HGS Expands Modern Crop Inputs

Jan 14, 2026
By Farms.com

Company acquires Pharmgrade to strengthen microbial crop solutions

HGS BioScience has announced the acquisition of Pharmgrade, an Idaho-based company known for developing advanced microbial crop solutions. This move follows the successful merger of HGS BioScience and NutriAg and marks another important step in building a strong biological farming platform.

The acquisition brings new microbial expertise to HGS BioScience. Pharmgrade has over 30 years of experience in creating microbial consortium products. These products use helpful microorganisms that support plant growth, improve nutrient use, and strengthen crop health.

By adding Pharmgrade, HGS BioScience now offers a complete range of biological solutions. These include humates, plant extracts, bionutritionals, and microbial products. The company can combine these technologies to provide multiple benefits in a single product. Solutions can be delivered in liquid, powder, or granule forms, giving retailers and farmers flexible options.

HGS BioScience also strengthens its research and development capabilities through this partnership. The company combines field testing, agronomy research, manufacturing knowledge, and microbial science to develop reliable and proven solutions. This approach helps farmers choose products that show consistent results in real field conditions.

“Biologicals are growing rapidly, but the market remains fragmented and difficult to navigate – especially for retailers trying to determine what works, how to deploy it, and how to deliver consistent results,” said Mike Steffeck, CEO of HGS BioScience.

“By bringing together HGS, NutriAg, and now Pharmgrade, we are building something different: a single, integrated platform with the scale, science, and manufacturing depth to consistently deliver solutions that work in the field. Pharmgrade adds critical capabilities in microbials – one of the largest and fastest-growing segments of the market – and strengthens our ability to stack technologies and deliver multiple modes of action that drive real, measurable ROI for growers,” said Mike.

The company operates a vertically integrated manufacturing network across North America. This allows HGS BioScience to maintain strong quality standards, reliable supply, and cost-effective production. It also ensures timely delivery of products to retailers and growers.

Through strong partnerships with distributors and retailers in the United States, Canada, and international markets, HGS BioScience continues to expand its reach. The platform is designed to support modern farming needs, improve crop performance, and provide measurable returns for growers.

With this acquisition, HGS BioScience becomes one of the most comprehensive biological crop solution platforms in North America. The company aims to be a trusted long-term partner for retailers and growers seeking effective and sustainable farming tools.

Photo Credit: gettyimages-anna-tarazevich

Video: From Students to Solutions | On The Brink: Season 2, Episode 14

Ask Canada’s most decorated soybean breeder his favourite part of the job and he doesn’t name a single variety. He names the students.

Istvan Rajcan is a professor of soybean breeding and genetics in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph, where he has run the soybean breeding program for 28 and a half years. In that time he has developed 87 soybean cultivars, published 140 refereed papers and trained 51 graduate students. In 2025 he received the Public Sector Impact Award from the National Association for Plant Breeding.

He is also worried. In this episode he says Canada is at a crossroads, pointing to recent government cuts to plant breeding programs and to the facilities that support them. His prescription is structural. "Plant breeding funding formula has to be a long-term one," he says.

The formula he is defending is the public-private matching arrangement his program runs on. Private seed companies fund the work, provincial or federal money matches it, and the combined pool stretches each dollar further than either source could alone. At the National Association for Plant Breeding annual meeting in June, he says American public breeders were often surprised at how well that collaboration works in Canada.

He also describes how the people entering plant breeding have changed. His early graduate students came mostly from farms. More recently they include, in his words, "city kids who just became excited about genetics."

Topics covered:

Why public-private plant breeding funding in Canada needs a long-term

commitment rather than a larger one

How matching private seed company investment with provincial and federal

dollars multiplies research capacity

How the graduate student pipeline into plant breeding has shifted from

farm kids to city kids