And giving cereal crops a powerful push down the path from field to mill to our nation’s tables
Curtis Rainbolt, BASF technical service representative, is a middleman. Though the term sometimes carries a negative connotation, in the world of crop protection those middlemen are critical links between lab and field.
Researchers produce revolutionary solutions. Farmers and their advisors are experts at multiplying a handful of seeds into bushels of crop while navigating paper-thin margins. Each group has the end goal of keeping the world’s citizens well-fed, but like Apple and Android, they don’t necessarily speak the same language. That’s where Rainbolt comes in.
“As products come to market, I do a lot of the local fine tuning,” says the Boise, Idaho-based agronomist and weed scientist, whose work combines his passions for farming, science and problem solving. “I figure out how products will best work in the real world to solve the challenges growers face.
“I take what we learn and figure out a practical way to apply the solution.”
Factoring into that equation is economics—an element of farming to which Rainbolt is finely tuned having grown up on a central Texas dryland wheat farm.
“I remember every bushel counting toward it being a profitable year. My dad did everything in his power to protect yields. There were so many stressful years. Then, on years when the weather would cooperate and the crop looked good, the whole mood would change,” Rainbolt says.
Tipping the scale in the favor of success for farmers like his father—and in favor of more joyful moods for more farmers more often—continues to drive his work.
“With margins what they are, I know producers can’t spend an unlimited amount trying to max out yield. The solutions we bring to them not only have to work, they need to have a good return on investment. Provide a good value,” he says.
Solutions from old to new
Troubleshooting is another satisfying part of Rainbolt’s job.
“If a grower or crop advisor is facing a tough problem, I work with them to put together a solution. The answer may be using one of our products, changing their practices or even using a competitor’s product. In the end, I just want the grower to be successful,” Rainbolt says.
Beyond providing support for current products, Rainbolt works with university and private researchers helping to design, place and implement field trials for new products. And trials to continue tweaking already available products.
“In graduate school I worked on Clearfield herbicide technologies, helping bring producers a solution for the tough small grain problems of goat grass and downy brome. Almost 20 years later, it’s still an effective tool and BASF is constantly looking at products it can be teamed with and ways it can be used to improve what it has to offer producers,” Rainbolt says. “Just because something is old doesn’t mean we can’t find ways to improve it and keep it working.”
That’s a sentiment to which most farmers can relate.
Then there’s the new.
While as few and far between as those years when rains come at exactly the right time and in exactly the right amount, one of the most rewarding parts of Rainbolt’s job is having a new product to offer.
“It’s really satisfying and exciting when you find a solution to something that’s hurting a grower’s bottom line,” Rainbolt says.
Rainbolt doesn’t always have an answer for growers’ problems, and developing new products is a long and frustrating process. It takes seven to 10 years to get a product from early development to a grower’s hands.
Many chemistries and molecules that start the journey fail to make the end. In his 13 years with BASF, Rainbolt has only seen the introduction of a small handful of novel products across a number of crops. Which is why 2021 will be an exciting year for him.
“Wireworms have been devastating for growers in my area,” he says. Options have long been limited with solutions only mitigating, not controlling the problem.
For the 2021 growing season, Rainbolt is on schedule to be able to offer the cereal grain growers of his region a new seed treatment from BASF. The product kills wireworms, instead of just repelling them as other products have done in the past. This innovative new chemistry, Teraxxa Insecticide Seed Treatment, will protect the current crop and decrease wireworm populations for ongoing benefit.
“It’s really fun to bring something to the grower that can fix a problem they’re struggling with,” Rainbolt says. “Growers have a lot of things to deal with. The ability to take one of those problems off their plate is pretty satisfying.”
The waiting can be hard. He and others have spent the past three years conducting trials in the Pacific Northwest to figure out the most effective way to use the novel product. Farmer cooperators or those who have seen results at field days are anxious to put the product to work in their fields.
“They see what it does and start asking when they can get it,” Rainbolt says. It’s tough to wait for due diligence to be done when they have a pest that can, in extreme cases, cut yields by 50% in portions of infested fields and they see a product that works, he says. And, to add to the urgency, the pests tend to be worst where there’s more moisture—the traditionally highest yielding portions of the field.
“Developing products is a long process fraught with disappointments. Many don’t make it to market. Some work better than expected. Some don’t work as well as you’d hoped. In the end, it’s a good feeling to bring something that’s going to be valuable to the grower,” Rainbolt says.
“No matter if it’s a new product or a new use for an old product, I think back to the family wheat farm and ask myself, ‘Would I recommend this to my dad?’ The answer to that question helps me gauge the value of what I’m bringing our farmers.”
Martha Mintz can be reached at [email protected].
