Sustainable agriculture and organic farming are increasingly intertwined as the global food system evolves. Organic farming is driven by the principles of avoiding synthetic chemicals, enhancing soil fertility, and promoting biodiversity. As the world grapples with the effects of climate change, consumers and regulators are pushing for farming systems that are both eco-friendly and economically viable. Sustainable agriculture plays a critical role in making organic farming scalable, ensuring that both environmental sustainability and food production goals can be achieved simultaneously.

crop.zone’s electric weed control technology is designed to meet the needs of organic farmers by offering a completely chemical-free solution for weed management. One of the primary challenges in organic farming is weed control, which traditionally requires labour-intensive mechanical weeding or the use of organic herbicides that may not be as effective as synthetic ones. crop.zone’s innovative technology uses electric currents to destroy weeds at the cellular level, reducing the need for chemical herbicides while maintaining soil health.

Organic farmers benefit from using crop.zone’s solutions in several ways. Firstly, it ensures compliance with organic certification standards, which often prohibit the use of synthetic chemicals. Secondly, electric weed control promotes soil health by not disrupting the soil structure, unlike traditional mechanical weeding methods, which can lead to soil erosion and degradation. Thirdly, by eliminating the need for chemical inputs, the technology contributes to the long-term sustainability of farming operations, reducing dependency on synthetic products that can harm ecosystems.

Sustainability in organic farming also requires an understanding of crop rotation, nutrient management, and water conservation. crop.zone’s technology complements these practices by integrating seamlessly into broader sustainable agriculture strategies. Electric weed control helps farmers manage their crops more efficiently, allowing them to focus on other crucial areas such as improving soil fertility through green manuring and composting. 

As organic farming continues to grow globally, technologies that support sustainability will be increasingly critical. By providing electric weed control solutions, crop.zone is at the forefront of helping farmers transition to more sustainable, organic systems. This alignment between technology and organic farming principles ensures that farmers can maintain high productivity without sacrificing environmental responsibility.

Potato scarification is a critical step in agricultural practice to help potatoes ripen and facilitate harvesting. By specifically killing the potato haulm, tuber development can be completed, resulting in improved tuber quality. This is particularly important to protect potatoes from damage during harvest and to ensure longer storage life.

Traditionally, chemical agents have been used for this process, but electrical desiccation is becoming increasingly important as a sustainable alternative. This method reduces the use of chemicals and helps protect the environment.

Agriculture is facing a growing challenge: herbicide-resistant weeds and grasses are increasingly threatening crop yields. Herbicide resistance refers to the ability of plants to withstand the herbicides used against them.

Resistance in weeds and grasses occurs when herbicides with the same mode of action are repeatedly applied to an area. Plants that are naturally less sensitive to the herbicide survive and produce seeds. This gradually increases the proportion of resistant plants in the population, leading to control problems.

Several factors contribute to the increase in resistance, such as narrow crop rotations dominated by cereals, early sowing of winter crops and long-term, one-sided tillage. In addition, the lack of new herbicide modes of action over the past 30 years has exacerbated the problem. In Germany, common weed species such as blackgrass, wild brome, ryegrass species and barnyard grass are particularly affected by resistance. A notable example of herbicide resistance is glyphosate, one of the most widely used broad-spectrum herbicides in the world. Since the 1990s, the number of weed species resistant to glyphosate has increased significantly. Currently, more than 500 cases of herbicide resistance have been documented worldwide, threatening both agricultural profitability and food security.

The concept of Integrated Weed Management (IWM) has been developed to address this problem. This system aims to slow the development of resistance by combining different control methods. Mechanical weed control, crop rotation and the targeted use of herbicides with different modes of action play a central role.

Alternating herbicides with different modes of action can reduce the likelihood of resistance. In the long term, the development of new active ingredients and research into alternative weed control methods will be crucial. The use of digital technologies such as drones and robotics to accurately monitor and control weeds is also becoming increasingly important.

One alternative solution could be the Volt.apply system. This technology is based on pre-treating plants with a conductive liquid, followed by an electrical application that destroys plant cells and water-conducting tissues, causing the plants to die completely. Only through sustainable and innovative approaches can agriculture successfully combat resistant weeds.

Oats (Avena sativa) are a widely grown cereal crop for both human and animal consumption. According to the FAO, 256 million tons of oats were produced worldwide in 2020. The leading producers are Russia, Canada, and Poland. Oats hold an important place in the agricultural landscape and serve as a staple food in many regions of the world.

Oats are becoming increasingly attractive as the demand for these crops in the food processing chain rises due to their wide range of uses for human consumption. In recent years, oats have become the new superfood. Oat porridge, oat milk, and oatmeal are very popular, especially among younger people. Among other things, the high fiber and vitamin content make hearty and tender oat flakes a healthy food. Due to the high demand for these products, they are regularly subjected to product testing. These tests have shown that some oat products contain mineral oils, mold toxins, and glyphosate residues (Öko-Test).

Oat desiccation refers to the drying out of oat plants before harvest. This is mainly done in higher latitudes where the warm season, and therefore the growing season, is shorter. This process usually facilitates harvesting or combining and synchronizes maturity, as oats tend to ripen unevenly.

The most common herbicide used for oat desiccation is glyphosate. Desiccation is typically applied at yellow ripeness (BBCH 87), about 7 to 10 days before harvest. In German cereal production, desiccation is only allowed to a very limited extent, namely to restore the harvestability of lodged crops with a high amount of secondary growth or significant late weed infestation. However, desiccation with glyphosate is a common practice, particularly in North America, where large quantities of oats are produced.

There is growing public concern about the use of glyphosate close to harvest, leading the food processing industry to increasingly look for alternatives to desiccation.

Concretisations of the article “Potatoes in 2050: A vision for the future of the global potato industry”

He himself writes that he does not have a good crystal ball, but that lines of development are emerging. It will therefore help us all if every player in the potato business asks themselves whether and how they can fit into this vision. How can we perhaps specify and concretise it – or where can we achieve something? As we are ultimately all shaping the future together, we are also best able to work together on the many individual aspects and visions.

The following text is a contribution from crop.zone to the discussion on the ‘Vision Potato 2050’, which crop.zone, as a provider of electrophysical plant management, considers to be target-orientated. crop.zone works in the field of residue-free desiccation of potatoes, but has an impact far beyond this in the agricultural processes of plant management, from pre-sowing treatment and green manure to the siccation of other crops such as oats.

We take up the core theses of Lukie Pieterse and concretise them from our point of view.

Lukie Pieterse writes: „The year 2024 marks a critical juncture in this journey. With just 26 years until 2050, the potato industry must navigate a rapidly changing landscape characterized by climate change, population growth, resource scarcity, and shifting consumer preferences.“

crop.zone in Vision 2050: At present, the major changes that need to be made are becoming increasingly clear and innovative agricultural technology, as part of the potato industry and agricultural systems, must face up to them. These are turning points that are necessary to master the challenges. To Lukie Pieterse’s list, we would like to emphasize some more specific aspects such as the rapidly changing weather conditions, the increasingly demanding logistics, the question of biodiversity and the handling of soil as probably the scarcest non-renewable resource.

Lukie Pieterse writes: „One of the central pillars of this vision is the development of climate-resilient potato varieties.“

crop.zone in Vision 2050: From crop.zone’s agricultural engineering perspective, climate-adapted potato varieties are important, especially if they require less crop protection. However, as has unfortunately happened too often in the past, this must not lead to soil protection and soil regeneration as well as adapted agricultural technology being neglected. After all, the potato is also nourished by the soil and the soil promotes its quality. It is a complex interplay in which all aspects must be managed together: Complexity management is the name of the challenge.

Lukie Pieterse writes: „In tandem with these biological innovations, the integration of precision agriculture and digital technologies will revolutionize potato farming. The use of data-driven insights, artificial intelligence, and autonomous machinery will allow farmers to optimize every aspect of potato production.“

crop.zone in Vision 2050: It is the task of innovative agricultural technology such as crop.zone to fill the individual aspects rightly mentioned with very specific content. In many places, it will no longer be a question of making individual technical aspects a few per cent more effective. Potato cultivation in particular already utilises many aspects of precision farming. Better AI-based information can help even more farmers to do the right thing even more often and or autonomous AI systems to make competent decisions and support farmers as very good employees. Potatoes ultimately grow in the World of Things, and the Internet of Things can help. However, the concrete tools for fundamental progress remain up for grabs. This is precisely why we need to rethink in many areas. Instead of a little less herbicide or a little more energy-saving ploughing, solutions in plant management are needed, such as siccation with electricity, which do not require any chemical agents and do not move the soil.

Field logistics under the increasingly difficult weather conditions caused by the climate will also be easier if there are simply no more waiting times due to herbicides because siccation is carried out using electricity. Harvesting can take place when the potato is sufficiently firm and that is all that counts.

crop.zone documents all the relevant treatment parameters on the field with precise area accuracy. The data is available to the farmer and is used by crop.zone for further improvements and recommendations on the optimum use of machinery. In this way, once the expertise has been acquired, it can be easily shared and effectively utilised by all users under all complex farming conditions. This helps to alleviate the shortage of skilled labour in the field and turn (semi-)autonomous expert systems into ever better employees for the farmer.

Lukie Pieterse writes: „By 2050, the industry must fully embrace sustainable practices that prioritize environmental stewardship, resource conservation, and waste reduction. This includes adopting regenerative agriculture practices that restore soil health, implementing circular economy principles that turn waste into resources… .“

crop.zone in Vision 2050: In many cases, the regenerative protection and reconstruction of soils will only succeed if soil movement only takes place for absolutely necessary reasons. Ploughing, tilling and hoeing for weed control or to kill growth or green manure are not part of this. This is where electrophysical methods such as those from crop.zone have to step in, without chemical residues and without soil movement and therefore with a very positive influence on soil life.

The crop.zone process has been proven to have no negative impact on soil life during electric potato desiccation. The improved haulm separation by crop.zone reduces losses in the field and also makes sorting work easier for autonomous potato harvester systems. Large working widths compared to haulm toppers and stalk pickers minimise soil compaction between the ridges, which will also help autonomous systems to separate potatoes and clods of soil. Intermediate ridges in potato fields to retain water and minimise erosion are maintained until harvest, which is particularly important during heavy rainfall. Potato ridges are less damaged than with mechanical haulm removal, which in turn maintains quality and reduces crop losses due to green potatoes. Insecticide spraying during the siccation phase can be avoided as the stems do not turn yellow and become attractive to aphids. As crop.zone, unlike haulm topping, does not produce aerosols that are highly contaminated with plant diseases, additional crop protection products or disease-related yield reductions are also avoided in neighbouring fields. crop.zone requires 10 to 40 times less energy than thermal siccation methods that were previously used in organic potato cultivation (from the perspective of 2050). Fossil resources are conserved or no longer needed thanks to fewer passes and the use of regeneratively generated electricity as an active ingredient. Green manure, which binds nitrogen from the air, replaces natural gas for artificial fertilisers. If additional nitrogen is needed, then it will come from green hydrogen or directly from electricity. A circular economy, even with residual materials, only works if residues and pollutants do not enter the cycles in the first place and cannot accumulate there. It is therefore important to systematically prevent residues from being produced in the first place, e.g. using electrophysical processes.

Lukie Pieterse writes: „The ability to respond to shifting consumer demands, adapt to changing trade policies, and build resilient supply chains will be critical in maintaining the industry’s competitive edge.“

crop.zone in Vision 2050: The world will also grow together in terms of its demands on food production. As a result, it will become less and less possible to use herbicides in certain regions that are already banned in other parts of the world for good reasons. This applies in particular to non-selective herbicides, some of which are highly toxic, which crop.zone is replacing with electricity. At the same time, resilient supply chains also require a secure supply capability despite changing weather and climate conditions. Dispensing with siccation or other crop protection methods or returning to ploughing are therefore not options, as they reduce the resilience of the soil and the entire production system.

Especially with the desired global expansion of the organic potato market, it will be necessary to harvest the potatoes on time and firm in their skins in order to be able to deliver them to the supermarkets packed in bags and also to avoid food losses due to rotting. This will only work on a large production scale with crop.zone as a non-chemical siccation process with a wide range of applications.

New and innovative modes of action, such as electricity, will generally be required to maintain current supply chains, which are also threatened by increasingly resistant weeds.

Lukie Pieterse writes: “Empowering smallholders and promoting social equity will be key components of the industry’s vision for 2050.”

crop.zone in Vision 2050: The trend towards sharing innovative technology will spread worldwide. Small farmers in particular are often unable to afford innovative technology on their own, even if it could make cultivation significantly more environmentally friendly. At the same time, they and their neighbours are particularly and directly at risk from the use of highly toxic, non-selective herbicides. The lack of qualified labour and increasing environmental regulations show that even medium-sized farmers (which means something completely different in various regions of the world) can only survive if they use highly innovative technologies. There will only be social and economic justice in open trading systems if everyone avoids residues at the same high level and produces in an environmentally friendly way. To this end, crop.zone is making its contribution on the agricultural technology side in the area of residue-free crop cultivation for farmers of all sizes.

Lukie Pieterse writes: „Finally, the industry must prioritize ethical sourcing and supply chain transparency, responding to growing consumer demand for products that are produced sustainably and ethically.“

crop.zone in the Vision 2050: Especially when consumers can obtain more and more information directly or via dynamically customised quality seals thanks to blockchain, they will increasingly demand compliance with high and obviously feasible standards. The pressure will then also come from potato processors and their legal protection insurers against consumer complaints. If potato siccation without chemical residues in the environment is feasible and well documented, it will have to be implemented on a broad basis. At the same time, the transparency of supply chains down to the last detail also offers farmers, for example, the opportunity to show that they can grow potatoes and at the same time provide excellent protection for the soil. The farmer who then has 150-250 earthworms per square metre in his potato fields thanks to very good care, including compost and green manure, should then receive more for his product. However, this will also exert market-driven pressure on those who have so far been content with 40 earthworms or less or have ignored this parameter altogether.

It will also be even less explainable ethically why in some countries agricultural workers still work with herbicides that have a skull and crossbones on the packaging or can cause permanent damage to the young, while these have often been banned for the same crop in other parts of the world for decades. In the area of non-selective, highly toxic herbicides, e.g. in potato desiccation, but also far beyond this, crop.zone can offer ethically acceptable alternatives worldwide. 

Lukie Pieterse writes: „By embracing innovation, sustainability, and collaboration, the potato industry can not only meet the demands of a rapidly changing world but also lead the way in creating a more equitable and prosperous future for all.“

In recent years, potato farming has experienced a transformation, driven by both regulatory changes and consumer demand for more sustainable agricultural practices. One of the key processes in potato production – desiccation – has traditionally relied on chemical herbicides to kill off the potato haulm before harvesting. However, with increasing restrictions on chemical plant protection products and a growing emphasis on environmental responsibility, the future of potato desiccation lies in innovative and sustainable solutions.

At the forefront of this change is crop.zone, whose unique hybrid electric desiccation technology offers a promising alternative to chemical desiccation methods. In this blog, we will explore how sustainable potato desiccation is reshaping the industry, and why professional farmers should consider making the switch to this greener technology.

Dessiccation is crucial for an effective potato harvest. Killing the weeds before harvest allows the tubers to mature, improves skin formation and reduces the risk of disease and potato storage problems. Traditional chemical siccation methods using the herbicide diquat have proven to be very effective, but are now banned in Europe due to the substance’s high toxicity to humans on tractors and in the field. The substitutes work only in combination with sunlight, are generally slower, usually require multiple applications, and are less effective. However, as the use of chemicals is increasingly restricted in Europe, farmers need a reliable and environmentally friendly alternative.

In light of these challenges, farmers have been looking for a more efficient, reliable, and sustainable solution that not only complies with regulations but also meets the environmental expectations of modern consumers.

crop.zone’s hybrid-electric desiccation system represents a new frontier in potato desiccation. By combining electrical energy with a pre-treatment that increases conductivity, this technology disrupts the plant’s cell structure, effectively drying the haulm without the use of chemicals. This solution not only provides effective desiccation, but also meets the growing demand for environmentally friendly farming practices.

The benefits of crop.zone go beyond compliance. As agriculture becomes increasingly focused on sustainable production, methods such as electric dessiccation offer growers a way to reduce their environmental footprint while maintaining or even improving crop quality and safety.

This approach ensures that potatoes remain undamaged and free of chemical residues, which is increasingly important to both processors and consumers who demand high-quality, residue-free produce.

As chemical desiccants for other crops become less or no longer viable, the need for innovative, sustainable desiccation methods increases. crop.zone’s electric desiccation technology offers professional growers a way to future-proof their operations while contributing to a more sustainable agricultural system. Moving to environmentally friendly technology is not just an option, but a necessity for potato growers and beyond who want to be competitive and innovative in producing safe and healthy food on healthy fields.

Minimising food waste from the field to the table (Farm to Fork)

From 29 September 2024, the ‘Too good for the bin!’ campaign week of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) will take place in Germany. There are similar campaigns in Austria, ), Switzerland, France, Italy, England, Spain, and Sweden for example.

It is good to know that yoghurt does not immediately become inedible after the best-before date and that seeing, smelling and tasting is the better choice. However, it is often enough to show respect for the vegetables and everything that goes into them: Labour, love, energy, carbon footprint (or whatever your favourite motivation is).

However, food does not just end up in the bin at the point of consumption. Many decisions for and supposedly in the consumer’s interest have already been made beforehand. Potatoes that are too big or too small or crooked carrots are not even sold in supermarkets (many shops in Switzerland, for example, show that there are other ways of doing things). Apples were and are also knocked off the trees or sorted out because they are not all the same size – the more sustainable consumer therefore now buys apples in bags per kg. Broccoli are fattened with lots of fertiliser, regardless of the weather and season, until they weigh exactly what the supermarket demands per piece and uniformly for everyone. This is harmful to the environment and, if worse luck has it, a lot of broccoli ends up in the biogas plant because the supermarket didn’t buy it in the first place. However, supermarket chains can use scales and digital tools to quickly change prices.

In all these cases, it makes sense to make a clear personal and social statement and call on supermarkets to stop making such questionable quality claims. In other cases, it is not the fault of the EU, but that of the packaging industry, which just wanted cucumbers to fit better in the crates.

This is why processes such as potato desiccation have been developed, which stop the growth of potatoes in the field depending on the weather, potato size, starch content and required delivery date for further processing. Twining due to recurring wetness and further growth of the formerly compact tuber is also prevented.  Hardly anyone likes waxy potato varieties, which tend to taste mealy due to a high starch content (too much sun for too long).

What used to be done with highly toxic chemicals (for the spraying farmer and the dog owner out for a walk, not for the potato eater) can now only be done less effectively with substances that need sunlight to be effective. However, this is not always sufficiently available at harvest time and certainly cannot be planned – especially not in times of climate change.

Or it is now being sicced completely without herbicides.

That’s why crop.zone has created an innovation with electrophysical desiccation, in which the cells in the potato haulm are destroyed without chemical herbicides to such an extent that the haulm dries out and the potatoes no longer grow – and are given a stable skin.

In this way, crop.zone makes a contribution to a safe and high-quality harvest and against food waste. An important step in the value chain from farm to fork (farm to fork).

Then it’s the consumers’ turn. They enjoy the potatoes – and the remaining potatoes are turned into a nice portion of roast potatoes. Because they are far too good for the bin. And if they were jacket potatoes, the loss through the peel is minimal.

Bon appétit…

The herbicide DCPA (also known as Dachtal) has so far mainly been used on vegetables such as broccoli and onions in the USA and elsewhere. It can cause damage even before birth, from which people suffer for the rest of their lives. There has been no such herbicide ban as an emergency procedure in the USA for 40 years. (EPA bans DCPA pesticide Dachtal weedkiller)

In the EU, the ban was 15 years faster in a regular process. The herbicide was no longer authorised here in 2009.

This means that pregnant agricultural workers in particular have not had to risk the lives of their children for 15 years.

It can therefore be said that even in a highly industrialised country with first-class science, the approval of a plant protection product is no guarantee that the plant protection products approved there are safe.

Those who take the precautionary principle seriously will recognise dangers earlier and ban many substances earlier for good rational and scientific reasons – and continue to use other substances responsibly.

The example also illustrates that importing food from other countries with lower standards is unfair and economically damaging for German/European farmers. Those who are allowed to use cheap and toxic herbicides do not have to price in more environmentally friendly and more expensive methods. This does not change the fact that this would make sense in many cases for environmental and health reasons and would save society as a whole a great deal of money. Citizens should actually be able to rely on the fact that the health risk of food for themselves, for the farmers and for the environment does not depend on the country of origin.

If other countries attach less importance to health, in some cases only import bans will help as a first step.

However, here in Germany and in the EU, we not only want to enjoy healthily grown food, but also affordable and readily available food from the EU and other countries.

That is why we in the EU and especially in Germany, and also with regard to the international export of technology, must constructively create new processes for better and more cost-effective crop protection. This is the only way that we can continue to provide safe crop protection in agriculture under increasingly uncertain weather conditions and work so economically that we can sell both the food and the crop protection technologies. If modern processes are used internationally, we can also import products that have been produced under good conditions at fair prices. At least then there will be no more dumping in terms of health and environmental standards.

We must actively utilise and expand this lead in responsible action in plant protection in order to generate benefits for everyone – not just for pregnant women who no longer have to put their children at risk. This means that the precautionary principle in the EU must be applied consistently and on a sound and comprehensive factual basis for all methods of plant protection. This has obviously worked with DCPA. It was not authorised as early as 2009. 

In the risk assessment of glyphosate, too, there are currently serious indications that the precautionary principle may not have played the role in the latest scientific and legal assessments that the EU legislator demanded and that corresponds to the facts of the case. The EU has also determined that the quality of the ecotoxicological data is insufficient for an appropriate assessment.

The EU must now continue to work on this consistently and responsibly. Only in this way can risks to humans and the environment be avoided against better judgement, in the knowledge of major gaps in knowledge and against the EU’s own standards.

Anyone who bans the very targeted use of insecticides in seed coating and pelleting for precautionary reasons must clearly analyse and weigh up whether the large-scale application of similar insecticides in the fields is really the more environmentally friendly method. There must always be a comparison of similar effective and available methods.

Emergency authorisations in individual EU countries, which turn out to be illegal years later but have given farmers in individual countries an advantage in a free market, are not an alternative. Fairness is only possible if there are better alternative methods and not if one simply hopes that it will work without the measure. If this were the case, farmers would do without a lot of crop protection.

The precautionary principle applies to the environment, to people’s health, but also to the economic viability of agriculture. There will always have to be trade-offs. However, legal and political decisions will have to shift if the risks are greater than previously estimated and technical alternatives become simpler and more efficient.

It is also not purposeful, for example, to simply return to cultivating and ploughing to reduce the use of glyphosate in cover crop and weed control, with all the undesirable side effects for humus, soil structure of many soils, soil life, erosion and energy consumption. Here, too, it is important to look ahead to new, better methods and not to return defensively to methods that have been replaced by glyphosate for good reasons.

Neither hoping for the future, nor leaving things out, nor going back to old methods are solutions. Realistic and effective methods to solve the real problems in the fields are needed.

crop.zone is doing its part and working on sustainable methods of crop management without chemical herbicides, including for cover crops and weeds (= wrong plant in the wrong place at the wrong time in too large a quantity), so that farmers and legislators have more innovative solutions at their disposal as economic alternatives. After all, crop protection and plant control always take place in the field and need technological progress there.

Prolonged rainfall alternating with high temperatures provides ideal growth conditions for plant pathogenic fungi – including the late blight pathogen P. infestans. The German Farmers’ Association and the Association of the German Potato Industry have warned that the risk of massive outbreaks of late blight is higher than it has been for a long time and could jeopardise the supply of potatoes and the potato value chain.

Along with rice, maize and wheat, the potato is now one of the world’s most important staple foods. In Germany, the area under potato cultivation was around 262,600 ha in 2023 (Federal Statistical Office, 2024).

An integrated approach to crop protection, including preventive strategies such as cultural practices and variety selection, and the use of fungicides in a spraying sequence adapted to forecasting systems, is essential to control the disease. In conventional agriculture, the range of fungicidal active ingredients is already severely restricted; mancozeb, for example, will no longer be registered after 2022, and other active ingredients are expected to be phased out over the next few years. In line with the strict requirements of organic farming, the only effective direct control, in addition to preventative measures, is copper preparations. Due to their potentially harmful effects on soil, soil organisms and water, the use of these agents has been restricted to 3 kg ha-1 of pure copper within the German growers’ associations and is repeatedly the subject of controversy. The search for environmentally friendly biological products to directly control late blight has been ongoing for many years.

However, the adaptable pathogen quickly develops resistance to fungicides, new strains become more aggressive in their spread and can overcome existing resistance genes in potato varieties. As a result, some of the most effective tools for managing late blight are being lost.

The high disease pressure caused by late blight in the 2024 season is a major challenge for growers. Forward-looking strategies to control Phytophthora require a combination of preventative measures such as monitoring and crop management, as well as effective fungicidal crop protection products and resistant potato varieties. Our growers are committed to using all the tools at their disposal to best protect their crops each season.

Glyphosate is a synthetic chemical. In its pure form, it consists of five elements: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus. The first four elements – carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen – are currently brought into the correct form using a great deal of fossil raw materials and energy, but can also be produced sustainably using renewable electricity from virtually unlimited raw materials.

The production of phosphorus is not only energy intensive, but also limited because phosphorus can only be mined in a few specific locations. The extraction of phosphorus poses significant problems:

This article shows just how devastating the current situation in Western Sahara is: Dispute over the status of Western Sahara.

After mining, the phosphate rock is crushed. To obtain the white phosphorus needed, the rock is heated to 1500 degrees Celsius together with coke and silicon dioxide. This process produces a considerable amount of carbon monoxide and consumes a lot of energy. The white phosphorus is then purified and can be processed further to produce glyphosate. 

Known phosphate reserves are estimated to last 100 to 300 years, although there are reports that the reserves could last as little as 80 years. Unlike other fossil resources such as coal and oil, which can be replaced by alternative energy sources, phosphorus is indispensable and irreplaceable as a nutrient for plants, an ingredient in animal feed, and a critical element for humans, particularly in bones.

Phosphate must be used sparingly. In addition, phosphate bound in the soil must be made available again. An important step towards better cycles and less use of phosphorus from deposits is the use of green fertilizers, which make phosphorus available again for animals and plants.