Ask Me Anything with John Kempf - July 22, 2025

Hi friends.

Welcome.

Welcome to this Ask Me anything this afternoon. It's 2pm on Tuesday, July 22 and life remains entertaining. It's peak growing season for many people. It's already past the peak for others. But across the people that we work with all across North America, there's lots of different growing environments, lots of different things happening. Feel free to type in your questions into the comments and I will try.

To respond to those. We've also received a couple of questions in advance, so I'm going to bounce to those to get started and we're.

Just going to have a good time. So it's an interesting, interesting growing season. Lots of weather variation across different regions as it appears there frequently is. And it's been, it's been an intense year for disease pressure and we've got.

Some interesting things we're working on with that. So.

First question here is from Ellen Best. Hi Ellen. Solutions for downy mildew Is it possible to prevent with with a soil amendment? So the short answer is that it is possible to prevent downy mildew with with soil.

Nutritional balance requires soil that is very.

Good at delivering silicon and manganese and.

Copper and zinc in particular.

Requires really good biology to do that. But there's also Ellen, you haven't specified what, what crop you're thinking about. A lot of the modern cucurbit selections tend to not have great root systems. And so there is a genetic component here as well. Generally the varieties, the genetics that are more resistant to the various mildews are, have more robust root systems and are better at picking up some of those.

Nutrients that give them better resistance.

So that's one aspect to keep in mind as well. And then there is some quite exciting stuff we've been working on. We released what is it now, two months or so ago, we released a new product that I've been working on for over a decade that is called Pinion. It's still going through the registration process.

In a number of states. It's available in half a dozen plus states at this point.

But pinyon, as I understand it, has several different mechanisms and modes of action. But it is a foliar application that you can spray on for treatment of.

A variety of different fungal and bacterial diseases.

So in the trial work that we've done with it so far, it's been incredibly effective against downy and powdery mildew.

In different types of environments.

It fundamentally, we shouldn't say fundamentally, but it causes some produces some very significant changes in the plant's microbiome for the better and makes the plant's microbiome much.

More disease suppressive and disease resistant and.

Also activates some of the plant's immune pathways. So we've had some very good successes with Pinyon.

You can now find it on the Advancing EcoAg website website and I highly recommend that you see if I don't recall off the top of my head which states it's registered, currently registered in.

And available in but that is a very effective solution. We had last year we had powdery mildew on grapes. I think I had this conversation with Greg Pennyroyall on the on a recent podcast and they did, if I if memory serves me correctly, they did one or maybe two applications at the beginning of their powdery mildew pressure season and the effect lasted for the entire season.

All the way through to harvest.

And that's because it changes the plant's physiology and changes the plant's microbiome in some very foundational ways that have a long term impact. So it's not like you constantly need.

To reapply it, except perhaps in very high pressure situations.

So it's a good question.

Thanks Ellen.

Follow up question here from Greg Pennyroyal. Greg is just talking about you. I've had the privilege of working with the beta version of Fieldlark and have.

Been amazed at the succinctness and accuracy of its information based on actual biological principles versus similar inquiries from other AI.

Platforms that seem to be based on.

The cacophony of bad information, especially when it comes to agriculture.

My question to you is, as users of Fieldlark and co collaborators in regenerative agriculture in general, is there a way of getting our individual data into the AI? And if so, does that need to be moderated to make sure that the.

Information that's going into the system is actually good data?

Boy Greg, you ask interesting questions. So the answer is yes, it will be possible for qualified users, for vetted users to get their data training data sets into the AI and there'll be a couple of different ways of doing that, but similar to similar to let's say Chat GPT or Gemini, something like that. You're going to be able to train it on files that are relevant to your context, your operation, and those remain completely proprietary to you and if you wish, there's a desire to do so. You can also collaborate directly with advancing eco agriculture and train the larger data set and of course for that larger or to train fieldlark as a whole so that the information is generally accessible and available to everyone. We certainly will be reviewing and vetting that data.

And it doesn't just get uploaded into fieldlark's repository and knowledge base automatically with, without review. It's a very important, very important aspect.

So Field Lark, if, if I'm not mistaken, Field ARC goes live this week for public use public access. You can find it already on the advancing ecoag.com website and the. So there will be public access coming this week. And where was I going?

I just lost my train of thought.

Oh, the. There will be the capacity. I don't know if it'll be there when we go live, but within a week or so we will be releasing the capabilities of uploading images and uploading files and having those files be accessible.

To work on specific projects.

And in the longer term, one of the next pieces that we're working with on fieldlark is the ability to upload all of your soil analysis, SAP analysis, all types of different data associated with different blocks, as in field map blocks, and then have deep data analysis on that entire data set as an archive. So that's something that we're still several months away from releasing that, perhaps longer. It's something we want to make sure.

We get absolutely right before we release it. But that's something that we're actively working on at the moment. Moment.

Question from Christopher I have 6 SAP.

Analysis on pomegranate trees. I struggle to produce a decent interpretation and action plan. Where do I start?

Christopher, I think the, the place I would recommend you begin. Depending on where you are geographically, it.

Might make sense for you to just reach out to the advancing EcoAgriculture team to have that conversation.

Fieldlark as it exists at this moment, will have some capacity to, to look at those mineral relationships and nutrient interactions.

And to make some level of recommendations.

But once we release the next stage of Fieldlark in roughly, let's call it, half a dozen months from now, it will have the ability to look at that data and to make a very.

Specific set of recommendations based on nutrient interactions, desired values and what's. What's happening and what's going on.

So that's the, that's the best answer.

That I have for you at the moment.

I see you have a follow up here. I have a hunch that differential SAP.

Analysis gives to discrete clues. For example, if a mobile nutrient like.

Potassium is higher at xx part per.

Million in new leaves than old leaves.

Could the higher leaf part per million.

Be an indicator of optimal levels of potassium in both new and old leaves?

I ask because very few SAP analyses.

Provide a Target range for part per million in the tree.

Perhaps the answer to your question is possibly. But the. And of course if you just. If you have a relatively small data set, it's more challenging to observe this. But in, in a larger data set, the larger data sets that we work with, we, we look at the crossover points like where is the inflection point at where is the threshold where.

The.

Plant will shift and have nutrient keep either either display deficient levels of potassium in the old leaves or store excess.

Of levels of potassium in the old leaves.

So it's really looking at the inflection point of where they shift back and forth that is more revealing than just looking at the ratios on a single set alone and just taking the new growth, the new leaf as the optimal target. That can be the case, but it.

Can also be misleading depending on fertilization practices and genetic tendencies and so forth.

Question from William Lensmeier. What are the key plant minerals needed for raspberry plants to resist spotted wing, Drosophila and other insect pressure? So William, the. There is a need for a solid foundation. You need the foundation of generous levels of calcium, adequate phosphorus, potassium, silicon, etc. So I'm, I'm going to make my comments under the assumption that you have provided this solid foundation. Actually, maybe I shouldn't make that assumption because it is, it's very important to address the full range of the 20 some elements that are essential for the.

Plant to be healthy.

So you have to address the entire spectrum. But when you have the foundation of the entire spectrum and the entire profile that is there, making sure that you have elevated levels of boron and molybdenum and sulfur and magnesium in particular those four elements. And the key aspect with swd, it is usually, I shouldn't say usually because a number of these berry crops and raspberries and so forth respond very quickly. But it is frequently the case that the leaves of a plant are resistant to insects before the fruit. And the reason for that is because the fruit requires a greater mineral concentration to be completely healthy than the leaves. So you might have a leaf analysis might show, let's say on SAP analysis might show 30 parts per million on boron. But if you do the same thing for the berry itself, the required levels to be at optimal health might be.

180 part per million. It just simply has much higher requirements and much higher concentrations.

And so if, if we are working our way up towards having adequate levels, it is very common for the leaves.

To become resistant before the fruit.

So just something to be aware of there. So those, those four elements I would address would be are the four elements.

At the foundation level two of the plant health pyramid. Molybdenum, magnesium, sulfur, boron.

Follow up question and by the way, you can find that combination of those.

Four elements specifically designed for this application in Photomag. That's what it's designed for. Question from Claire.

Do you have, do you know if there is any research of observed examples.

Of beneficial fungi that are killed by.

Fungicide use that would otherwise protect plants.

In the rose family from black spot and other fungal diseases like mildew working in a public park which is still sadly using fungicides.

So I don't know the answer off the top of my head, Claire, but.

I'm quite certain once Fieldlark releases and is publicly available, you will be able to ask questions like that of Fieldlark.

And it can go into exact mechanisms and modes of action of, of specific organisms. And actually you know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to do something different for folks who are listening in. I, yeah, I can do this. I can do a screen share and I'm simply, I'm going to go to Fieldlark. I'm going to ask your question.

Nothing better than giving a demonstration of.

Why we're excited and what it is that we're looking at AD and talking about here. All right, so I'm going to ask the question, I'm just going to ask a simple question. How can I manage Black spot on Rose?

Field Lark has been.

Oh, I should share my screen here.

We've put a lot of work into Field Lark.

I'm quite excited about, quite excited about it. Field Lark is. Here we go.

Fieldlark is a large language model, a train large language model, trained chatbot in the, in the same spirit as Chat.

GPT and Gemini and Grok and so forth that has been trained on our knowledge database and archive.

So I asked the question how can.

I manage Black spot on Rosis? It asks me for a follow up.

Question to be more precise to make.

Better, more effective recommendations on context. It's asking about rose varieties and climate and so forth stage of disease, growing practices.

I don't have that information so I'm.

Just going to ask it to please proceed with general information. So let's see what field art comes back with. All right, Black spot caused by a specific fungus which I'm not going to.

Attempt to pronounce and it gives us a combination of short term treatments, talks.

About sanitation and pruning and then we get to foliar applications for plant health and microbial balance. It talks about using potassium silicate and kelp extract and humic substances specifically.

And then in to more the question that you were asking, are there long term, are there long term things that you can do in it here it describes soil health and biology and let's just ask, make some product recommendations.

Let's just ask are there any, are there specific microbes that can help prevent.

So we've done quite a bit of work with fieldlark. I'm very excited about it and all the users we've had about.

We've had a number of beta users who've had access to it for the last month.

And let's just say the information that.

You'Ll get back is much more detailed and quite different from you from what you will get back from any of the other any of the other AIs. All right, so microbial mechanisms for disease suppression. The ability of microbes to suppress pathogens like black spot fungus is multifaceted, leveraging several ecological principles, competition for resources in space, antagonism, antibiosis, mycoparasitism and lysis.

Describes exact specific mechanisms and then starts.

Talking about specific microbial allies. So Pseudomonas species, Bacillus species, Trichoderma, Streptomyces.

So you can get to get, you can Field Art will give you a set of recommendations for and you can keep digging here.

You can start asking questions about products that contain these species. You can ask about specific subspecies that.

Are valuable and you can just keep digging.

With field arc it's a pretty awesome.

Tool to continually dig deeper and understand.

The root cause of why we have problems in the first place and what we can do about them. So all right, switch gears and how do I stop sharing? There we go. All right. What other questions do we have?

Question from John when we get really heavy rains.

John Rossini Rosani Our soils collapse and grasses and smartweed become abundant. Which tells me our soils have little structure from too much tillage. What macro and micronutrients would be key in optimizing photosynthesis in a soil building cover crop John is the same elements that are at the foundation level of the plant health pyramid level one. It's magnesium, nitrogen, iron and manganese are the four that are quite central. And for many crops you might also consider adding phosphorus or just making sure that the crop has enough phosphorus.

And if you have soils that collapse and lose structure very easily, obviously you have to address to have good soil aggregation, we need to have Diverse microbial species.

We need to have root exudates. We need all those things. And also you need to address the soil's calcium balance, looking at what the calcium to magnesium ratios look like. Because soil flocculation and an aggregate structure for many clay soils is. Calcium is a very important part of being able to flocculate clay soils. Well, for good aggregate structure, though, that's. That's the one aspect that you want to pay attention to as well.

Question from Jen Harris.

Is there any way to eradicate laspadeza from a field without the use of herbicides? I'm sure there is, but I don't know what it is off the top of my head. I'm curious how it would respond to intense grazing pressure from sheep or goats, but that's probably a bigger conversation than we can have right now here, because I don't know a good answer off the top of my head.

I do know that any plants which become dominant in an ecosystem so dominant that they just outcompete everything else, when you have that degree of competition, it is invariably because of something that is.

Happening in that ecosystem.

Grazing pressure or grazing management or lack.

Thereof, Soil microbial profiles, soil mineral profiles, soil physical structure, all of those pieces play a role.

And I have not yet observed a situation where we were not able to.

Change the dominant species by managing those various aspects.

Question from Jenna. How do you go about reducing aluminum.

And chloride accumulation in blackberries during dormancy Every spring our SAP shows high levels and it decreases as the season progresses.

For context, we are located in Southern.

California and have the greatest amount of root exit dates and biomass growth of native annual grassland in the winter. It's important context. Jenna, thank you for adding that.

And it's. This is another question that it would.

Be just awesome to get into field arc and start asking these questions.

But the aluminum and chloride accumulation are connected. I would say that the aluminum is. The chloride is most likely the core driver. And my first question would be where.

Is the chloride coming from? Is the chloride coming from some type of application?

Is it coming from ocean fog? I would expect if you're able to identify where the chloride is coming from.

And limit that, the aluminum levels are likely to drop as well all on their own.

So there's different pieces to consider, making sure that your soils have balanced calcium.

Levels and don't have acidic pHs from an aluminum perspective.

But again, I would suspect chloride is probably the primary driver here. So identifying that. And if you can't identify a source, if it's just. If it's coming atmospherically from ocean fog.

Or rainwater that has some level of.

Chloride in it, which can happen, does happen.

By the way.

Then the pathway chloride, even very small amounts of chloride, just.

A few parts per million of the soil, are rapidly taken up by plants and show up as parts per million of several hundred or parts per million or even several thousand part per million in plants because it is so soluble.

However, chloride being in the group of halogens, humic substances have a very strong.

Affinity for all the halogens. So chloride, bromine, fluoride, et cetera, you can stabilize in soil very effectively with humic substances such as humicarb. So that would be the one approach or suggestion that I, that would be worth trying.

Question from Ryan. I have a mid size organic market.

Farm and we have several high tunnels. We irrigate from a well with high phone water. So I've been acidifying the water with acetic acid. I have heard you allude to getting better results with citric acid. I was hoping that you could elaborate on that. Additionally, salt buildup is an issue in high tunnels and I'm concerned that the acid injection is compounding that issue as acid plus base equals salt plus water. Any thoughts?

All right, so a couple of questions here, Ryan. First of all, I don't have any.

Particular reservations or concerns about acetic acid. Acetic acid is perfectly appropriate and fine.

Citric acid is more concentrated and has greater buffering index, so has the ability to bring more acidity per pound of.

Product than acetic acid does. But there's nothing wrong inherently with acetic acid. I don't, I don't have a strong preference for one versus the other.

And when you say salt buildup is an issue in high tunnels, I don't.

Particularly like the word salt in this context because it's, it can carry too many possible different meanings. We could be talking about sodium or we could be talking about salts which are ions, or we could be talking about, we could be talking about elements such as calcium bonded with bicarbonates.

So there's. The short answer is I don't think that acetic acid or citric acid is going to contribute. It doesn't directly contribute to salt buildup.

In the sense of sodium buildup or chloride buildup.

In fact, if you have effective acidifying agents and that should aid in solubilizing.

Any salts that are coming or any, I should say any bicarbonates that are coming in your irrigation water and flushing them through this, through your system more effectively.

So unless there's something that I'm not.

Thinking about or a misunderstanding.

I don't think you're adding acidity to.

The water is going to add and contribute to salt buildup in the soil.

In fact, if you think about it, adding acidity to irrigation water is a.

Common method for reducing salts in soils.

So that's, that's my frame of reference.

And how I'm thinking about it at the moment.

Question here from Brian when will field art be available for mobile?

Are there plans to roll out an app like Chat GPT has?

So Brian, this is a good question. Field Lark is not a mobile app now and I don't know how soon that will come or if it is.

Even going to become a priority for us.

So here, here's a couple of thoughts. First, you can, you can save on.

I'm familiar with using an iPhone.

I'm sure Androids have similar capabilities and similar functionality. But you can save the Open the browser. Open a browser access Field ARC and save it to your home screen. There's lots of tutorials and instructions available.

Online all over the place for how to do that.

Uh, it's, it's a bit non obvious.

People aren't familiar and aware that that capability exists.

But you can save it as an.

App or as an icon on your home screen, ones that are essential for the plant to be healthy.

So you have to address the entire spectrum. But when you have this out compete everything else, when you have that degree of competition, it is invariably because of.

Something that is happening in that ecosystem. Grazing pressure or grazing management or lack thereof. Soil microbial profiles, soil mineral profiles, soil physical structure. All of those pieces play a role.

And I have not yet observed a situation where we were not able to.

Change the dominant species by managing those various aspects.

Question from Jenna how do you go.

About reducing aluminum and chloride accumulation in blackberries during dormancy Every spring our SAP shows high levels and it decreases as the season progresses.

For context, we are located in Southern.

California and have the greatest amount of root exudates and biomass growth of native annual grassland in the winter. It's important context. Jenna, thank you for adding that.

And it's this is another question that.

It would be just awesome to get into field arc and start asking these questions.

But the aluminum and chloride accumulation are connected. I would say that the aluminum is the chloride is most likely the core driver. And my first question would be where.

Is the chloride coming from?

Is the foundation of the entire spectrum and the entire profile that is there Making sure that you have elevated levels of boron and molybdenum and sulfur and magnesium in particular those four elements. And the key aspect with swd, it is usually, I shouldn't say usually because a number of these berry crops and raspberries and so forth respond very quickly. But it is frequently the case that the leaves of a plant are resistant to insects before in particular those four elements. And the key aspect with SWD coming.

From some type of application, is it.

Coming from ocean fog. I would expect if you're able to identify where the chloride is coming from.

And limit that the aluminum levels are likely to drop as well, all on their own.

So there's different pieces to consider, making sure that your soils have balanced calcium.

Levels and don't have acidic pHs from an aluminum perspective.

But again, I would suspect chloride is probably the primary driver here. So identifying that. And if you can't identify a source, if it's coming atmospherically from ocean fog.

Or rainwater that has some level of.

Chloride in it, which can happen, or the fruit. And the reason for that is because the fruit requires a greater mineral concentration to be completely healthy than the leaves. So you might have a leaf analysis might show, let's say on SAP, analysis might show 30 parts per million on boron. But if you do the same thing for the berry itself, the required levels to be at optimal health might be.

180 part per million. It just simply has much higher requirements and much higher concentrations.

And so if, if we are working our way up towards having adequate levels, it is very common for the leaves.

To become resistant before the fruit.

So just something to be aware of there. So those those four elements I would address would be.

Are the four elements at the foundation level, two of the plant health pyramid, molybdenum, magnesium, sulfur, boron.

Follow up question.

And by the way, you can find.

That combination of those four elements specifically.

Designed for this application in fotomag. That's what it's designed for. Question from Claire.

Do you have, do you know if there is any research of observed examples.

Of beneficial fungi that are killed by.

Fungicide use that would otherwise protect plants.

In the rose family from black spot and other fungal diseases like mildew? Working in a public does happen by the way.

Then the pathway chloride. Even very small amounts of chloride, just.

A few parts per million of the soil are rapidly taken up by plants and show up as parts per million of several hundred or parts per million or even several thousand part per million in plants. Because it is so soluble.

However, chloride being in the group of halogens, humic substances have a very strong.

Affinity for all the halogens. So chloride, bromine, fluoride, etc you can stabilize in soil very effectively with humic substances such as humicarb. So that would be the one approach or suggestion that would be worth park which is still salazing fungicides.

So I don't know the answer off the top of my head Claire, but trying to.