Advancing Eco Agriculture CEO Jason Hobson discusses agronomic discoveries and grower successes

Hi friends, this is John and this is the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast. Thanks for coming back. This is the place where we talk about the agronomic science and the cultural management practices that regenerate plant health, soil health and public health. In this episode I have a guest who I've had the very good fortune of spending a lot of time with and learning about regenerative agriculture science together over the last decade. Jason Hobson, the CEO of Advancing Eco Agriculture. Jason and I worked together in consulting and agronomy work for the last 11 years and we've had lots of adventures together. Jason, thanks for joining me here.

Thanks John, thanks for having me. It's great to have a chance to come on the show.

Jason, can you provide a little bit of context for our listeners? Your background that brought you to agriculture and then to your work with AEA and the scope of your work with AEA E.A.

Sure. Well, I, I guess my journey in agriculture started when I was in college. I grew up in the suburbs of Indianapolis. Not anything to do with agriculture. My parents were teachers. My grandparents on both sides had all grown up on farms in Indiana here, but they moved to towns at various points right in the last 50 years or so and, and got jobs and things like that in, in town. And my parents, you know, were teachers in Indianapolis area. I was at Indiana University studying religion. I was studying ethics, was planning to go to Harvard. I was, I was going to go to Harvard and get a PhD in ethics and had everything set to go to there. And in the fall of my senior year of college somebody handed me a Wendell Berry book. I read that book and read everything else he wrote and decided I needed to, you know, find a way to get into agriculture. And working in ag for the last 25 years it seems like that, that calling to the land and to farming is in so many people at a almost, I'd say genetic level. It reaches out and grabs people from in various places and various points in their lives and kind of pulls them into it almost unwittingly. And that happened to me at that point. So instead of going to Harvard, I got a job at a CSA and Terre Haute, Indiana growing vegetables. Then proceeded to figure out how to be more involved in agriculture for the next 10 years or so. Had various CSAs that we ran with my family, did things like horse drawn agriculture, horse logging, various other things. I ran a construction company for several years that specialized in timber frame building and then I decided to take a job in a grazing dairy operation in Pennsylvania which then led to a Job managing a dairy here in Indianapolis and did that for about three years and was fired from that position in 2010. One of the reasons I got fired was trying to implement some ideas that I had learned from Gary Zimmer at Midwestern BioAg. So after I was let go, I went to Gary and said, hey, you guys got me fired. Would you mind if I could train as a consultant? And Gary was gracious enough to bring me into the consultant training program for Midwestern BioAg and spent, you know, three or four days at Gary's farm in Wisconsin drinking from the fire hose, trying to take as many notes as possible and catch up to as many of the concepts he was. He was laying out. I think it was the last day of that. I was talking to Gary. He was like, you need to go check out this kid in Ohio named John. He was doing some crazy stuff with liquid fertilizer. You might get along with him. And that was October of 2010. So November. I drove over to meet you in about an 8 by 8 office with a fax machine and a notepad. And still our AR manager, Diane, as your assistant, you were shipping stuff out of your dad's driveway. And things seemed a little bit brand new with all of that. But something in the dream that you talked about as far as changing agriculture and what you believe that the products that you were building could do and what they had done already in some of the trial situations that you had conducted in the last year or so before that caught my attention and so decided to start working with you. And 11 years later, and going from company with just a few employees to over 40 and business in all 50 states, plus a couple other countries, it's been. It's been a heck of a ride.

It's certainly been a lot of fun. So when you think back to that shift, reading Wendell Berry's books, what was it when you think about studying ethics versus agriculture, where's the bridge between those two? And I guess really my question is, what was it in Wendell's writings that really caught your attention? What was it that was really appealing to you?

Well, a couple things. I think it was a very short step from ethics to that because I was looking at social movements, Catholic social movements, very various stages over the last couple hundred years, and being able to understand why people are making decisions and what's motivating them. A lot of Wendell Berry's writings are about decisions, decisions that are made for good reasons that turn out well and for maybe not so good reasons, maybe decisions made for good reasons. That don't turn out well. I think the amazing thing about Wendell Berry is being able to read his essays and his fiction and his poetry and seeing the same themes woven through all three of those genres and be able to tie those together. And so hearing him describe the degradation of farming communities in factual detail in the nonfiction books like the Unsettling of America and detailing the impact of the big ag movements of the late 60s and 70s and what that did to family farms in the Midwest, especially in Kentucky and Indiana and Ohio. And then seeing that chronicled through the characters that he writes about in his fiction and seeing those facts kind of turned into stories that move through generations that are inhabiting the fictional kind of landscape that he created. So seeing that, seeing the version of that that happened around here to my family when they moved off farms and moved into town and got jobs because farming wasn't profitable, you know, on the marginal land around here, you know, seeing things like the still five foot deep gullies, you know, that, that are in our farm now that were created in the 20s and 30s and people plowing hillsides for corn, you know, being. And seeing those, those scars that are left all over the landscape here in southern Indiana, it was kind of being able to, to see how the stories that he was talking about and the changes in agriculture had in a sense, led me in my life to be where I was to be. You know, it was a rural driven community here in Indiana that has become, you know, more a suburban community because, you know, farming was difficult here and we didn't have the tools and the understanding to be able to make it profitable. You know, like I said, trying to plant corn on steep hillsides within topsoil, you know, it's not a, not a recipe for sustainable agriculture and agriculture that thrives over time. And so I think once I was able to see that and it helped me to want to, I think, become more rooted in my own place here. You know, I'm the eighth generation on both sides of my mom's family from Bloomington area. You know, that the Duke county is, that are east and west of Monroe county, where Bloomington is. You know, we had family in this area as far back as the 1840s and probably even before that. So, you know, that reading him helped me to understand how important it is for me to be here and be from here. And, you know, that led to several decisions in my life as far as, you know, to not move away to somewhere else and go to grad school and also to want to kind of honor that history that I have here, you know, and raise my family and in the same place.

Jason, when you think about your pathway, the transition that you made with the brief connection with Midwestern BioAg and then our work together for the last decade, I really want to get your perspective on how is our approach at advancing eco agriculture. How is our approach to nutrition management and crop management perhaps different from other perspectives? And of course, there's a lot of overlap with other agronomists and other approaches in the regenerative agriculture space. So there are differences between regenerative agriculture and kind of the mainstream agriculture approach, if you will. But then there's also nuance even within the regenerative agriculture community. What are the things that you have observed in our last decade of working together where we have learned new insights that have led to a very different approach to agriculture than what others might be familiar with?

Sure. I think looking back at that time, the concepts that you and I both learned from gary at Midwestern BioAg and, and others that were the kind of groundbreakers, you know, of this movement, I think it was a great foundation. Looking at Gary taking essentially Neil Kinsey's, which was a offshoot of Albrecht. Right. Taking that look at soil and then adding the biology component to it and adding some of the focus on trace minerals and calcium and things like that were much not a part of conventional agriculture and conventional agronomy. Right. In the last 50 years. And then looking at a biological component and looking at different cultural practices that impact the biology and how to change that, and tillage and adapting different machinery to be able to plant in heavy trash and things that he's done and things that he emphasizes, you know, that was a great foundation. I think that what we do builds on that foundation, but also goes in, in several new and important directions. Two biggest areas that I feel like that we've been able to make innovations are, number one, being able to manipulate biology, being able to understand it, being able to manipulate it and create applications that do different jobs. So we can reduce sodium, we can increase phosphorus solubility, we can create additional nitrogen, and we can also reduce the impact of residual toxins and chemicals that are in the soil. And we could do those almost at will when the situation calls for it. We're not just out there, quote, unquote, building biology as a general goal. And we're also, I think, not just looking at a simple, you know, single species type solution where we're using a biological product to take the place of a chemical product. You know, it still has that Kind of point and shoot mindset of a single action product to do a single goal. What we do is much bigger than that. And understanding how to foster and guide biological communities to accomplish certain, certain goals for a grower, I think is something that we do very well in a lot of ways is more sophisticated and effective than other approaches that are out there. The second key piece I feel like is understanding how to read and build programs according to what crops need during the season. And this is the use of SAP analysis becomes key here. And obviously we were the first people to really popularize and really bring that technology to fruition here in the U.S. and you know, over the last, I guess, almost eight years now, we've been, we've been doing SAP analysis. That history and experience has given us the ability to very quickly understand what's going on with the crop, almost no matter what crop it is, in any area, any growing region, and be able to create a nutritional program that is tailored exactly to what that crop needs in that situation.

What have been some of the highlights for you in the last decade or so, working with lots of different crops in different regions? What have been some of the experiences that really stood out for you?

Wow. I think we get used to hearing all of the quote unquote miracle stories at aea. Things happen that are unusual so frequently. I think going back to what I was just saying before about understanding what's happening in plants, this wasn't a success in the field because we didn't have a chance to pursue it as much as it was just an aha moment to see what the value of the technology was. But I think looking at citrus in SAP analysis and being able to see those first tests and see calcium deficiencies and issues with calcium uptake that were not showing up on traditional tissue tests, they were showing up very clearly in SAP analysis that were able to pinpoint what was happening with the very devastating disease of citrus greening and being able to look at what trees were healthier versus what trees were more affected based off of the nutritional profile with a great deal of accuracy. So that was a huge eye opener and that was very early in our SAP analysis experience in 2013 and 2014. As far as in the field successes, this has been on our site and years in the past. But, but the changes that we saw in our first block we worked at, at my code makes farm back in Oregon starting in 2011 and 12, and being able to take that from the worst performing block to the best performing, second best performing block he had in just Over a two year period. And seeing firsthand the changes in those trees was pretty amazing. More recently, I feel like the success we've been able to have on apples in Washington over the last three years, you know, Stephen Bearlink on his farm, obviously he's done a lot by taking our ideas and our programs and adding his own twist to that. And he's made a lot of advances on his own. But I think it's a very fun thing to see where he's been able to take, you know, our, our example and in our way of doing things and create a huge amount of growth and success on his farm as far as being able to have the quality and the production he has there. I think some of the other interesting, interesting developments, you know, last year, our work in, in cotton in New Mexico with James Johnson being able to cut out the pgr, cut out the insecticides and other pesticides, reduce nitrogen dramatically and still increase yields by, you know, a substantial amount. There's a huge potential that we have for being able to work with, with growers in those regions on those kind of crops. And so James was able to show us that.

What about agronomic highlights? One of the key pieces that I believe is that the foundation of our success is our continued learning and willingness to challenge what we think to be true. So what were some of the experiences that you've had over the last decade where we thought something was a certain way and then we discovered that it wasn't?

I mean, I recall learning that our trace mineral products weren't nearly as effective as we thought they were when we started using SAP analysis and having to reformulate those lines that and eventually turned into the rebound line and just really seeing what a tool that was for gauging the effectiveness of nutritional materials. That was definitely a big learning curve for us when we saw started to see those trends or did not see the movement the plants that we thought we were able to create. I think another key thing was talking about apples again was realizing the key calcium potassium relationship. We knew that Bitter Pit was calcium driven. We weren't as fully aware that it was also potassium driven as far as potassium blocking calcium from getting into the trees. And I know you wrote some papers and articles on that even before a lot of universities were talking about that now and it's pretty commonplace now to talk about potassium and calcium in honeycomb apples with Bitter Pit. But I think we saw that first because of the SAP analysis and we were pushing calcium. But when the trees are so full of potassium pushing all the Calcium in the world is not going to be able to move the levels to where they need to be. And it was the having the SAP analysis that showed us that particular relationship and allowed us to focus on managing potassium, both by reducing it and not applying it when it's, when it's not needed, and also by providing the trace minerals like manganese that are necessary for proper potassium regulation in the trees.

When you were speaking about apples just now, there's this phrase, this conversation that keeps reoccurring within our team here at AEA that is something along the lines of if someone sat down and deliberately put together an agronomy management system to create and to design some of the problems that these crops experience, they couldn't possibly design something better than the current agronomic management systems that are in widespread use. I know that we say that with an element of facetiousness, and yet there's entirely too much truth in that to be comfortable. Can you share some of your observations and experiences of where you've observed crops or management practices that were the direct antithesis of what was needed to produce a really healthy crop?

Sure, yeah. I think apples are a big example and this is something that I want to make these criticisms or observations from the perspective of understanding that farmers are trying to make the best decisions they can on a daily basis. And a lot of times, you know, the information that they're coming across that they're reading, that they're being things that are being told by agronomists, by consultants, by university personnel, by salesmen from retailers, things like that, they're following the best advice they can get. It's just they're not hearing the right information or hearing the right perspective. And so I don't want to default, you know, growers as much as be able to just call out the practices that I think, and I've seen be be detrimental. And I think on, on apples, going back to those key nutrient management pieces of potassium and calcium, of understanding when and how to use potassium is hugely important from our perspective. Potassium isn't needed and generally until well into fruit fill on most varieties of most soils. But a lot of programs front load large amounts of potassium in the fall, in the spring, to the detriment of the ability of those trees to pull up calcium, to create large, high quality fruit, and also to meet the nutritional needs of the trees that allow for continual production year on year without falling into biannual bearing cycles. Especially when you get into hard to manage varieties like honeycrisp, where there's also Heavy pruning. So you're restricting the photosynthetic capacity of the tree as well as feeding out of balance mineral programs. It really results in trees that struggle to produce a lot of high quality fruit, that struggle to maintain productivity and a long healthy lifespan. So I think that even going into techniques of deficit irrigation and using a lot of calcium chloride because it's cheap as a calcium source, which only further impacts the, the canopy of the tree and retards its ability to undergo photosynthesis and produce a lot of energy. So, you know, it's just this negative cycle that keeps kind of building upon itself with these trees. You know, I think citrus is another one. Obviously greening has made a huge impact on the citrus industry in Florida. But those trees, before the bacteria showed up, you know, were in rough shape as well from again, too much focus on nitrogen and potassium, not enough on trace minerals and calcium. Overuse of herbicides and pesticides that reduce soil biology and created in a sense, an opening for a disease organism to gain a foothold in those trees. And the trees don't have the energy or strength to be able to fight it off. I think that extends to. I mentioned cotton before too, and cotton as well. It's a plant that is managed. I've heard you describe it as having both pedals jammed to the floor at the same time, both with the accelerator and the brake. And that's pretty accurate because they're feeding tons of nitrogen which causes the plant to grow. And then they don't want it, they don't want it to grow. So they, they use the, the PGRs to put the brakes on the growth, which then sends the plant into kind of a shock cycle, you know, that does in, in some ways create some forced reproduction, you know, but then there's not the nutritional support underneath that to be able to, you know, allow the plant to feel like it can, it can successfully undergo that reproduction cycle. So then it, it really stretches out more in response to that and creates, you know, tolerant nodes and weak cells that are susceptible to insects and disease. So more chemicals have to be applied to control the insects and disease. And at the end of the season, bowl openers and desiccants have to be applied to be able to get the bowls to open and the crop to be harvestable. And it really is working against the natural tendencies of that plant. And I think that that's an extreme example, but those things happen a lot in most cropping systems where the management decisions and the growers are making are working against nature. Right and we talked for a long time about working with nature versus working against nature. And to be able to understand what a plant needs and when it needs it as far as nutrition and be able to support that and provide those things in the right timing are some of the key things that we talk about. And some of the advances and successes we've had are just because of changing up of timing. Like I mentioned with potassium, we don't need potassium in March and April on the majority of crops. We really need it in July, August and September. And so being able to, you know, to change management programs to account for that could make some big differences pretty quickly.

I think many of the challenges with nutrient mismanagement, or in the case of cotton, of driving with both the accelerator and the brake jammed all the way to the ground, which is a great analogy for what is happening with those systems. The challenge is not that farmers aren't attempting to make good decisions or that they're getting wrong information. It is that many times the decision making framework is, rather than looking at the entire system and all the pieces that are integrated into the entire system, we're looking for specific point solutions. So back in the beginning, I'm sure that there was a problem that resulted in the point solution for a specific problem on cotton was increased applications of nitrogen. Well, that then creates another set of problems for which the solution is a PGR application. It's very similar to someone who gets a drug prescription and they're on a drug for a while and then they develop another symptom, another problem. Now they need to have another drug to treat the symptoms or the effects of the first drug. And that's in many ways where we've arrived in agriculture. And I recall one conversation when you had first started working with some apples in Washington, there were concerns about fruit drop. Late season fruit drop just before harvest as a result of high levels of abscisic acid. Yet the challenges with fruit drop were actually being created by the very practices and products that farmers were using. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah, that was going back to the honeycrisp management. But you're exactly right on the kind of layering of silver bullet solutions, which is a lot of what, agronomy and what is pushed in ag retail. Exactly right. Focusing on a single problem with a single point solution that does not account for any of the effects that are caused by that and does not account for how those particular applications affect the entire system, you know, or really how they would optimally incorporate it into that, into that system. That's not to say that some of these things can't be tools that, you know, are effective and used well, but just it's not, they're not thought of that way. It's much more focused on, on short term versus systemic or holistic or long term thinking. And part of what we do, I think is being able to unwind, you know, some of those and under help growers to understand which management practices are, are helpful and which, which can stay and, and which need to be let go of because they're not, they're not really making a difference or they're making a negative difference. I'll get back to your question on the apples in a second. But just thinking about a grower that we were working with, just starting work with a couple of years ago, and they were spending several hundred thousand dollars a year on a potassium product, high quality dry potassium product, looking at their SAP analysis. When they were applying it, they didn't need it, their potassium was good in the trees, adequate levels or more than adequate levels. And they're making very expensive applications and actually weren't seeing a big bump in their potassium levels in the trees. So they were really, you know, throwing a lot of money in a sense onto the ground and not seeing a lot of benefit from it. And we were able to help them take that money and put it towards the calcium and trace minerals and biology that made a big difference in the next season on how those trees performed. And a similar situation in the grower you were talking about earlier is, you know, looking to retard growth in honeycrisp. All right, because they don't want a lot of growth, a lot of vigor because, you know, that pulls in a sense, calcium away from, you know, the fruit. And so the idea is to retard the growth past the, the fruiting spur and be able to concentrate the nutrient flow into the fruit. Which is logical, right? It makes sense. You know, it's just that that's accomplished through pretty drastic measures of holding back water and very arid environments for long periods of time and applications of things like captisic acid, which is the very compound in trees that causes fruit drop. Both those things together on this particular farm was resulting in pretty high percentage of late season fruit drop on the honeycrisp. And when you're in that situation and you're, you've been making these decisions and listening to what people have been telling you, you know, it can make sense from, from that particular perspective of walking into the farm, you know, from the outside, just Being able to listen, you know, with in a sense fresh ears to what was going on, you know, it was like, okay, you're holding back water from the trees which is going to want to make them drop fruit. Especially you know, in the climate, you know, in this area where it's hot and very dry and you're applying a hormone compound that will also encourage trees to drop fruit. And your little, you know, surprised that there's fruit drop happening, that this problem, you know, is occurring within a certain number of weeks after the application of the abscisic acid. It's really kind of like I felt like that was they were just down in a dead end street, you know, and they had been making all these turns following directions, you know, that were being given to them and they ended up just smacking the middle of a dead end street. And we're wondering why, you know, how they got there when from stepping back and looking at it from a bit of a different vantage point, it was very easy, you know, very easy to see why they were. But in that spot and having to undo that entire system, you know, where you know, the problems, not the irrigation practices or the hormone applications, it's really backing up to what are the nutrient applications that are leading those trees to be in the situation where they have to be deficit irrigated and have hormone supplies to stop them from growing. It's really looking for the root cause of it, right? And that's also something that we do really, really well is to, to not get caught up in chasing symptoms, but really look for the root causes and situations that when we change those, the series of problems, whatever they are, start to unravel. The crops move into a situation where they're creating their own resiliency and robustness that can resist whatever the issue of the day is, right? If it's, if it's too wet of a year or two, dry of a year, or if there's, you know, an insect problem that happens to show up at part of the crop, you know, it's just it when the biology is right, when nutrition is right, and when the system is working, you know, like it should, don't become large economically damaging issues that they used to.

It's a really interesting conversation for us to have advising a different approach to nutrition management. Because what happens is we end up with this series of self inflicted wounds as a result of incorrect information or simply maybe the right information misapplied or as a result of these, as you described it, layered silver bullet solutions. And then when you identify the Root cause and you start making recommendations for how to change the system. They appear to be completely radical to say, okay, let's go back to the cotton example. Okay, we need to, rather than driving with both the accelerator and the brake to the floor using both high rates of nitrogen and PGRs, let's cut out the PBRs, let's reduce nitrogen applications by 60 or 70%. That's just two facets. That's not even talking about how additional recommendations for addressing biology and so forth. So those types of recommendations appear to be really radical. They require some comfort with taking a completely different perspective and completely different approach often. Then what happens? We've gained a reputation in this regenerative agriculture space for producing some pretty extraordinary yield outcomes. Like the cotton example that you talked about with James Johnson of producing. What have been the numbers for this last year? 40% to 70% on the different varieties. I think increase yields over regional averages. And so when you look at taking this very different approach to very different types of outcomes, I've made the comment in the past that many of us don't even know what really healthy plants actually look like anymore. We don't have a good perspective anymore of what is really possible because we have developed such a warped approach. And so I'd love to get your perspective on what really is possible. Where are the opportunities that we're really missing?

I think opportunities abound in every region, in every crop type in the US and beyond. You know, I've seen, I think starting from what's possible to not do, it's possible to dramatically reduce the nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus applications that are routinely made all across the country that are in a sense the root of plant centered issues that surround insect and disease problems that end up polluting waterways in Chesapeake Bay and the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico and the west coast waterways. So being able to reduce those applications to only what's really necessary, necessary. Using plan SAP analysis and their technology, I think it's possible to dramatically reduce the amount of crop control pesticides, insecticides that are applied on a yearly basis. The cotton is a great example. I think there's not a crop that we've worked in that I can think of right now where we haven't been able to significantly reduce those kind of applications. When the grower feels ready. Right. We don't do that right from the start. We don't come out and try to pull it, pull the tablecloth out from under the place settings in the first year. And we have to work with the grower I think we do a good job of that, working with the grower to have them feel confident that they can make those kind of changes. Sometimes we get thrown for a loop when the grower does it without telling us, but that's always a fun surprise later in the year. Like, yeah, I haven't put on insectsite all year. I didn't tell you guys. I wanted to see how it worked. But I think that's great to see that they have confidence in what they're seeing. It's always a nice surprise to hear that. So I think there we can make major, major changes in the kind of negative applications that are causing a lot of both the issues with the crops and plants themselves, and then also that create issues downstream from that, you know, in ecosystems and communities all around the country. So making those two changes, I think, are huge. And, you know, as the. As the acreage that AEA works on expands, you know, on a yearly basis, I like to be able to think we're having a very positive impact on those two areas. First, as far as what's possible with the plants themselves, I still think we're only seeing the beginning of that, being able to increase yield. And we've seen that in crops ranging from apples to Brussels sprouts to cotton to corn and soybeans to wheat, kind of whatever we've been able to work. But also really understanding what the key quality metrics are that make a big difference economically for growers, I think that's something else that we do very, very well, is we're not just saying here, buy this product because you need it, or buy this product because everybody else is putting it on and having conversations with. With a grower, we're able to understand what are the key drivers of their economic situation, you know, what makes them the most money, in a. In a sense. And we are able to put together a program that orients all of what they're doing for fertility around that particular goal. Whether that's looking at, you know, size and firmness and blueberries, or whether that's, you know, looking at protein and falling number in wheat, whether that's looking at color and, you know, size uniformity in apples, we understand how to make those manipulations and how to encourage the crop to, you know, to move towards those particular goals. And we can. We can show the grower exactly why, you know, we're making particular applications and they're in line with those goals. And so once we're doing that, I think that we really haven't been able to see the new levels, new plateaus of growth and productivity that we can reach. You know, I think we've been doing this, you know, you and I for, you know, over a decade. And there are some farms that have been with us for, you know, four or five, six, seven years that are really only starting to come into their own understanding the systems of having soil biology in place for a number of seasons, of having, you know, high quality crops growing in those soils, putting a lot of that energy and solar energy back into the, in the ground, and feeding biological and creating that positive momentum. Because it takes two to three years at least to stop the negative momentum from decades of potentially not as beneficial practices and get it going the right direction. So once we do that, it takes two to three years to start seeing some of the real benefits. And we're just in that phase of having growers that have been doing this long enough to really open up. I think what some of the new possibilities are when you observe some of.

These exceptional successes, or as in the cotton example that we spoke about a moment ago, or you mentioned, Steven Beerlink on apples, we have any number of growers that we've worked with that have observed some pretty remarkable crop responses. What are the common themes that you observe that growers are doing? What are growers getting right that contributes to those exceptional successes?

Starting with biology, Being able to focus on the life in the soil and either accentuate what they've got, or if they're starting from a more hardcore conventional system, being able to start that process of reinvigorating, of repopulating, you know, the various communities in the soil, which then changes water penetration, it changes oxygen levels in the soil, it changes soil structure, it changes nutrient cycling. You know, all these things which are fundamental to the success of a crop, right? So being able to, to start with that, being able to build off that foundational block of soil biology and then look to really start to take a much more direct hold on their nutrient management during the crop season. And that has a couple of forms. You know, one like we talked about is reducing the applications of what's not needed or what's causing problems. And whether that's things like anhydrous ammonia or early season potassium applications in tree fruit, or being able to understand the full impacts of herbicides and fungicides and insecticides on soil and soil biology and nutrient density in crops, being able to cut some of those out that are necessary or change product types to ones that are less harmful. The second part of that is being able to add in Being able to understand where the holes are, where the needs are in the nutritional levels of the crop, and be able to supply those with high quality materials at the right time. That combination of having a good foundation in the soil, you know, with minerals and biology, plus moving what's causing problems or what's not necessary, what's getting in the way, and then adding in the key pieces that are missing, you know, is really the pathway that I see over and over again that leads to.

Success with the different experiences that you have had, which have been almost without question quite different from many mainstream agronomists and producers. With all of your various observations, what do you believe to be true about agriculture that is perhaps different from the mainstream view?

Nitrogen isn't as important as people think it is. Nitrogen, a drug that covers up for a lot of other things being missing or not functioning. I think that's one of the great myths of agriculture around the world right now. Nitrogen is important, absolutely, it is necessary, but it is not, as it is not more important than calcium or phosphorus or manganese or sulfur or any other of the key minerals that are needed for proper plant growth. Not only is it not as important, but it's also much easier to come by in a functioning regenerative or biological system than a lot of growers believe. I've seen farms in places in California that haven't applied nitrogen in a couple years and tree fruit and seen very adequate nitrogen on SAP analysis because of soil biology, because a little bit of nitrate in the water, this wasn't needed and the crops are very healthy and performed very well.

Are they using cover crops in those contexts?

No, it wasn't even any particularly well managed from that perspective. It was just being able to use the data and SAP analysis to take advantage of what was coming into the water and being able to provide the rest of the trees needs through soil biology and those applications that we're increasing that. So it was just being able to use some very basic tools in our toolboxes and even getting to some of the more advanced ones with COVID crops and multi species and things like that that could even enhance that.

When you think about the perspective that you've just described with nitrogen challenges and so forth, which I think has been echoed quite commonly with other people who've been here on the podcast as well. There's kind of a two part question here. One is where do you see significant areas of opportunity for farmers today? And kind of the other side of the coin of that question is what do you observe most limiting farmers from achieving the potential that they are capable of or that their crops are capable of.

I think agronomically for farmers, I believe that they have the ability to change what's happening on their farms in very significant degrees. I think it's very easy. I even see it on my own farm. You see things every day. You have the same problems. You tend to think that they're always going to be there. A benefit of having somebody come in that's not there every day that doesn't deal with that from the outside is being able to make suggestions or give a perspective that those things are malleable and changeable. But that has to start with the belief that they can be changed. Right? And having that belief will then lead to the actions that make the changes. If growers stay stuck in the mindset that this is the way this soil is, or this is the way this variety is, or this is the way this block is, or that kind of thing, then it's going to stay that way. But if we look at it from the perspective of what's one thing we can change here, you know, what's the most important thing we can change on this block and this variety this year and figure out what that is and implement that change, then probably you're going to see something different. And then that leads to additional energy and excitement and enthusiasm that then want you to make other changes in different places, and that then snowballs over a few seasons, and then things on the whole farm are very different. Right. So it's having that understanding that what we're seeing in front of us, even if it's been there for multiple years, is not the only way that things can be. I think growers both, you know, are the eternal optimists, right? Because they have to start every springtime. You know, here in Indiana, it's springtime. It's grass is turning green, daffodils are blooming, red buds are coming out. Growers always come to a new season with the belief that things can be better. And we're pulled to that drive to grow things and the pull of agriculture and working with the soil to do the work that we do on a yearly basis, the hard work, the difficult work, the long hours we have to have that constant belief in renewal and new opportunity. And I think that often gets blunted or ground down in growers over the years when things don't go as they had hope, or things don't work out quite like they need to. Being able to take that more optimistic and hopeful side of things and Then augment that with the right tools and with the belief that with those right tools, very important and beneficial changes can be made, can help growers to really create a new sense of ability to make important changes on their farms.

Jason, what is something that you would like to speak more often about or something that you think is really important but you don't often talk about it because you sense people may not be ready to hear it yet?

I think the importance, kind of going back to my previous point of discussion there, just the importance of belief and intention in any given situation, whether that's in relationships, in business, in agriculture. And we see this over and over again with people that work with us. The people that believe things are going to work and believe things are going to change overwhelmingly see success. People that believe that they're not going to work probably aren't going to see success. And that doesn't have to be necessarily some esoteric woo woo thing, right? Very practically, if you believe in something, you're going to do the things and the little things necessary to make that successful and you're going to pay attention to it and you're going to go out and check on it and you're going to make sure the applications got made and that the mixes were right and that, you know, the irrigation profile was correct. And all those little things that go into making a growing season successful, you're going to do those. And if you, if you don't believe that, then maybe some things get, let that go, other things get more important. You know, you go do something else that, you know, just, it can take shape in a myriad of decisions and small actions over the course of a year. You know, say what's the one criteria of all the growers, you know, the thousands of growers we've worked with, you know, over the last decade. What's the one thing that separates people that are successful from those who, who haven't been is really that, that belief that it's possible to make a change and the belief that, that it can happen and, and the belief that they have the ability to, you know, create that, that different outcome that they're looking for. You know, we like to joke around AEA that we need to have T shirts that says aea. It works if you put it on, because I don't know, I don't know how many, how many growers that, you know, have said, oh, this stuff didn't work and I want to return it and they want to return 60% of what they were supposed to put on because they didn't have time to put it on. I got busy. I, you know, whatever. Tractor broke, sprayer broke, what, you know, whatever the reason. Right. It didn't get put on and, you know, it didn't work. You contrast that to other growers who have the same problems and the same stuff breaks and the same issues and the same labor problems, but they managed to get it on and managed to follow the programs and make things happen. And what do, you know, the stuff worked for them. So it's really that piece, you know, and occasionally you'll see people that can come in and. And have a change of heart, and you're skeptical to start with, but then, you know, they see some small things during the year, bigger leaves or, you know, shoot caliper or root growth or whatever. Right. They start to believe it over the, you know, over the course of the season, and by the end of it, you know, they really see that things are possible. So it is possible to start skeptical and grow into it. But, man, the people that come in, I'm doing this because, you know, somebody made me or whatever, things like that, there's not a lot of room for good things to happen in that scenario.

Yeah, I think there are many people who can relate to that observation. And that is another element of we create the reality that we believe in or we create the reality that we want to be true.

Exactly.

Jason, I want to say thank you for joining us here, for sharing your thoughts and wisdom, and look forward to seeing you more in the future on other AEA podcasts and webinars and so forth.

All right, thank you, John. Thanks for giving me the chance to come on.

The team at AEA and I are dedicated to bringing this show to you because we believe that knowledge and information is the foundation of successful regenerative systems. At aea, we believe that growing better quality food and making more money from your crops is possible. And since 2006, we've worked with leading professional growers to help them do just that. At aea, we don't guess. We test, we analyze, and we provide recommendations based on scientific data, knowledge, and experience. We've developed products that are uniquely positioned to help growers make more money with regenerative agriculture. If you are a professional grower who believes in testing instead of guessing, someone who believes in a better, more regenerative way to grow, visit advancingecoag.com and contact us to see if AEA is right for you. Thank you for listening, and we look.

Forward to working with you.