Research Ingnores What Is Most Important
By Ken Quandt, Regional Manager
 

According to an article I read at the Ohio State University Turf Field Day, a good deal of the research was directed toward dollar spot control. Accordingly, many of the attendees’ questions were about the same subject. The research that was discussed consisted of different fungicides at different rates and different timings of applications. They also studied fertility programs that used both water soluble and slow release synthetic fertilizers. They were examining ways to kill the pathogens and feed the plants with nutrients that were directly available to the plants, completely bypassing looking at ways to feed the beneficial microbes. That is almost always the approach used in typical university research programs. Research conducted by seven universities demonstrated that when Nature Safe is applied on a regular basis most plant diseases significantly decline and overall plant health increases. Dollar spot responds to Nature Safe even more than some of the other pathogens. Yet universities do not even acknowledge the correlation.

There are many reasons for the apparent lack of interest that we see in university research programs. The primary reason is that most of the research conducted at the university level is being paid for by grants from the chemical companies and they do not want to see any research done on methods that would reduce their sales. It is difficult to blame them for that. Their objective is to find compounds they can patent and make millions of dollars on in a few short years. That pays them back very handsomely for their research expenditures. There is an old saying that he who pays the fiddler gets to call the tune. In this case the chemical companies are paying the fiddler so they are obviously going to get to dictate what kind of research is being done.
The university research people themselves have been trained from the time they were in diapers to embrace the chemical approach. In their view, there is a chemical solution to every problem. As a result, most university research personnel have not been exposed to organics of any kind and they usually ignore them.

In Canada, things work a little differently. The Canadian government has effectively banned the sale of many turf chemicals. However, the government has sponsored many research projects that demonstrate the benefits of organic products for both turf and agriculture.

The question then is why don’t organic companies sponsor more university research to demonstrate the benefits of organics? Most organic companies are small and they just don’t have the funds or the desire to do much in the way of research. In some instances they also have doubts as to how well their products will compare in such field trials because they know that their products lack consistency.

Nature Safe has sponsored more university research than any other organic company, but the amount that we sponsor pales in comparison to the large chemical companies. Nature Safe’s products are always consistent and feed the microbes that compete with pathogens. Nature Safe has the highest level of digestible amino acids and feeds far better than any other organic product on the market.

We could spend a lot of money on research projects and discover that feeding a particular organism does great things for the plant, but naturally occurring elements or organisms cannot be patented. It would be like trying to patent air and then charging people to breathe. The bottom line is that we do not need to, nor could we afford to spend more money to confirm and reconfirm the benefits of using Nature Safe. All we have to do is ask the people who use Nature Safe regularly. Their numbers are growing every year and their voices are getting more and more difficult to ignore.