothers Tim and Tyler Nuss found themselves overwhelmed with the options of biologicals available to them. They learned about the biologicals space through their Modern Acre podcast, which they launched in 2018.
In the subsequent years, they built a network, built credibility within their sector, and became ready to build a platform for their audience base.
They kept coming back to biologicals, which led to the creation of AgList, which they refer to as the “Yelp for Agriculture,” focusing on biological product endorsements by growers, for growers.
AgList launched publicly in January, and the Nuss brothers wanted to offer a platform that farmers could use to search for biologicals that have been vetted by other growers.
“Sometimes it’s nice to call a fellow grower and ask for anecdotal feedback,” said Tim Nuss. “It’s a fragmented marketplace [out there], overwhelming for farmers to navigate.”
AgList serves as a way to unify this marketplace, by placing many products in one place and providing endorsements from users (typically farmers and agronomists) who have tried the product.
“We didn’t want to go with the 1- to 5-star review,” said Nuss, citing how that rating system can make things confusing in terms of determining just how good a product is. Instead, the endorsement-only method of reviewing enables products to be sorted essentially into two categories: ones that work and ones that don’t.
“Companies with products that just don’t work will struggle to get growers to say something good about them,” said Nuss. “Sometimes growers get the confidence to try something knowing someone down the street tried it.”
This simple way of reviewing products allows growers to determine whether a product is one they want to take a risk on and try out.
So far, AgList operates on an honesty policy, with Nuss and his team individually reviewing each account and endorsement to ensure legitimacy and compliance with their platform policy.
Originally launched with 10 different companies and their products, AgList has been adding one to two new companies every week. Today, you can find companies such as Pivot Bio, Vestaron Crop Protection, Biocarbon Earth, Impello Biosciences, and Sound Agriculture.
Companies pay to list their products on the platform, with prices varying based on the number of products the company wants to list. Companies that are pre-commercial can also list their products, offering an opportunity for marketing early on in their business.
With hundreds of users now using AgList, the platform is designed to be easy to navigate and tailored to growers.
“We really wanted to make it user friendly for growers,” said Nuss. “You can search [for biologicals] by different categories like location, crop, even features like disease resistance.”
Companies have their own manufacturing page with information, which is filled out by the company when they sign up. Companies can write as much or as little as they would like, and choose to list all their available products or just a select few, typically their most popular.
As a specialty crop grower, Nuss says that AgList is primarily for other specialty crops or conventional row crops, but the platform is diversifying day by day. Some new features that have been added are the distributor feature, where growers can search for a distributor of a product near them.
Nuss is also interested in potentially expanding AgList to connect growers to biological-adjacent companies, such as Biome Makers, which doesn’t sell any biological product but instead promotes soil health management.
“Sometimes growers get the confidence to try something knowing someone down the street tried it.” — Tim Nuss, co-founder of AgList
While Nuss says he is interested in potentially adding in other vertical niche areas of ag, such as certifications or ag tech, his goal for the remainder of the year is to add more companies and products, ensuring that AgList is robust in its representation of the biologicals market.
Long term, Nuss just wants to make it fun for users on the platform.
“I’ve thought about doing a Soil Health Olympics competition next year or something, where we ask growers to submit soil samples and [we generate] rankings,” said Nuss.
AgList currently keeps a Leaderboard, updated monthly, to give companies a competitive edge to their products. Ultimately, Nuss says, it’s about making it fun and engaging for users and companies to use the platform.
With hundreds of biological products in the market, and new products being introduced, farmers today face a dizzying list of options. Without knowing whether a product is legitimate ‘bugs in a jug’, snake oil, or something in between, it can be costly and risky to try something new. AgList touts itself as being able to take some of that risk away by providing growers a trusted way to review products before trying them.
Biologicals is still a burgeoning sector, and it can be a confusing space for producers looking to get into it. Consider AgList as a way to vet and assess biologicals by farmers, for farmers; ultimately, this is another tool for growers to use to potentially improve the resiliency of their operation and maintain economic sustainability.
Liza Thuy Nguyen served as the 2023 American Farmland Trust Agriculture Communications Intern at AGDAILY. Liza is originally from Anaheim, California, and attended the University of California, Davis, as a first-generation college student. She received a bachelor’s degree in genetics and genomics and went on to earn a master’s in horticulture from Penn State.
