AEA 2024 Product Announcement

All right, welcome. I've been looking forward to this conversation for weeks. At this point, it's, you know, we always find it exciting. And as we work with life and with living systems, one of the, one of the things that happens is that as, as every season goes by and every spring, you see new seeds emerging, you see birds migrating back from the south, and you see this emergence of new life. And this emergence of new life expresses itself in different ways in, in enterprises as well. And one of the ways that it should express itself when you're working with living systems as we are, is the development of new innovations, new ideas and new technologies. And it's very rewarding to work with the amazing team of people that we have at AEA to constantly be developing and be iterating products that can be even more effective and provide even greater economic responses on the farms that we work with and the fields that we work with. And there are a number of technologies that have been in the pipeline for years that we are only now able to really talk about and to really release. And this is, this is a really exciting time because agronomy for the last nine decades or longer than the last century really has been defined in terms of chemistry for the very good reason that chemistry was the one piece that we were able to measure readily and therefore attempt to manage. But we now live in a different world where we have the emergence of new genetic analysis and various types of assays to measure the soil microbiome. And the agronomy of the future is not going to be an agronomy exclusively of chemistry, but an agronomy that also emphasizes biology and biophysics. And this is the exciting, these are the exciting pieces that are coming. And I'm really looking forward, as we look forward at the new products, the new technologies that we're developing over the, for the course, for release, over the course of the next several years, there are going to be some very exciting releases that I think supersede even what we have to announce today. So without any further piece, let's dive into it. We have two new product lines that we are releasing. And the intent of these new product lines is one of the, one of the pieces that we have really emphasized with our team and as we communicate and work with growers, is being able to connect with people and to really meet people where they are on their transition journey. We work with growers who are all the way from using very mainstream corn and soybean, quote, unquote rotations, if it could be called that, growing genetically modified corn Genetically modified soy, soybeans using lots of glyphosate applications, anhydrous ammonia. The list goes on and on. Of all the things that some people would consider to be negatives, and it's true that they do have, they do have the capacity for a significant negative impact. But we all begin somewhere. We all are on our own journey. We all have to begin where we are and make the next, those initial steps forward in, in many different ways from a, from a knowledge perspective, from an experience perspective, and also from a perspective of products that fit into different systems. So over the last decade and a half of our work with products at advancing eco agriculture, with, with very few exceptions, the majority of our products have been organically compliant, organically certifiable for those growers who wanted to use organically certified products. And that has represented roughly half of the growers that we have worked with historically. But as we continue to grow very rapidly as, as a business that is shifting and it's becoming clear, particularly because some of the best technologies that are available are not permitted for use in organic farms. And so it makes sense for us to develop products and to release products that are specific for farms that are in the transition process or that are not organically certifiable or that are not organically certified. So we have, we're developing two different product lines, releasing two different product lines. One that is Regen focused on regenerative. And why would we use that word? Why call it a regenerative product line? Well, specifically I want to, we want to communicate that this, these are products that are intended to be used in a system that supports and invigorates biology. In other words, agronomy, that is biology centric rather than chemistry centric. And then the second product line of course is a regenerative NOP compliant product line that is organically certifiable. So let's jump into it. We're releasing a handful of new products. I'm going to give you a brief overview of each of them and then we'll open it up for Q and A. The first is a product called SeaGuard. SeaGuard Many of you may have heard of, we've talked about SeaShield in the past. SeaGuard is a non organically compliant version of SeaShield. And what makes the SeaShield and SeaGuard such a valuable part of an overall system, and SeaGuard in particular, we've, we've amplified in this way is that one of the, one of the components of, of seaguard is, which is a component of the crab shell, shrimp shell combination is this compound called chitin. And one of the things that I really appreciate about having chitin as a part of the overall system is we know that chitin, when it is applied to plants and to the soil microbiome, functions and serves as what is known as an immune elicitor. So there are a number of white papers that have been are reported around the effects of immune elicitors. But what it means simply is that this is immaterial that when applied to a plant can enhance that plant's immune system function and give it increased degrees of disease and insect resistance that don't necessarily correlate or are not necessarily necessarily associated with a specific nutritional profile. So SeaGuard is now available for non organic producers. And I'm quite excited to see what will happen with this. In foliar applications and an infero application, soil applications. In both contexts there is, there's something interesting that happens when you have, if you have insects that pupate in the soil, such as corn, rootworm beetle or others, one of the mechanisms that is known to help reduce these popular populations in the soil is to enhance the populations of chitin feeding bacteria. So there are a large group of bacteria that consume and digest chitin in the soil profile, but sometimes they need to be kickstarted, they need an accelerator. And when we combine applications of seaguard with microbial inoculant or a product like Rejuvenate, then we get this proliferation of chitin digesting bacteria and all of a sudden the populations of insect pupae and the soil profile can diminish dramatically. So this can be a very fascinating tool from a couple of different places. The next product that we're releasing is a product called calguard. And I am quite excited about Calguard. The one of the pieces that I speak about in webinars and in more in depth conferences presentations is how we need to get calcium flow into the plant. And we know that in when plants are functionally, optimally, the majority of the calcium should be coming from not the majority, but the entirety of calcium in an ideal scenario is coming from the soil system and moving upward in the xylem and throughout the entire plant tissue to wherever the plant needs it. But there are some scenarios, there are some crops which for which this process doesn't function well. Some crops don't have a large enough stem diameter, a large enough pipeline, if you will, to sustain the amount of nutrient flow that is required for the large crop, the genetic capacity for that crop to that they have to set Large yields. So sometimes on apples or cherries or other crops, we have this ability for a tremendous fruit load. And there is actually more fruit present because of the ways the these plants have been bred than the plant's ability to move calcium effectively. And so this is often remediated with foliar applications of calcium. And I've spoken about the need to have chelated calcium when we were, when we're applying calcium as a foliar. And so over the years we've experimented with many different forms of calcium in foliar applications to make sure that they are in the chelated state and to identify which forms of calcium are the most effective at being translocated and moved around within the plant. And there are forms of calcium within Calguard that when the calcium translocation contest of, of calcium moving from the leaf to the fruit, the forms of calcium contained within Calguard are hands down the best at moving into the fruit. However, the technology that's used to develop this product is not organically certifiable. And so historically we have not developed this product even though we were aware of the technology. But we are now, we're now releasing this product to be, and it is specifically, it can be soil applied, can also be foliar applied, and it is very effective at moving from the leaf or from the soil directly into the fruit. It's the one form of calcium or the several forms of calcium that we have found to be the most effective at actually increasing fruit content of calcium. The third product. This is one. I wrote an article a year ago in Acres USA titled Seeds with Speed. I followed it up this spring and I think maybe December or January issue with a follow up article titled Seedlings with Speed. And I described this phenomena where in many cases it is not enough to just to simply inoculate a seed with beneficial biology. When I say it's not enough. The beneficial biology, like materials like biocode Gold, are widely used because they are so inexpensive to apply and they deliver such strong economic responses. But to produce the greatest economic response, to produce the greatest crop response, we need these seeds when they are planted, to immediately germinate, emerge and begin photosynthesizing and produce sugars and send sugars out through the root system as root exudates to sustain and to feed the biology that has been inoculated or that is being recruited from the bulk soil microbiome. And this has been a problem because in the world we live in today, the, the expectation, the ideal is that we should expect seedlings to emerge, to be exposed to the sun and turn dark green and begin photosynthesizing within a matter of a day, 24 hours or less. The effect of having exposure to sunlight should trigger seedlings to turn dark green. And this used to be true, and it's still sometimes true for some seeds and some crops. But far too commonly we see seedlings that emerge and they remain pale yellow. They don't turn dark green with chlorophyll for days after germination, sometimes for weeks. This is an expression of seeds that do not contain enough mineral nutrients that are needed to properly form chlorophyll in high concentrations and to begin rapidly photosynthesizing. They in many cases we're finding that seeds do not have adequate levels of magnesium and molybdenum and zinc, manganese, cobalt, copper, kind of the list goes on. And of the various nutritional imbalances. And this, this is very important because for some crops, not only is there a micro microbial association challenge that occurs, but there is also a disease susceptibility and insect susceptibility association that occurs with this pattern. With. Let me talk about the insect piece first. So we, we've described in the Plant Health Pyramid and a number of other places the importance of having complete protein synthesis to have good insect resistance. For a number of insects like flea beetle Ambrasicus and cut worms and others, there are a number of insects that are a problem right as seedlings emerge and or within a week or two thereafter. And for these tiny seedlings, it's not reasonable to expect to put on a foliar application to produce a crop response and to produce a resistance response. What we really need is we need to have the appropriate nutrients needed to achieve nutritional integrity and protein synthesis present inside the seed from before germination. The second, the the disease resistant piece is that I've learned that in many cases, when we think about the challenges with soil borne fungal diseases such as Vasarium or Rhizoctonia or Pythium or verticillium anthracnose, the list goes on and on. We tend to think of these diseases. Most of these diseases show up visually in the crop for the first time once we are at the fruit fill stage or approaching the maturity stage. And so we tend to think of these as being diseases that occur later in the crop's life. But in reality, the majority of them, the majority of these diseases infect the plant root system for the first time. The initial infection usually occurs in the first two weeks after germination and there's a fascinating story about why this is and what's happening, what's going on. I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to just summarize it briefly. What happens is that usually because of that, the seedling emerges and it doesn't have enough nutrients to form adequate levels of chlorophyll, so it stays pale yellow green, doesn't photosynthesize well, and as a result the seedling doesn't have enough sugars to transmit out through the root system, to feed the soil biology and to establish a strong microbiome in that type of environment. Fium Rhizoctonia. These various soil borne fungal pathogens will first penetrate the root system and they will establish a presence, they'll begin populating the root system. But then as the plant starts getting some nutrients from the soil, it does turn dark green, does begin photosynthesizing well, and all of a sudden the volume of sugars being sent to the root system increases dramatically. And as that sugar volume increases to the soil profile, all of a sudden the other disease suppressive organism population explodes and proliferates and they shut down the expression of Fazarium and Verticillium and Rhizoctonian Pythium et cetera, until later in the growing season when you get to the fruit fill stage. All of a sudden once you have a lot of seeds producing auxins and the fruit or the seeds or the grain becomes the primary sugar sink on the plant. Now the majority of sugars go to the fruit, no longer to the root system. And now this disease suppressive microbiome goes into decline again and the Fazarium and the Rhizoctonia, the Pythium and the Verum begin expressing themselves as disease. But the reality is the infection happened first in the initial 10 to 14 days after germination. So as a combination of all these pieces, we realize that it is not enough to just add microbial inoculants alone to seeds or seedlings at planting. We also need to support these seeds with the proper mineral nutrition so that they have the nutritional support, the nutritional integrity that is needed to emerge, turn dark green, begin photosynthesizing immediately and support that microbial population. So I believe seed flare is going to end up being in the same product category from an, from an economics perspective as the microbial inoculants. It will be a very low cost per acre application as a seed treatment with a significant crop response and a very large ROI potential. The next product that we're releasing is A product called Macropack and Macropack came out of the realization. I spoke about this earlier when I was describing Calguard. When. When we think about the breeding innovations that have happened, and I'm speaking broadly, many different crop types, many different crops have been selected. They have the genetic potential for a very large yield. Apple trees and almonds, etc, they will set many more blossoms than they're capable of bringing to maturity. The same is true of cucurbit crops and peppers and grain crops even. And for many of them the constraint, one of the constraints they have to producing higher yields is that they do not have a large enough plant frame. They don't have a large enough stem, large enough pipeline in order to fill more fruit. One of the, one of my colleagues and friends who I've interviewed on the podcast is Ed Curry, the chili pepper breeder from Arizona. And Ed has single handedly he gets from conversations I've had with other people in the space. Ed gets the credit by himself for having quadrupled the average yield of chili peppers in his 40 years of breeding work. When he started, the Average yield was 10 tons per acre. Today it's 40 tons per acre. And his pathway to achieving that was to focus on genetic selection. That had a very large stem diameter. And it is this expression of building plant frame. That macro pack is designed and intended to support the nutrients that are contained in macro pack. Calcium, silicon, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, so forth. Are designed and formulated so that when we apply this to a plant, a supportive plant with these nutrients, it specifically develops and builds a large plant frame that has the ability to sustain and support higher yields. So this obviously the, the ramifications of this are there are a lot of ramifications because actually we should think about this not just in terms of, of stem size and plant frame from a primary stem perspective, but also from the perspective of individual fruit stems. Do we have the calyx or the stem going to a tomato or to a cherry? The thickness of those stems can vary significantly based on the plant's nutritional status. A macro pack is intended to be used to specifically increase a plant's ability to trans. To transport nutrients from the soil into the fruit very efficiently and very effectively. So of all the, of all the products that we've designed or that we've talked about so far, I think seed flare is unique in its ability to. The application rate required per acre is relatively small and it has the potential for significant crop response. And macro pack is the next in that category in that I expect it to. We know in far too Many crops. My memory goes back to when I. When I first started down this pathway, and I was growing up on my father's farm growing vegetables. One of the crops that I really enjoyed working with was cantaloupe. And my goal was that someday I was going to grow more than 2.5 cantaloupe per plant on average, because I would. We would grow these cantaloupe plants that were amazing, lush, vigorous, healthy plants, at least healthy from a visual appearance perspective. And you could easily pollinate and set as many as 20 to 25, and in exceptional cases, as many as 30 small cantaloupe per plant. They would grow to the size of roughly a tennis ball. And then they would all abort, with the exception of two or three, because those plants didn't have a large enough frame and it didn't have a large enough and robust enough root system to sustain all of those fruit. And what I've come to realize is that many of our crops have the genetic capacity. They have the genetic potential to produce much larger yields, but they don't have the nutritional support during the framing stage. And this is what Macropack is designed to support and to sustain then. The last product that we're releasing today is a new formulation of Holocal. Many of you may be familiar with Holocal and have used it in the past. We are keeping the name. But aside from the name and a few key ingredients, there is nothing similar between the new Holocal formula and the previous Holocal formula you may have. If you have a previous experience with Holocau. When. When. As we were producing with the. The previous technology that we were using, when you think about having a micronized suspension of calcium carbonate and other forms of calcium, you end up with a material that has the consistency of paint. Or when things don't go so well and perhaps there's elevation changes or major temperature swings or whatever, that can happen again. This was. We were working within the constraints of an organically certified formula. And so we have constraints on the ingredients that we were able to use. And sometimes you ended up with a material that resembled drywall paste more than paint. And that was not a good experience. That is gone. The new formulation of Holocal is. We're using completely new technology, very different technology from what we've used in the past. And so we have a product that is a micronized calcium carbonate, but it behaves as a true liquid. That's a liquid formula that doesn't have any of the problems with thickening or dropping out of suspension, as we had with the previous Holocau formulation. And what is interesting, what we're observing as well, is that with the new technology that we're using, this version of Holocal is not quite as good as Calguard at getting into the fruit, but it is better than the previous version of Holocal at when we put on foliar applications, at most effectively moving into the fruit. So this, this version of Holocal is organically compliant. So we are, we're using new technology that we now have access to, but it is still organically compliant as the previous version was as well. So those are the new products that are coming out this spring. We have a handful more that are in the pipeline that we'll be announcing in the future. I'm quite excited about those as well, but I'm, I'm not going to give you any further teasers other than to let you know that they exist and that there's, there's some things coming down the pipeline that are even better than what we've released so far. So the availability for these products, we are going to be ready to ship by mid May for all the products that I've talked about. And obviously planting season is upon us. Seed Flare is going to be available in some of these, in some regions in early to mid April. The reality is that from a logistics and product perspective, we have the product ready to go and we'll have, we'll be able to fulfill orders. But we do have product registration in various states that is still in process. And so if you have questions about whether the products are available in your states or your regions, I expect the majority of the, the Midwestern states where we're planting a lot of corn, beans, wheat, small grains, et cetera, and cotton in the Southwest, we will have very rapid availability from a registration perspective. So if you have, I would suggest checking in with our team or checking in on the webpage for additional updates on which regions Seed Flare is going to be available and in what time. So the, these are the five products in summary that are being released this year. And I am, I'm really excited about all of them. But in particular I think if you don't have previous, if you don't have previous experience, well, even if you do have previous experience with some of our other products, the products that you particularly want to pay attention to are going to be Macro Pack, the new Holocau and Seed Flare. And if you are not organic and if you're growing fruit that benefits from calcium. You, you also want to pay attention to calguard. Seaguard is also noteworthy, but it's, I've failed to mention that in the, in the products that I think you want to particularly pay attention to only because we already have familiarity with it, with some of the things that it can do from a seashield perspective, but that I expect some of the new innovations that we'll be releasing in the future are going to really greatly upgrade that formula as well. But that's stuff that's still in the pipeline, so lots of fun things. If you want to check back in for updates on availability, regional availability, and also new products that we're going to be releasing in the future, check out this page, the advancingequag.com new products. I'm sure one of our team members is going to drop that link into the chat and yeah, be prepared to be, be prepared to have a lot of fun and be prepared to have to be amazed by the results you get in the field. I've, I've been looking forward to this product release for some time because as we continually improve and iterate, you know, there was a time when we first started doing product testing and research and development over a decade ago. At that point we were, it's safe to say that we were a decade ahead of a lot of products that were available in the marketplace at the time. And this continued release of new products containing new technologies helps us to hold and maintain that position. And the, there's, there's something that I would suggest that we all need to keep in mind. And I'm now switching from my AEA hat to wearing my agronomist and grower hat. And that is there is a great deal of value in having products whose performance is validated with SAP analysis, whose performance is validated by seeing effects in the field. There's a great deal of value in being able to have SAP analysis reports, apply a product, pull another SAP analysis report and observe the crop response. And that's something that I would really encourage everyone to do as a routine matter for any product that you are using because you can quickly identify which products are performing well and which are not. So I want to say thank you to all of you for attending. I'm going to answer any questions you have related to these products and that I haven't anticipated already. And yeah. Question from Timothy because many of the products at AEA are complex with humic acid, does this mean that soils need adequate levels of fungi to access these minerals when used in fertigation or Are they generally available for plant absorption regardless of soil fungal biomass levels? So Timothy, the answer to your question is many of the products. In fact, I think it's almost safe to say practically all of the products that we produce at AEA do include humic substances. Not sure if it's accurate to call it, we might call it humic acid on the label because that's the only thing the regulatory framework understands. But they are not extracted in the common sense from an alkali extraction process. And I guess what I'd like to say is that while our products contain these materials as an ingredient, that doesn't necessarily mean that everything in the product is complex. With human substances, we there are very specific in the manufacturing process, there are very specific timings and sequence of how ingredients get added and in what process in order to affect and produce certain interactions and to produce certain outcomes. And the outcomes that we're looking for are not necessarily the ones that are commonly described in the literature. And then to the, to the key essence of your question, no these products can be absorbed by plants regardless of soil fungal populations. But the key differentiator is that when they are applied, when our products are applied, they are intended to support and to enhance not just the plant but also the soil fungal and microbial community at the same time. So there is intended to be a parallel support, parallel enhancement. Question from Greg Penroyal. Hi Greg, as seaguard stimulates chitin digesting bacteria and the subterranean first instar development stage of mind mealy bugs or chitin exoskeletons, would it be reasonable to assume applications of SeaGuard would act as a pre emergent reduction of crawlers emerging in the spring? The answer Greg, is yes, it would be reasonable to assume that that is that that should be one of the expected outcomes that we should be able to look for. But in some soils we may also, in fact maybe I should say in many soils we may also need to inoculate with some of the chitin digesting bacteria. So it may not necessarily be enough to apply SeaGuard by itself. That may be effective. And in some soils we may also need to apply a bacterial inoculant with that. And then Greg has a follow up question on seed flare. We have consistently had challenges getting adequate levels of trace minerals in early emergence shoots in grapevines. Might seed flare be a useful foliar and or fertigation to overcome this high nutrient requirement development stage in grapevines? It's possible, Greg. Seed flare has some interesting technology that as you might expect, really facilitates transport inside the plant. And it's also entirely possible you may get some of the effects that you're looking for from some of the rebound trace minerals. Question from Kevin Tolling. Hi, Kevin. Does providing the seed these luxury conditions inhibit the arbuscular fungi and other endophytes? Oh, Kevin, that's an awesome question. The answer is no, quite the opposite, in fact. It enhances them. Because when, when we're providing, we're providing this, the seed with. Actually, I, I don't think it's a correct framing to say we're providing the seed with luxury levels of trace minerals, but simply with adequate levels of trace minerals, because in many cases we find them to be so severely deficient in the first place. But what happens is it is, it's unlike. It's not the same scenario as when we're. When seeds are provided with excessive levels of nitrogen or phosphorus at planting because those will have the effect of shutting down microbial symbiosis. But what happens with the seed flare? Seed flare is applied as a seed treatment and is actually absorbed into the seed internally and well in advance of planting. It can be applied weeks or months ahead of planting. And once it's inside the seed, it will enhance the seedling's ability to photosynthesize and it will produce sugars, more sugars as root exudates. So rather than inhibiting mycorrhizal fungi and other endophytes, I would expect the exact opposite to happen, that it will increase the population of those associated microorganisms because of the increased sugar concentrations. It's a very good question though. Question from Timothy. Will we be updating our grower guides for vegetables and berries etc to include these use of these new products? The answer is yes, we will be. Is macro pack have an application arbor culture? Yes, Macro Pack has an application anywhere you want to have larger diameter stems, larger leaves and just general overall plant health support. We know many of the plant health benefits that silicon has, and a decade ago Advancing Eco agriculture used to have a silicon product that was in the same category as the Holocau, Holo K products and Holofoss. And we ended up discontinuing that product because we were, I suppose, too far ahead of our time. We had a silicon product, but many people couldn't figure out how to incorporate it into their systems or didn't think it was necessary or useful. And now as we're beginning to recognize and be able to measure the many benefits of silicon, then all of a sudden it's becoming quite popular. Question from Leah. How would seed flare or macro pack impact pollen and pollination, fruit set, etc. Well, the. Goodness. There's about half a dozen answers that come to mind all at the same time. Let's talk about macro pack for just a bit. The I. I framed macro pack in the sense of building a larger plant frame and building an increase in the plant's nutrient transport pipeline. But if you take that thought one step further, what that means. I used calcium as a reference nutrient, but what that really means is that the plant has the ability to absorb nutrients from the soil and move them upwards into the plant more efficiently than it otherwise would. And this is very important for all nutrients, but particularly for calcium and manganese and boron, because supposedly calcium and manganese and boron are not flow mobile when they are in the ionic chemistry form. And this is, as we know, some of this conversation goes out the window. Once you have products that are contained inside the cells of endophytes and you have endophytic bacteria or fungi or algae moving throughout the plant's vascular tissue. They do have the ability to transport those nutrients, but there is still some ionic nutrient transport that happens. And so the answer to your question is because Macropack facilitates nutrient transport from the soil upwards, particularly for manganese and boron and calcium, it does in fact have a significant effect on pollination, on bud size, the number of buds, the number of fruit, fruit set, et cetera. So there is kind of an indirect effect, but the direct can the effect can be quite significant. It's a very good question. Question from Lisa, Is Macropack a foliar or a root drench? And the answer is yes, it is both. Question from Greg on macro pack silicon is a challenge to get into the skins of grapes and is key to protection from pill from mildew and bees. Might this be of assistance? Yes, macro pack contains 2% silicon, if I recall correctly. And the key is that it is silicon in a form that can either be transported from the root system upward or, if it's applied to the leaf, will move out of the leaf into the berries, which is exactly what we need to happen and what doesn't happen with many of the various forms of silicon that are available. Question from John Warmerdam. Will other. Hi John. Will other products be reformulated to improve, improve ease of use as Holocau has been? And the answer is yes, there's quite a bit of that work in the pipeline and we expect them to be much easier to use in the future. However, at the end of the day we have to remember. It's. It's the results that matter, the results with crop performance. And I think that there are other questions that are still open, but they are not relevant to a product discussion or to these particular products that we're releasing. So I think we will call that a wrap for right now. If there are any questions that I missed responding to, then please reach out to us. I'll be happy to follow up with any additional questions directly or also reach out directly to our team. So thank you all for being here. I hope you found this useful and interesting. And as exciting as I have, there's. There's a lot of really great work happening. A huge thank you to the team at aea, both the R D team, marketing team, our consulting team, all of who've contributed input into developing and refining our product formulations and developing these going forward. So thank you to all and I will look forward to chatting with you all again soon. Have an awesome day. Happy Spring and a great growing season.