Why More Fertilizer Isn’t Fixing North Carolina’s Fields
By Michelle Fiscus, Senior VP & Chief Communications Officer
In some North Carolina fields, water no longer soaks into the soil the way it should. Instead, it runs off—an early signal that something deeper is breaking down beneath the surface. Crops still emerge. Fertilizer is still applied. But the system that supports both is starting to fail.
“At its core, multiple subsystems fail at once,” explains Dr. Rafael Loureiro, assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Winston-Salem State University. “Physical structure collapses, organic matter declines, and biological diversity is reduced. The result is weaker nutrient cycling and a root zone that is less supportive of plant growth.”
For decades, the default response has been to add more—more nitrogen, more phosphorus, more inputs aimed at correcting what looks like a chemical imbalance. That assumption is where the problem begins.
“That it is mainly a chemistry problem that can be fixed with inputs,” says co-investigator Luke Concollato, “is the biggest misconception.”
“Low nitrogen and phosphorus is remedied with synthetic fertilizers,” he continues. “But the real problem is structural and biological.”
Plants need these critical nutrients—but they must be in an available form. That requires soil that can move water, hold air, cycle carbon, protect roots, and support the organisms that unlock and shuttle nutrients.
“Even with essential plant nutrients present, crops can perform poorly if the physical structure and microbial processes that move and convert nutrients are weak,” Concollato says.
Loureiro’s team is working to rebuild that system from the ground up, developing a biological additive designed to restore microbial function in degraded soils. The goal isn’t to replace fertilizers—but to make them work as intended by reactivating the living processes that sustain soil over time.
“Microorganisms are the metabolic engine of soil,” Loureiro says. “They determine whether nutrients stay available to plants or are lost.”
The challenge isn’t proving that biology matters. It’s proving that it works consistently.
“What’s surprised us most is how unpredictable the response is,” Concollato says. “That unpredictability is exactly why farmers don’t adopt at scale.”
For a farmer making planting decisions, that uncertainty carries real financial risk.
“If you can’t tell someone with reasonable confidence what they’ll get back and when, the economic case falls apart,” he says. “It’s not that microbial restoration doesn’t work. It’s that we can’t yet predict where and when it will work.”
That prediction gap—not performance—is the barrier.
Closing it is now the focus of the work. And it’s where NCInnovation comes in.
Through non-dilutive funding, NCInnovation is pushing the project out of controlled environments and into conditions that actually matter—greenhouse trials at NC State’s Phytotron and field trials across North Carolina. This is where the work is tested against real variability: soil types, weather patterns, and farm operations.
It’s also where ideas either hold up—or don’t.
“The funding allows us to expand infrastructure, build partnerships with local farmers, and move from lab studies to field trials,” Loureiro says.
Those trials are designed to answer the only questions that matter: Can it perform consistently across different soils? Does it integrate into existing farming practices? Does it deliver a measurable return?
For co-investigator Chad Vanden Bosch, the answer has to be practical.
“Success would look like improving yields while maintaining—or ideally reducing—fertilizer application rates,” he says. “It means soils that hold moisture better, crops that are more resilient to stress, and ultimately higher profitability.”
And it has to fit within the way farmers already operate.
“The advantage of a biofertilizer additive is that it fits into what farmers are already doing,” Vanden Bosch explains. “It can be applied using the same equipment, at the same time, with no extra passes and minimal added risk.”
That lowers the barrier to entry. Farmers can test it on a portion of their land, evaluate results, and expand if it delivers.
“Budgets are tight,” he says. “The product has to reliably improve yields and profitability without adding complexity.”
At Winston-Salem State, the work is also shaping the next generation of scientists. Students are involved across the pipeline—from controlled experiments to field validation—gaining experience in data-driven research and real-world problem solving.
Because that’s what this ultimately comes down to:
Not whether soil biology can be restored—but whether it can be restored reliably enough for a farmer to bet a season on it.
If the answer becomes yes, the impact extends far beyond a single field. It changes how soil is managed, how inputs are used, and how resilient farms can be across North Carolina.