When Alberta seed grower and retailer Patrick Fabian first tried a biological seed treatment, he wasn’t expecting the results to be so dramatic. “We were approached to try this biological product, so we tested it side by side with synthetics,” he recalls. “The results were amazing.”
Fabian didn’t jump in blindly. Instead, he offered his customers a choice. “We laid it out for them—do you want synthetic, or do you want to try the biological? Here’s the good and bad of both,” he explains. Most of his clients that year decided to take the plunge and experiment with the biological option. The following season, nearly all of them came back with one request: “Whatever that stuff was that you put on our seed, we want that again. We’ve never seen our seed come out of the ground like that.”
That initial success led Fabian Seed Farms to dive deeper into biological treatments. Fabian’s farm has now been on a six-year journey of reducing synthetics. “We haven’t used an insecticide in six years. I won’t claim it’s just because of biology—it’s the full systems approach we’ve implemented. But the results speak for themselves,” he says. “We also haven’t used a fungicide in seven years, and we’re farming under irrigation.”
For Fabian, the concept of “regenerative agriculture” is still a bit murky. “What does that really mean?” he asks. “Most Canadians don’t have a clear understanding of it. At Fabian Seed Farms, we take a hybrid approach. If interventions are needed, we use them. But we’re actively working to reduce our reliance on synthetic inputs.”
The benefits have been undeniable. “By introducing biology and reducing synthetic fertilizers, we’ve improved crop health, increased profitability, and almost eliminated lodging and fungal disease,” he says. “We also measure plant health through sap analysis, making real-time adjustments with supplemental foliar products.”
But perhaps the most rewarding part of the transition has been the feedback from customers. “The greatest compliment I get is when farmers shake my hand and tell me how much our system has changed their operation,” Fabian shares. “One young farmer in Saskatoon told me he saved $75,000 in a single year—enough to take his family to Disneyland for the first time. You could’ve handed me a winning lottery ticket, and it wouldn’t have made me happier than hearing that.”
Despite the clear benefits, Fabian acknowledges that change isn’t always easy. “The biggest obstacle? Fear,” he says. “Farmers hear from their agronomists, ‘You have to put this on your seed, or you might lose your crop.’ But we shouldn’t be making decisions based on ‘what ifs.’”
That’s why, three years after offering both synthetic and biological seed treatments, Fabian made a bold decision. “We completely eliminated the synthetic option. Fabian Seed Farms now only offers biological seed treatments,” he states. “And guess what? We don’t miss it—and neither do our clients.”
There’s also a practical side to the shift. “With new regulations requiring inspections, compliance reports, and extra precautions for handling synthetic chemicals, we just don’t have those headaches anymore,” he explains. “If I spill a biological treatment on my hands, I wipe it off and move on. No hazard suits, no contamination worries.”
Perhaps most striking is the visible transformation of the land itself. “We deep-place biology into our soil every six or seven years using humic acid, fish hydrolysate, and a few other elements,” Fabian says. “One year, our agronomist walked through our field and kept looking down at her feet. She asked, ‘What’s wrong with your soil? It feels weird—spongy, almost like peat moss.’ I told her, ‘That’s how soil is supposed to feel.’”
