A Q&A with regenerative agriculture thought leaders, Part 2 | Regen Rev 2022

For all you guys out there watching, welcome back and welcome back to our speakers from today's program. We're now going to do some group Q and A, and we're going to have it moderated by Dennis and Steve from Tanio Bio. Hopefully you guys were all able to see Steve's. Sorry, excuse me, Steve's presentation from earlier today. He is chief science officer at Tanio. And for those of you that weren't with us yesterday, Dennis is director of sales and technical support at Taneo biologicals. With over 25 years of experience in biological agriculture and turf management. Dennis is highly respected for his expertise in biologicals for both organic and conventional agriculture in a whole bunch of crops. So the pair are here to moderate the Q and A. I'm going to pass it over to them and I'm going to ask Dennis and Ted to behave themselves just a little bit. Okay?

Oh, good, I've got company. Ted, that's awesome. Well, I just want to first off, guys, thank you for a wonderful day. Thank you for a wonderful day of presentations and information. All well done. Great information. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Sarah, so much. You did an amazing job as our mc. Thank you, everybody, for joining and attending. We had a lot of fun. Yeah, I had a lot of fun.

A lot of great information here. And I think with that, I'll throw a question out, kind of like John did yesterday to the entire panel and have each one of you guys answer it is, what is the one tip that you would share with growers that are starting or furthering the regenerative process?

And John, you're right next to us. So we're going to go clockwise, and that's you.

All right. Well, that's definitely better than counterclockwise.

So I would say.

In my pathway.

And my experiences, folks that I've observed, folks that I've learned from, I think the most powerful thing you can do, the most valuable thing you can do, is find the people who have been successful at doing what you are attempting to do, rely on them for advice, rely on them for input. And it's important for any of us, no matter the work that we're engaged in, we need to be surrounded by supportive peers. And there are enough negatives coming in or potential negatives coming in from the community and the folks of the coffee shop and the folks in church who don't understand what we are doing, who don't have a qualified opinion about what we are doing and without. And so we need to counterbalance that constant stream of negativity coming in with positivity and we need to surround ourselves with that positivity. So I think the most important thing that people can do is identify and surround themselves with people who have been successful at what they're doing and get their input, use them as a peer group. Perfect. Thanks.

John. I think I've heard you in the past say the opposite of gravity is levity. Yeah, we've got to get a little bit of light and lift.

Yeah. Ted, why don't you go ahead and answer that if.

Well, I was gonna wait till you're ready.

Oh, sorry. You're next.

I'm next. Alright. The question was what tips or what was it?

Yeah. So what is the one tip that you would share with growers starting or furthering their regenerative process?

Well, with the farmers that I work with is read the instructions on the product labels. They don't always do that and they're there for a reason. So that's my perspective of that question because I'm dealing with growers that have problems. And well, the first thing is, well, did you read the instructions? So, and usually it's, well, I was told to do this. I don't care what you were told. What, what do the instructions say?

So, Ted, don't you know how this works? We only read instructions after it doesn't work.

Well, we're all males here. Yes, that's what my wife would say. You stinking males. You read the instructions after the fact.

Well, and I think you gave a good tip in your presentation today, Ted, that you talked about the biology being a living system to treat it with care. And you know, I thought that was a really, really good point that you brought up today. The understanding that they can't ride around on the dash of your pickup or in the back of your trap wagon in, you know, 112° Kansas or Nebraska or Washington or wherever we may be weather.

I mean, even before I started using AEA products, it was about six years ago, I drove into a organic farmer's barnyard, look at his setup, and do you know where he had all of his biological fertilizer? Out in the middle of his farm yard with no protection from the sun or the heat. And I thought, oh, okay, maybe that's all right. His explanation for when I said, well, don't you think these UV rays are kind of hard on this? Wow, these are blue plastic barrels. It's fine. I said, I just kind of left the conversation at that. And it was like, okay, so.

But if you know anybody, if you know Anybody else who's willing to just throw money away, I'll take it.

Exactly.

That was the thought going through my head was you're just throwing your money away. You're putting these products out on the field, and before you even put them in the mixing tank, they're dead.

So, yeah, and I think that's one big challenge that we have in regenerative agriculture is making sure that with all of these products that we get them in the soil as designed. I think that's critical to further your regenerative process is having that success. So I think that's a really, really good point.

All these products, they all have an expiration date, but you're speeding up that degradation if you are not following the instructions by leaving them out in the sun in the heat, letting them freeze. You know, the freezing temperatures aren't as critical as the heat in the sun.

Yeah. And I mean, when you said basically treat them like your seeds, if you're treating your seeds in a way, it's going to decrease their germination. Same thing's gonna happen these little babies. Think about it like your seeds and treat them that way. Now, I really like that.

Yeah. Nathan, what's your one tip?

Well, really, the one, but it's been said so often that it's not. Not a unique thought, is just trust the, you know, the bacterial microbial community. Trust the, you know, the community in general. Beyond that.

Right.

As John said, the other. The other people already know what they're doing.

Right.

It just takes a little bit of a leap of faith.

And.

But moving on from that, one of the things that I feel is critical to those farms that are successful or not, honestly, folks, it's marketing, right? It's being able to sell your product. We can all do amazing things. That amounts to a hill of beans. Like literally a hill of beans just sitting there if you can't sell it. And that's, you know, that's the important magical thing about being a farmer, in addition to all the other job descriptions, is it also ends up with marketing. And the difference between being able to sell, you know, a small amount of product for a really good price at the right time makes you a more successful farmer because you're there doing it again next year than somebody who can sell a phenomenal amount of something, you know, for a loss. And, you know, I think that luckily we have an amazing opportunity right now. You know, as Sarah was presenting and as I think we all know, you know, Americans still spend less on food than just about anybody anywhere, despite the, you know, complaints over rising food costs, like, is there anything more worth it? And you know, a large portion of the consumer base is saying, yeah, we'll pay that, and I'm comfortable with that. And I think that like, you can't be shy about jumping in there about making a better product and getting what it's worth. And you know, I think that that, that also means that a lot of us can farm fewer acres and just what a relief of stress that is to be able to, to market well so that you can farm in a sane way and provide hopefully then other opportunities for other people who are growing something also uniquely and profitably.

So are you, are you hearing from your growers that it's becoming easier to find a market for higher quality produce and whatever they're producing?

So it's, it's on all scales.

Right.

And I think that, you know, as Sarah was saying yesterday, that that middleman, that, that producer, the mill, the presser, the, you know, that's still the golden opportunity that, you know, look at the distribution of organic farms. When there's like a new proliferation of organic farms in an area, it's because somebody opened an organic mill there, you.

Know.

And.

So, I mean, short story, yes, absolutely. You know, there are new food brands, there are new anything from fiber to oil to, you know, to traditional grains or produce. But a lot of the most successful folks are using some alternative avenues. Right. It does take a bit of creativity.

So for anybody in the audience who's listening and you're looking for an opportunity and you have some abilities, make yourself that middleman, set it up, become that distribution, become a branch in that system so that people have more access. Farmers have a repository, a place to deposit this, this high quality material so that people can find it. Because sometimes it's just, it's hard to find in some markets. So I definitely appreciate that.

How about you, David?

Sorry, go ahead.

One more point.

With being organic, people think that that has a higher quality. No, no, it does not. It depends on, you know, what you're using, if you're giving the plant that you're growing, nutrition or not. For example, in my popcorn, my popcorn buyer, he's just amazed by the quality of my popcorn. But does he separate that and put it in a different bin? No, it gets dumped in with all the other organic producers that have inferior quality. And yeah, that's, that's very frustrating to me as a farmer. Yes, we do need those middle people that are willing to say, hey, I want this high density popcorn that Ted's growing. And I want to sell that to consumers. It really frustrating. It just gets blended in with all the other organic growers.

Good point, Cat. David, what's the one thing that you would share with growers? Either just getting started or continuing their process?

Great, Dennis.

Way to give me just one. So if I talk really fast, I could have three.

You only have a couple seconds here.

Go.

Okay, on to the next question.

Thanks, David. Good answer.

Well, number one, Dennis, is if you're in Kansas, be very selective what burritos you choose.

Well, that burrito still there. It hasn't digested, believe me.

All right, on a more serious note, Ted said, read the label. One of the things that the label says is apply and a certain rate and problems that growers find is apply. And then the other thing that I would throw out there as a tip of improving success is measure. Know what your actions do or don't do. Measure by SAP analysis. Measure by Haney analysis. Measure by whatever metric that your success is based on. Measure by whatever metric that is actually giving you more profit. If you don't measure, you'll be three years, five years down the road of this journey. And you're like, I don't. I don't think there's much difference. Like the apple grower that I worked with, like the very first grower that signed on with me, all 75 acres. And the reason was because he had some serious fear going on. He was losing blocks to fire blight. Well, three years later, he had no fire blight. And he forgot all about the statement that his apples weren't dropping as much because his brother and his father were concerned about the check that they were writing to aea. They were a small operation. They didn't have any way of measuring their success. And all the good stuff kind of just faded away. So measure in a way that you can quantify in dollars and cents so that when that slick salesman comes down the road and has the silver bullet, you remember what true success really is.

Write your book. Isn't that what we heard?

Yeah. So this kind of goes right into a question for Nathan. Is there any correlation to SAP analysis from the previous season? It can be carried on to the next season. And I'm assuming this is coming off that question of, you know, you've got two weeks time, by the time you get it, being able to apply, can you collect? I call it collecting data. Can that data be useful tool for the next year's foliar application?

Right.

Absolutely. You know, so long as the parameters make sense, from, from the perspective of how similar or dissimilar are the fields, the planting conditions. Obviously we're hoping for tracking the same crop, hopefully the same variety, but absolutely. Yes, yes, yes. We thoroughly expect to learn things every year that are going to be able to move forward in time.

Right.

To be predictive.

Yeah.

I mean, short answer for sure.

What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing and expecting different results. John, it looked like you were going to respond to what David had said. Did you have something that you wanted to add?

I wanted to ask you, David, to. In our presentation, we flew through really quickly and you didn't finish one of your thoughts on that. You started on the pecans. Can you tell us a bit about pecan quality differences with the nutritional profile or nutritional change just that you made? And I have something I want to build onto that, which is why I'm asking.

Yeah.

So again, going to. Measuring. Being able to measure what your.

What your.

What are the responses, whether the results, the conventional versus where just the AEA foliar was applied, not the additional potassium we looked at, there was a six point increase in the quality of the grade out, which was 62%, which is the highest that the packer had ever seen on pecans. So huge improvement in revenue. I mean, huge.

So just for clarification, what you're saying, David, is did he go from 68 to 62 to 68 or was 62 with the eight points in or with the six points in?

Yes, yes.

So a score of 62. For those of you not familiar with pecans, that means that 62% of the fresh weight into the processor was meat and the remainder was hull. And that's pretty significant. That means you have a really heavy nut and a really large nut in.

Proportion to the hull.

And that results in a difference of about $700 per acre to the grower. And that's the point that I wanted to make, is that when we talk about regenerative agriculture and facilitating change, Ted talked about his higher quality popcorn. What we as farmers need to figure out is what are the pieces that we get paid for for that higher quality. Now, perhaps Ted has a higher test weight or a higher oil content or whatever you may or may not being paid for those pieces. But many crops, many growers are paid for some quality parameters, perhaps even indirectly, but they're still compensated. So here's a quality parameter on pecans that the grower was actually being paid for. That's what we need to figure out.

Identifying what individuals place value on and then earning the income that you deserve for creating that value.

Well, and it even goes on. I mean, when we look at Steven Beerling's conversation yesterday about Bitter Pit, and when we start to look at that as a grower, because I know a lot of growers all the time that say, well, you know, I, I really can't get out there and spray calcium. But the idea behind it is you pick all that fruit, you grow all that fruit, you spend all the money to pack all that fruit, and then it gets so thrown away at the packing house because it ends up with bitter pit in the packing house. How can you afford not to do some of these things? Yeah, you know, we were talking.

Go ahead.

I have to throw a question back at you really quick. Do you believe that growers deserve to be paid more to produce higher quality?

Absolutely.

Steve, you agree with that?

Well, then is that a real question.

I'm sitting here thinking of? We're talking about the walnuts or we talk about cherries. All right, I have a reason.

I have a reason for that question. I'm now going to ask you the inverse. Do you believe farmers deserve to be paid less for producing junk?

Who? Ask.

Ted had brought up that example of organic is not organic. And Bruce used to call it organic. My neglect. And shouldn't organic by neglect get paid the same as an organic person, like for himself? Ted, that pays very close attention to popcorn and has his popcorn as very high quality. No, he should get compensated for that. So there should be a payment schedule. At least from where I'm coming from.

The amount of energy that the body can receive from that food should correlate with the amount that you're paying. I mean, there are foods that we've all eaten that extract energy from your body. That's the question.

Only because I asked the question today. Many farmers complain they're not being paid enough. And I would agree many farmers are not being paid well enough for the crop that they're producing. And the counterpoint to that is much of the stuff they're producing is junk. So I'll just leave that there. I didn't intend to derail the conversation.

Ted. I love popcorn. I'll pay you more for your popcorn.

Yeah, well, the problem is I'm a contract grower and yeah, they don't mind if I take a five gallon bucket, but I think they're gonna miss.

I think we need to visit Ted right now.

Some popcorn with five gallon buckets.

We need to do something. I'm actually considering growing it on an Open market, no contract, because my buyer is not renewing contracts. And he goes, it's really sad because you grow some really good popcorn, Ted. And he goes, they haven't got back to me yet. We're gonna think about growing it without a contract from our buyer. They're just a wholesale distributor, so they still want me to grow it. And they said, we're gonna roll the dice and try to market it and go through a different buyer. So that's still in conversation. But that gets my wheels turning, thinking, well, you guys can bag it for me. Maybe I can sell it online or something. But that. That's a whole nother. I mean, I do. I want to take on more. I mean, so.

Well.

And maybe we drag Sarah back into the conversation because she might have some perspective and some insights into developing some of that market as well.

I know.

I'll say.

I think one of my common pieces of advice is if you take the differential of what you could get paid on top of, you know, selling it at a contract to third party, you might be able to hire a whole other individual starting their own business, and you still make money.

Right.

You know, I think that's the real opportunities. You don't have to do it. All right? You just bring in a third. Your own third party.

My.

My organic popcorn. Popcorn has a test weight of 64. The last year's popcorn, the test weight average was 66 and a half. Good test weight. They haven't told me what the pop is. They do a pop test, and that's a whole different. They put it in so much ounces, and then they pop it tube, and that's what they figure out. But I'm guessing it has good pop, so.

So do you have something bad, Sarah?

You're gonna ask me the question again? I don't know. What was the question?

Sorry, we were just. We. We were discussing. So. So Ted brought up. He produces a much higher quality popcorn, and when he sells it, it's just going into the same bin is everything else. And just trying to start a discussion, open a discussion about the idea of how do we approach developing these markets. Nathan mentioned the idea of maybe it's worth it to bring somebody on, on your own that can help market some of that as a premium. What's your take on that?

Yeah, I mean, I certainly don't have the answer to that, but one of the case studies we've been looking at is for folks coming together, farmers coming together, and trying to find a project manager and investors to actually come in and build something in their neighborhood to feed their market. So whether it's a processing infrastructure, seed cleaning, or whatever that might be to help them keep it in a regenerative supply chain versus having it be fed in the commodity market or organic market, which is what we've seen them talk about as well.

I watched the YouTube session that John Kemp had with Rick Clark. You can get a regenerative label, but there's no need for it right now. And that's what Rick said, too. There is no need for that, to get that regenerative certification.

And a question that kind of came in, and I'll throw it out for anyone. Are we seeing any movements from governments, or is this primarily private that's driving this? Are there governments? Is the U.S. canada, Europe? Are we seeing that anywhere where it's being government driven, or do you think this is primarily private?

I'll go first. The only thing I see is consumer driven right now.

And I would add I've seen some farmer, some farmer, individual farmer driven, and then farmer groups working towards it, but, you know, all grassroots. So it's a lot of work to take on as a farmer, I would.

Say, in the US the, you know, the COVID crop initiative, it's been going on for, you know, a decade, is significant. That's.

That's really.

That's a huge thing. And I know that in Europe, they're maybe kind of approaching it from the opposite side of regulating, away from the ability of farmers to use certainly certain classes of pesticides and herbicides, and that's a different technique, but it's not really promoting regenerative agriculture. Yeah, no.

I don't know.

I don't know that we can really look to government in the near term.

No, we got one minute left.

We only have one minute left.

One minute left. Why don't we wrap up with. We'll start with you again, John. Is there any.

Do you want to do that?

Quick one. Maybe we have some time. So it's along the path of the question that we originally asked. Regenerative agriculture is a path. What is something that you learned during these last few days that has taken you farther down or further? I can never remember down that path.

Pass.

Okay, dad, pass.

All right, so that was a really good question to end on. Dennis, help us out here.

Well, I certainly learned a lot of interesting insect, plant, microbial communication stuff from you guys earlier today. You're always bringing some. Some interesting esoteric knowledge that certainly fleshed out the sides of the philosophy, if not, like, in those cases, a super practical step as to, like, what to do about regenerative agriculture. But that, you know, wild tobacco stuff, that was pretty fascinating.

It's incredible what plants and nature can do. It blows my mind.

Well, I take it as some of the stuff, John, you've talked about so much is the plant's ability. And as Steve said today, they can't move. Their ability to adapt and be able to protect themselves to all sorts of stresses within that environment are there. We just need to help that plant make sure they can express those things. And I, you know, and I. That was one of the things you were. That you've talked about a lot, John, over the years is letting these plants getting out of the way and letting these plants do what they're actually capable.

Of doing well, and what are they incapable of? I've heard John say, we don't know.

I'll add one thought. There's a comic that I shared a while ago that I really like a lot. Two trees with a person walking by. And one tree says to the other, do you suppose humans can communicate? And the other tree says, no, how can they possibly. They don't have roots.

I like it.

Well, maybe that's. That's a good way for us to end because we all know the foundation of these plants are down in line. That root system is one thing we've all learned over the last couple days.

Okay, well, thank you all so very much for everything you brought to today's program and to yesterday's program. So wonderful to have you all here with us and to share your experiences and insight. So thank you very much. Also would love to thank our audience out there all again for joining us at regen rev 2022. It truly has been a pleasure. We hope you've learned some great tips to inform your regenerative journey over the last two days. The Regen Rev team will be reaching out in the next 24 hours to collect your feedback from this event. So please keep an eye out for this communication and please be sure to respond to the survey so that we can make this event even better next year. We are soon headed to the Expo booths where you can glean even more information. So if you have any more questions, please be sure to contact the organizers of the event or join them in the booths in just a few minutes. Just to remind you, AEA Consultants can help you create your regen nutrition programs for large farms or give you a sample crop program for small operations. Combining biological and mineral nutrition products from AEA and Tania with regenerative practices. You can Contact Haeneo Biologicals for more information about getting started with biological inputs and you can sign up with Kind Harvest, the All in One Resource and Community for Regenerative Agriculture. So connect with your peers there and take courses and read exclusive content. You can also sign up for all of these operations newsletters to get notified when the recordings are available and follow regen rev on YouTube, Facebook link, LinkedIn and Twitter. We want to thank again our media partners for the event, Acres USA Regenerative Food Systems Investment and Regen Farming News. Please sign up for our partners newsletters as well and stay up to date with the latest regenerative news. And then we also have some great nonprofits here. So if you've enjoyed this event, please consider supporting these organizations and help the regenerate movement move forward. And we thank you all for attending the second Regen Rev event. We hope to see you soon and until then we wish you the best of luck on your regenerative journey.