Ask Me Anything with John Kempf - June 2024

Hi friends. Welcome to this Ask Me Anything session. I really enjoy these conversations because I've learned from interviewing lots of people on the podcast and just from a lot of life experience that the one of the best skill sets or one of the most valuable skill sets, in my opinion, is not not having the answers, not even necessarily knowing where to find the answers, but being able to ask the right questions and thinking about what is what is the question that we should be asking. So one of the reasons I really enjoy these conversations is because I always get asked questions that I don't know the answers to and I get asked intriguing questions that I can then use to think about other types of questions that we should be asking. So I want to say thank you to all of you for showing up, for participating in these conversations because it makes all of us better and helps all of us think more clearly and perhaps more deeply about agronomic issues that we should seek to resolve. I'm going to dive into a couple of the questions that were sent over to the team. The first question that was sent to the team is what nutrition affects the number of locks per bowl of cotton? So if you're not familiar with cotton production, locks per bowl is the number of sections or the number of segments inside or within each bowl. And the answer when in the I actually go into this in some detail in the webinar on nutritional Specific nutritional needs at different critical points of influence. And so what is happening? The the lock number is determined during the bud initiation process, which I think occurs. I forget. Now I want to say roughly 45 days after well, for the overall plant, it starts 45 for the overall plant, the first bud is initiated 28 days after germination, if I recall correctly. But it's been a while since I looked at all of this on cotton closely. But to answer your question, I did answer the question already in the webinar on nutrition management at critical points of influence. But the specific elements that are going to have the most direct impact on lock count is are going to be calcium and manganese and phosphorus. Those three will have the most immediate direct impact. And then of course they need to be supported with having a strong foundation otherwise. So that's the first question. The next question how can squash bugs be dealt with from a nutritional perspective? When insects attack the fruit, it is often because the fruit have the poorest nutritional integrity. And the counterpoint for that is to say that they frequently have they generally have the highest nutritional requirements. So the seeds themselves and as a reflection of the seeds, the Remainder of the fruit has have very high nutrient requirements. The cobalt and copper and selenium and zinc levels of seeds are often a couple orders of magnitude higher than they are for the leaves in order for those seeds to have optimal levels of nutrition and health. And because of that, because of that very high nutritional requirement, it's often the reproductive parts of the plant that are the last to become disease resistant and insect resistant simply because of that high nutrition requirement. Hope that makes sense. All right, the last question that was asked. Oh, I see. There's a couple more questions. What can be done nutritionally? Phil? It's also possible I may have missed the first several Q and A. As of right now, I see five questions in the Q and A chat. So at the first half a dozen that came through, I remember seeing that there were six there, and I haven't seen a single one of those yet. So my apologies if you asked a question early on. If you can put that back in. Or, Phil, if you have visibility into that and can make sure those come back up, that would be appreciated. What can be done nutritionally for fruit trees after damage by cicadas? Is there anything that can be done prior to damage to deter cicadas or lessen the extent of damage? This is a great question. I don't know the answer. I don't know the answer from the perspective of egg laying. And can we deter cicadas from egg laying? I suspect the answer to that is yes, because we know that they don't just select trees at random. They do exhibit preferential behavior. They will go to specific insects or, excuse me, go to specific trees. So there is without question something about those trees, even within trees, the same species that they are selecting for. So I would suspect that you could balance the nutritional profile to deter egg laying. Once the eggs are laid and hatch and drop to the ground, begin burrowing into the ground, begin feeding on roots. Based on the experience that we've had with lots of other larval insects feeding on root systems, I would fully expect that we can manage nutrition so that we don't have challenges with the larvae feeding on the root system. So can gypsum applications be used to rebalance the cation ratio of calcium and magnesium? Is there a limit to how much gypsum can be added at once and why? As calcium only moves through the xylem, why then are foliar recommendations made for calcium? All right, couple of questions here. Can gypsum applications be used to rebalance the cation ratio of calcium to magnesium on the cation exchange capacity in the soil. The answer is yes. It's particularly relevant when magnesium levels are high and ph is relatively high, because as you get to higher ph levels, then limestone doesn't release nearly as readily, whereas gypsum does tend to release and the sulfur tends to attach to the magnesium and move the magnesium out of the soil profile, creating room for the calcium. So it's a very effective tool. The highest application rates that I've seen be successful. There is some context here. Depending on moisture levels and soil types, I'm most comfortable in most crops in a neighborhood of about a thousand to fifteen hundred pounds per acre. And in some crops in some environments, we've gone up to 3,000 pounds per acre occasionally and a few exceptional occasions even higher. But you'll get a greater. You'll get a greater crop response from doing smaller applications more frequently. I would prefer £1,000 per acre once every six months to. Or let me say it this way, the crop economic response to an application every six months or even every 12 months is going to be significantly greater than trying to do a larger dose. All and that has to do with essentially constantly spoon feeding and metering out flushes of available calcium, rather than giving you a tremendous surge of available calcium all at once, and then nothing further after that. Is there a limit to how much gypsum can be added at once and why? The limitation is that you can create too high electrical conductivity from the abundance of sulfur and from the abundance of other available ions and salts that are released when gypsum is added. So you can get very high electrical conductivity and have the crop grow too fast. From a vegetative perspective, get very wide node spacing. And so the net effect is that you have an unhealthy crop response from excessive gypsum applications. Then the last question. As calcium only moves through the xylem, why then are foliar recommendations made for calcium? The recommendations for foliar calcium need to be chelated calcium. So if the calcium is chelated, then it can be absorbed by the leaf and moved through the phloem. But ionic calcium does not move through the phloem as we understand it. How do factors such as time of day and moon phase affect the performance of foliar sprays? Time of day is a significant influence and the greatest response. You want the. I used to think and perhaps there are energetic influences based on lunar phases. There are based on lunar phases. We do know that. But I think the greatest effectiveness of foliar applications is very simply determined by the duration of time that they can remain liquid on the leaf surface. And the. And this is a function of course of. Of the foliar applications point of deliquescence. It's a. It's a function of humidity in the atmosphere, wind conditions and environmental conditions and so forth. But because of that factor, the most effective time for foliar applications is in the evening. And it's not even close. There are. I worked with a team who did some extensive experimentation a couple of years ago and they were getting anywhere from three to five times better absorption of nutrients applied in the evening as compared to in the morning because that allowed the solution to remain moist on the leaf surface until the following morning after sunrise. So there were significant improvements. Improvements there phases have an effect both on nutrient absorption from the soil as well as from nutrient absorption from the foliars. I forget now which of which phase I think perhaps post New Moon is most effective. But the, the lunar phase effect is not nearly as significant as the time of day and it's not nearly as significant as proper design of foliar sprays. How can we get rid of vine weed or bindweed morning glory? Well, you can graze sheep, they'll take care of it. You can make sure that your soils do not have excess of potassium because it is a reflection of excess of potassium in the soil profile. So maybe that is inadequate calcium in ratio to potassium. Perhaps it's not enough manganese. There can be a number of pieces that are going on there, but those will be the soil electrical pieces that I would look at. Why do coddling moth? It just says worms. Why do worms attack apples? The apple orchard uses Whoops. Worms attack apples for the same reason as I was describing on the squash bug is because the apple is the weakest part of the plant. And here it says the apple orchard uses only compost and manure on the soil. There's the answer to your dilemma. If you're only using composted manure, that means you're probably getting excess of potassium depending on the source of manure. You're probably getting excess of nitrogen and you're not getting enough of the trace minerals that are needed for resistance. You need high levels of mangan, zinc, copper, cobalt, selenium, etc in the seeds and in the fruit themselves to have resistance to coddling moth. Regarding sugar molasses application, when is it an excess? How does it create a sugar junky effect on the soil? I don't know. When the excesses are present it is. There is partially a reflection of frequency time. I know from experience that we had with Tomato High tunnels and they were applying, I forget, I want to say it was something like 3 to 5 pounds of sugar per acre per week and it was enough to limit the crops calcium absorption because the soil biology was absorbing all the calcium that was being applied and preventing the crop from getting any. As soon as we discontinue the sugar applications, we got this tremendous surge in calcium availability. So the real, the real answer is that the best way to get sugar into the soil is to foliar feed plants to increase their photosynthesis. Then you don't create all of these imbalances and you amplify what the system wants to occur anyway. So sugar applications are a, they are a temporary band aid that you might use occasionally. But I'm not a fan of very frequent or very consistent. I'm not a fan of having sugar applications be a part of the protocol with the exception of getting it through plants. How do we manage slugs regeneratively in a cover crop fields? I know that by not using neonicotinoids I can build predator populations, but in the meantime I have some fairly severe slug damage. You will only have severe slug damage on seedlings and plants that do not have adequate levels of iron. Slugs don't have blood, they have. Ah, goodness. The name of the fluid that circulates oxygen for them escapes me right now. But it is a, it is a copper based molecule instead of being an iron based molecule. And as a result slugs are very susceptible to doses of excess of iron. When you think about slug bait, what is slug bait? Slug bait is ferric phosphate, it's iron phosphate. And when you have plants that have adequate or generous levels of iron in the SAP itself, not as reflected on a tissue analysis, your slug damage and population goes down significantly. Harriet Mello also gave a very in depth overview of why slugs are prevalent in certain conditions. In the course that she put together on Kind Harvest that is titled Carbon Microcycling, she has a more thorough and accurate explanation of slug susceptibility than any other that I've heard of. And there go the questions again. Is there a remedy for black spot on grapes? Yes, there is. And the answer is nutritional balance and microbiome balance. I can't be more specific than that. I don't know if it's cobalt, I don't know if it's manganese, I don't know what the combination of nutrients is. I simply know that when you do SAP analysis and you bring the nutrients into a Certain balance into optimal range balance, then black spot vanishes. Question on swd. Spotted wing Drosophila. What is the most important criteria in plant health to drive resistance to swd? Is it all related to brix level or is it potentially related to volatiles coming off the fruit? Brix level in early ripe fruit was 11.5. Later fully ripe fruit is 14.5. Cannot measure Brix leaves and brix in the leaves because cherry leaves are too dry. The answer is it doesn't. I'm going to answer it this way. It doesn't really matter whether it's brix levels or whether it's volatiles. I think we might be getting too deep into the, into the details or into the weeds here and we need to back up and look at the simple fundamentals. When you have susceptibility to Spotted wing Drosophila, it is because the berries are the weakest part of the plant nutritionally and they meet they need better mineral nutrition. I can state with certainty that it is possible to grow berries that are completely resistant to Spotted wing Drosophila because we have done so with blackberries, with raspberries, with blueberries, with strawberries, with cherries, with peaches. The list goes on and on. All these fruit that are supposedly very susceptible to Spotted wing Drosophila because of soft fruit. When you balance nutrition, you get the trace mineral profile correct. You get calcium levels to be in a generous supply. You no longer have SWD in some cases. I remember this one BlackBerry field that was across a farm roadway. The ends of the trellises were literally 30ft apart where you had blackberries on one side that were treated using regenerative nutrition system. They had no SWD and 30ft away, they never took the pickers into the field. They lost the entire crop to swd. So it was not because of the presence of the pest or the lack thereof. It was simply a reflection of nutritional balance. It's entirely possible. All right, I am switching from the chat to the Q and A. Here we go. Lots of questions here. Thank you all. Question from Mike. Hi Mike. What is the most practical way for those of us that farm multiple, sometimes many locations with several different varieties per location to conduct SAP sampling on our farms without generating a torrent of data which cannot be acted upon? How can we eat this? Allah. Awesome, awesome question, Mike. I. I am looking forward to revealing the next generation technology that's going to supersede SAP analysis sometime in the next 12 to 18 months. But the. The answer is, I would suggest we pick representative blocks that are a reflection of soil type, rootstock and variety. If it's possible to reduce the stream of data and manage a group of blocks instead of each individual block, I think we'll get 80% of the way there and get the results that we're looking for. And then we can zoom in on individual blocks if they prove to be problematic. Question from Charlotte what are the five best practices for ecological dry land less than 15 inches of precipitation management? Charlotte I don't think we can reduce, I don't think we can reduce ecosystems thinking down to five best practices, because there are no five best practices. I mean, we can talk about things from a foundational principle perspective of needing to keep soil covered, preserving soil moisture, improving soil aggregation, et cetera, et cetera. But the bottom line is we need to develop management systems that produce deep soil aggregation. And I'm talking, when I say deep soil aggregation, I'm talking to a depth of 35 to 40 inches, which by the way is not that difficult. But most of us have never seen it because it's impossible with the management systems that we are familiar with. In order to get soil aggregation to a depth of 35 to 40 inches, we need a diversity of plant species that are preferably or that are largely forbs or that where the, where the total population is dominated by Forbes, not by grasses and not by legumes. And the reason for that, as I understand it, is that Forbes, when you think about the root architecture of grasses versus the root architecture of Forbes, Forbes put the majority of their root, their root transmitted carbohydrates out through the root system as root exudates to feed soil biology. They don't preserve it in architecture like grasses do. So to build soil aggregation at depth and to build a large water holding capacity, which is necessary in these arid environments, we need to have a plant species population that is dominated by forbs, not legumes. And that's about the best answer I can give you for your question at the moment. Question from Carl Raising grass fed beef, Getting enough energy for a good finish is a challenge. What is the best way to maximize sugar content in forage? Carl that's a good question, but it's not the best question. A better question is what is the best way to maximize energy content in forage? And energy content and sugar content are not the same because energy content also includes the fat content. So we tend to not have lots of conversations in the industry about fat content of forages. But it's something that I've spent a lot of time thinking and working on when I was doing 100% grass fed dairy at work a decade or more ago. And the answer to both questions is the same. You increase the plant's photosynthesis. When you increase the plant's photosynthesis and you get more energy levels that will, that short term sugar will have a short term effect on sugar content, but that will have a long term cumulative effect on building the overall fat content. Because when plants have excess levels of energy, they store the excess in the form of fats, which is exactly what you want to see happen. So your target, if you're doing 100% grass fed beef, your target should be to have an overall forage index that has 6% fat on a dry matter basis. When you run a forage analysis through a lab Question from Paolo in foliar fertilization, when the fertilizer has extreme ph, is it appropriate to bring the PH to optimal values and how in these cases can the properties of the fertilizer deteriorate? It's challenging for me to answer that question in the abstract. I'm assuming you're referring to fertilizers that are acidic, that have acidic pHs, because usually there's only a very few fertilizers that have alkaline pHs. I guess there are a couple. When you shift the PH of a solution then you don't necessarily reduce its effectiveness as a result of the ph change, but you might reduce its effectiveness as a result of ion bonding. If you have, let's say you have a solution of phosphorus that is very acidic, this is an obvious example and you, you blend it with cations, you can have the phosphorus binding to the cations and reduce the effectiveness. So it's difficult for me to answer that question in the abstract but in general I would suggest exercising cation. Technical information on fertility and nutrition that I'm going to have to follow up with after this conversation. Question from Aaron. You have a mission to convert 80% of the world's farming land to regenerative agriculture by 2040. How do you feel that we are progressing towards that goal and how can we help? Thank you Erin. That's an awesome question. Thank you for contributing and volunteering to help. So the answer is I think it is going very well towards achieving that outcome. We have in the countries around the world that are the most progressive in adopting region of agriculture. We are at, you know, adoption is not linear. That's an important piece for us to keep in mind. Any new technology, whether it's adopting hybrid seed corn or whatever the case might be adoption has never been linear. There is always an adoption curve. It starts slowly and then it goes quickly. So the tipping point is somewhere between the neighborhood of about 15% to 18% adoption. When you have 15 to 18% of a given population of farmers adopting new innovations, new ideas, the rest of the population tends to change very quickly. And quickly, of course, is a relative term in the agricultural context. But inside of a decade, a decade to 15 years, well, in Australia, we have 10% or more, I think it's safe to say more at this point. Of all the rangeland and farmland in Australia is being managed with regenerative principles at this point. Now, Australia is probably a decade, 15 years ahead of the U.S. but we are catching up quick and there's a lot of momentum. So I'm really excited by how things are progressing. And the answer to the question of how can you help is one, by being a good example, by being an innovator, and two, by sharing your story, by sharing your success and your failures, by sharing what is happening on your farm, talking about it to your neighbors, to your community, and evangelizing it in a healthy manner. That's something that fits for you and your personality and the conversations you're comfortable having. That's the most powerful thing you can do, actually implement and then talk about it. You know, I started the podcast with the kind of thinking about the biblical commandment, if you will. It's not even just a narrative. It's a directive that we're given freely. You have received, freely share. I received so freely the wisdom from so many elders and mentors, and I wanted to share that and put that out in the world. And now that holds true for you as well. You have received. There is such an abundance of information available today that wasn't available a decade ago. There is an overwhelming amount of information on regenerative agriculture available online on YouTube and so forth. We can receive so much of that. And now it is our obligation and our opportunity to share and to pass that on. That's what you can do. Thank you. Question from John Warmerdam. Hi, John. Question for me. I had asked once if there is a limit to how much total nitrogen we should have on a SAP test. Even in a spring sample, we have a very high number, 10,000 parts per million, for example. I believe this is creating a dilution effect, so we have a tough time moving the needle on micronutrient applications. Is that theory sound? And do you have a solution to help get our micronutrient numbers right? I Think if I'm tracking with you, John, you're suggesting that you have high nitrogen concentrations in the early shoots in the spring. That is then creating a challenge for micronutrient movement. And what would those optimal levels be? John, this is an interesting conversation that we should perhaps dive into offline and I need to dig into a little bit further. But I would suggest that if you have 10,000. Even on a spring shoot sample, that is way too high and that that is going to contribute your, your micronutrient. Just, you can have a dilution effect in that the, the. You have vegetative growth that is growing very rapidly. But there's, there's a bit more to that story, I suspect, because there have been many occasions where we've observed that one trace mineral might not be an adequate supply or something is going on. Sometimes we add cobalt, for example, or we add manganese, and the levels of other trace minerals will jump four or five times. But those jumps are. I can't think of many scenarios where we have such a high nitrogen level. So perhaps I'm not understanding your question correctly, but I'd be happy to dig into that more deeply because that's an interesting thread to just follow up. I consistently see very high ammonium in our new leaves. On SAP testing, no nitrogen is being applied. So the assumption has been that these elevated levels are associated with heat and ammonia off gassing. The soil is sandy and well drained. The aphids also attack the new growth each year. Do you recommend any strategy to mitigate against or reduce the high ammonia levels in the leaves? So Darren, it's worth asking about the source of the ammonium and digging into that a bit more deeply. I hear you that it is just one particular cultivar. I'm assuming there are other varieties that are on similar soil types. But I would want to look at. There was. There are two main pieces I would look at. First is what does the carbon levels look like in that overall system and is carbon cycling well? Because if you have adequate levels of carbon in the soil profile, which translates to adequate levels of carbohydrates in the plant, then I would suspect that the plant would be able to metabolize and convert this ammonia very well. So a different way of saying it might be to say maybe this plant isn't so great at photosynthesizing for some reason. Perhaps it doesn't have enough carbon dioxide. Perhaps there are other nutritional imbalances that are affecting and influencing photosynthesis. So that's the first place that I would look. The Second place I would look is to ask the question, does this particular cultivar have particularly high requirements for the nutrients that are required to metabolize ammonium? Well, and those would be the nutrients that are required to metabolize, same as for nitrate, magnesium, sulfur, molybdenum, plus nickel for the urease enzyme. So we know that some varieties have much higher nickel requirements than others, some species have higher nickel requirements than others. And nickel, because of its consideration as a toxic element, is not something that's commonly considered in agronomy or can widely be used or recommended. But that might be something you want to pay attention to. Question from Andre. What microbes are mostly needed in the soil for microbiology other than directly for the plants, for example, cobalt, boronum, molybdenum, and which is the best way to provide them liquid, solid, and in which form? So, Andre, I think the more that I study the plant microbiome and the soil microbiome, the boundaries between plants and soils become increasingly indistinct to the point where they're almost entirely vanishing. It's very difficult to tell where the plant begins and where the soil ends. In fact, it's almost impossible. My point is I don't think we can create distinctions between trace minerals that are required for soil biology and the trace minerals that are required for the plant, because they're essentially the same. So what forms should be applied? You know, I've a lot of the reference materials I would refer you to Arden Anderson's book Science and Agriculture and Gary Zimmer's the Biological Farmer. Describe a lot of the different sources that are beneficial for soil profile. Perhaps I need to put together a series of blog posts on this as well. But in short, you want to apply forms that are readily available, and if you're doing soil applications, you need to find a form that you can distribute well. So if you're talking about cobalt and selenium and molybdenum, I generally tend to favor liquid forms over dry simply because we can get more uniform distribution. So it's a question of getting good distribution, which we can do better logistically with liquids than dries for some of those trace minerals. All right, I think I need to move faster with some of my questions here. Question from Stephen. For years I lived on clay soil and got very good at mineral balancing and flocculating that soil while increasing organic matter as it was in Costa Rica. So it was naturally high in sulfur, 300 plus parts per million. It could support incredible levels of organic matter, 11 plus percent. Now I have a plot of land near Perth, Australia and it's on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. Very sandy, lower in organic matter, totally different ball of wax. What are the lowest hanging fruit? First things that you would do for a sandy soil, We need to. I'm beginning to realize that I perhaps haven't done a good enough job of communicating the household organic matter cycles and the differences between soil microbial necromass in the top six inches and what happens below the top six inches. But the reality is those are two different systems that we should think of completely separately. They're related, but only very loosely. In the top six inches. The healthiest soils cycle carbon very rapidly, that is in the top six inches. But they store and sequester carbon from six inches to 40 inches deep. And what you want to see happening in a sandy soil is you want to cycle more carbon in the top six inches. But don't expect to preserve it, don't expect to store it there. You need to store it below that profile, which is, as I mentioned a little bit ago, is a function that is primarily contributed by Forbes, not by grasses and not by legumes. And yeah, that's, that's kind of. I don't know if I've fully answered your question, but it's. You asked a bit of an abstract question, so that's, I think that's the best abstract answer is you need to build soil carbon, but in two different systems. The top six inches. And what's below the top six inches. The top six inches and cycling a lot of microbial active carbon in the top 6 inches will give you a very fertile and healthy soil, even despite of being sandy. But what is below that? The remaining 34 inches or so below that, down to the 40 inch depth, that is what will give your sandy soil staying powerful. It's what gives it water holding capacity and is what drought proofs and moisture proofs a sandy soil. You need to farm a lot deeper than six inches. Question from Andre. How do we buffer 90 plus percent calcium base saturation ratio in the soil? You simply add more magnesium and the, the calcium levels will drop. But I would also ask what is the, what is the cec actually, what is the measured, not the calculated cation exchange capacity, but what is the measured cation exchange capacity? Because on sandy soils it's easy to be 90 plus percent base saturation calcium. And that's exactly where we need to be. We need, you need a minimum of 1000 parts per million calcium to grow really healthy crops. So on some sandy soils that'll be above at or above 90% base saturation but you can't afford to go below that without causing calcium deficiency problems. Follow up question on or repeat duplicate question I should say on slugs and snails. I think I've already answered that. Address iron and the problem disappears. How does hydrogen sulfide and irrigation or spray water affect plant nutrition? It shouldn't have a significant negative effect unless levels are very high. Question from Darren Is there anything we can do to mitigate coddling moth and fire blight on apples from a nutritional approach? Yes, fire blight is relatively easy. We have if you ask any of our consulting team at aea we have a fire blight protocol that we put together. It's been challenging to get to develop good research on it because the we we have worked with third party researchers to to test it in the field and then where we were testing it in the years that we were testing it we didn't get strong fire blight pressure. So we don't have great scientific data on our fire blight protocol but we have an abundance of very good anecdotal experiential data on it and collimoth is a big bit more challenging and more difficult. Responds particularly to boron in addition to magnesium, sulfur molybdenum but there's good levels of those nutrients is very high in the bud and in the blossom and in that early fruit so often that requires fall application the year before getting the greatest crop responses Question from Colin I'm in Central Indiana with 40 plus inches of rainfall and it's been a wet spring. Hasn't it ever first year using cover crops and trying to eliminate herbicides using covers as mulch. The mulch has held in too much water and I have bad emerged large wet holes in my cornfields that were roller crimped just after planting. Should I give up on eliminating herbicides and go thinner on the COVID crops biomass for the first couple years until I get better infiltration or what would you suggest? Oh sorry I miss saw your name not Colin but Cole. Hi Cole. You ask a very specific question that is challenging to answer without actually being there walking the field looking at the soil and better understanding exactly what's happening and what's going on. I think the answer to your question is probably not. I don't I think the the benefits you're experiencing a challenging situation that emerged as a result of weather in one very challenging spring. But cover crops particularly rye can actually help to suck moisture out and to reduce susceptibility to excess water. So I. Without knowing more information, I'm hesitant to give you any specific advice or direction. I think it'd be valuable to have someone come out and look at your fields, see exactly what's happening, see what's going on. But I wouldn't just immediately jump to the conclusion that doing less cover crops is better and could have avoided the problems for you, because I don't think that's necessarily the case. Question from Jerry. When top dressing urea to corn, do it in liquid form and also add a carbon source at the same time. Yes, you can do liquid or dry, but liquid you can add more goodies to the mix and get a better crop response. We have a foxtail problem. Will it improve as soil health improves or are there other ways to get ahead of it? I'm coming to the conclusion that foxtail and other grassy weeds are a reflection of poor soil aggregation combined with excess of nitrogen. And that can happen in completely organic systems. Excessive nitrogen for the soil microbiome can can come from having a crop rotation that is dominated by legumes and by legume cover crops. So I think you can get rid of foxtail, but it is a question of what your cropping system and crop rotation looks like and cover crops, etc. Question from Jonathan. In high magnesium soils with a ph of 8, should I be trying to adjust ph and if so, how? Yes, Jonathan, there's context missing. What is your cec? What are your parts per million of nutrients like? But for most crops I would suggest yes, you should consider using gypsum and see if you can get the PH lower. Now have to move around a little bit here. I'm sitting on gravel. The seat becomes a little uncomfortable after a while. Ph adjustments and adjusting calcium magnesium ratios. We've had a couple questions on this topic so far and it's an important topic because balancing these and give us some very short term immediate crop effects. And so from an economic and have these conversations. But it's also important to mention that these severe imbalances are a reflection of an imbalanced crop system of the plants that we're growing above the soil surface. Because I'm of the persuasion that, you know, there have been conversations in the microbiology and microbiome community for decades that say that, well, when you balance the microbiome, when you have an optimally healthy microbiome, they will change the soil ph and they will change mineral availability. And yes, they absolutely will because we have seen that occur on many occasions. But it doesn't always happen. It just happens some of the time and other times, on other occasions, in other fields, it doesn't happen at all. And so why the differences? When I look back over the last 15 years, I'm coming to the conclusion that the differences, the reason it works in some environments and ecosystems and not in others, is a reflection of the plants and the plant diversity. Do we have a diversity of different plants from different plant families supporting a diverse microbiome? Or if we have a monoculture of grasses or a monoculture of legumes, or only have grasses and legumes and from a couple of different families in our system, then our soil chemistry is going to become increasingly imbalanced. So I think it is accurate that the microbiome can change the soil mineral profile and can change mineral balance, but only when it's supported and guided with the intention of that outcome. And only if we have diverse ecosystem, if we have diverse plant species, if you only have a handful of plant species and all from a couple of different families, a couple of different groups, you shouldn't expect to get those outcomes. So we can adjust soil chemistry in the short term, but if we want to have long term sustained soil ecosystems that don't constantly require those chemistry inputs, that's going to require changing and managing those species, the plant species that are on that soil. Question from Eric. Many groups share the goal of helping food quality be better measured, revealed, and having that information be much more available to end consumers. At this point, in your opinion, how do you predict that this change will most likely arrive in the food system? What timeline? Good questions, Eric. Well, there's a question of degree. To what degree will we have transparency and availability of this information? And to, and to what depth will this information be available? What's the depth of phytonutrient profiles, et cetera. So Peter Diamandis has this quote. The best way to accurately predict the future is to create it yourself. And we're in that situation. I feel like I'm in that situation a little bit with the whole conversation around nutrient density. A decade ago, I believe there were a few people in the space who were talking about nutrient density and the need to develop instruments to measure nutritional profiles. And they communicated that we were a couple of years away from having one of those instruments available. Well, it's now a decade later, and I don't think most of the players in the space are any closer than they were a decade ago. So we, we've publicized that we've made an investment in a company called Croptakes and It's premature for me to make any. We're going to be making some formal announcements here in the coming months, but the short version is they have demonstrated success and capacity that they can measure mineral profiles and they can measure phytonutrient profiles. Now to what degree of what phytonutrients and what importance? There's still a lot of homework that needs to be done, but there is going to be a fairly high degree of transparency and readily accessible data available for anyone who wants it, anyone who's willing to go out there and get it. It'll be at a very affordable price point sometime in the next 24 to 36 months and I'm quite excited about that. Question from Francisco on what is my opinion on grafted trees? You remember that I had mentioned they didn't have the same magnetism or electrical effects or antenna effects and didn't cause rain as non grafted trees would? I still think that is the case, but I don't particularly have a negative opinion of grafted trees. I just think that we have to recognize what their limitations are and manage them accordingly. Question from Calvin hi John of Tripe to give several organic and inorganic fertilizers to my tomato plants, but the Brix always remains at 5%. No changes in all the crops that I've grown. Please assist in how to raise up the brix levels. So I would suggest again not knowing much of what we've been trying, but I would suspect the reason you're still stuck in low brix level mode is because you do not have good biology. It's not a function of what fertilizers you provide. It's a function of is the plant absorbing its nutrition in the form of microbes, living microbes and endophytes? When that happens, brix levels are going to start increasing. So you need to start thinking about plant nutrition in terms of biology and not in terms of fertilizers and chemistry. Nutrition Follow up Question from Joe can we apply a liquid chelated iron into the furrow with seed to prevent slug damage on wheat seedlings? I would expect that you could. I would expect that you could also use seed flare as a seed treatment because that contains some iron. I think you could also use the iron as a seed treatment itself and if you miss those options and opportunities, I think you could also use iron as a foliar, I mean iron, high quality iron that is in the reduced form that is chelated is actually very absorbable by plants and they respond to it very quickly. Question from Darren Darren Johnston, you asked some interesting questions. Darren. Levels of nutrients, pesticides, insecticides and toxic contaminants in food are not visible to consumers. Therefore, it is harder to sell the value of organics and regionally grown products unless the consumer has a pre existing belief that these products are better than commercially grown. Are there efforts underway to make these levels visible to consumers at the point of sale to influence their purchasing behavior? The answer is yes. There are several enterprises that have just come out of stealth mode. I would suggest you might want to have a conversation with Joni Kinewalt Moore. One of her enterprises is named Snacktivist and another. They just rebranded their second organization. I forget the name, but they are actually working on a level 0 blockchain to provide complete transparency of farmer information and data to the consumer level or to any level in the supply chain that the grower wishes to reveal it. The grower has complete control over their data and what they wish to reveal, at which levels and what they don't. And then of course the next piece becomes the actual data collection itself, which is becoming increasingly affordable and increasingly readily accessible. So there's going to be a lot more announcements around data transparent as well as the absence of toxins, molds, mycotoxins, pesticides, et cetera over the course of the next 12 to 18 months. Question from sue how important do you think it is to remedy insufficiencies in soil biology compared to fixing symptoms seen in plants? I don't see a division between those two. Those two seem like the same thing to me because I think about insufficiencies of soil biology as resulting in the symptoms that are observed in plants. So it's just, I think the question you're asking is just which link on the chain do you start with first? And the answer is both. When you start with the link of the chain that is plants, if you have insufficiencies of plants and you put on full year applications of nutrients, then the benefit of that approach is there is an immediate economic crop response in the first growing season. If you start with soil biology and remedying the soil biological situation, there can also be an immediate effect. Sometimes the effect is more delayed. But I'm coming to the to the realization that if we want to fix soil biology, perhaps the optimal pathway is not to add more biology or add different biology or to add different inoculants. But perhaps what we should be thinking about is how do we add more different plant groups and more different plant families, because after all, plants are vectors for biology. Every individual seed of corn has 9 billion with a B microorganisms inside of it. So it is the seeds and the plants that are vectors for certain microbial populations. And if we want to regenerate soil biology, perhaps we should do that with plants and not just with products in a container. Question from Rob have I talked with Dan Miller since the podcast? No, not yet, but I will be seeing him next week. I'll see what kind of response he got from that. Question from Bryce hi John, could you expand on a comment you made about grafted trees having a permanent hormone imbalance? My goodness, that's been years ago since I talked about that. You guys are digging up the corners of the Internet. If that's the case, do you think it's possible to keep ungrafted fruit trees at manageable trellis height through branch count, fruit load and attrition? Does this also apply to root cuttings or only because of the mixed graft genetics? So my thinking has evolved on this as I've learned more about rootstocks, I've learned more about different tree and plant genetics. The the context for my comments about there being a permanent hormonal imbalance was in the context of trying to maintain a tree in a healthy frame without continuous pruning. And which I think is I, I, I've really shifted my thinking on this over the years. I now think that it shouldn't be a goal if we want to harvest fruit in significant commercial quantities. I don't think limiting pruning should be an objective because the goals of a fruit producer and the goals of a tree are only somewhat loosely aligned. They're not perfectly aligned. A tree trying to think of how to say this well, but a a tree wants to grow a healthy, vigorous tree and also reproduce. A farmer or grower wants to produce a commercially viable crop of fruit and also have a healthy tree. So the, the goals are similar but perhaps in reverse order where the objective of pruning is to facilitate optimal fruit production. So the grower wants to grow optimal fruit and the tree, left to its own devices, will balance a plant frame as it deems optimal. And that could be at the expense of fruit production. So infrequently is so there are, there are trees just as with any other plants, there are peas and soybeans. All across the spectrum of dwarfism to long leggy having multiple node spacing. There's a tremendous diversity of self regulated hormonal balance in many plant species. Peas, soybeans, peaches, apples, et cetera. And what Our idea is or not our idea, but what is a state of optimal health from a disease and insect resistance perspective is usually associated with root dominance and on some varieties, some cultivars, that is best facilitated with pruning. So that's my more evolved answer from or more more evolved perspective from how it shifted from where it was a decade ago. I have non GMO corn. Who's this from? Follow up question from Cole. I have none. GMO corn that was planted into a mix of tritical vetch, clovers and turnips. It was roller crimped right after planting the vetch and tritical didn't terminate perfectly, but the corn seems to be coming through and isn't smothered. Should I worry about trying to get the covers terminated somehow? Or do you think the corn can work symbiotically with the vetch and a small amount of triticale? Yes, it can, but particularly the vector and triticula. I wouldn't be hugely worried about it, but what I would be more concerned about is, given the situation that you described earlier, take a shovel and check the root systems. One of the things that I've observed is in that particular context, you can sometimes end up with a plant that vegetatively looks strong but doesn't have a vigorous root system because of a whole number of factors that are too much to get into right now. But when the plant is growing through a cover crop mat of residue and also has green plants that it is in close proximity with, it perceives that it needs to grow vegetatively very rapidly and it grows vegetatively at the expense of the root system. So you end up with a stand and with a plant that looks reasonably nice but doesn't have a significant root system and that can really cost you later in the season when you need it. So check the root systems. And if the root systems are weak, I would strongly recommend, I would strongly recommend doing something, a foliar application or some type of application to try to build root systems more aggressively while the plants are still small. Question from Doug what are your thoughts on the practices recommended by a Green New Deal? I don't know anything about them or Agenda 2030. I know less about them. Is governmental intrusion into our farm and farming practices the future and unavoidable? I think government intrusion into our farm and farming practices is present, not in the future. And it is avoidable if you're willing. Well, actually it's only avoidable in a very loose sense because it is very pervasive. But when you think about our farming landscape right now is shaped almost entirely by policy right now. And the way it's designed, it is not designed for the benefit of farmers. And this is I'm, of course, speaking in the North American and the US Context specifically here, which I'm most familiar with. Our agricultural policy landscape at the moment is not designed so much for the benefit of farmers as it is for agribusiness corporations. It's designed to protect commercial interests other than the interests of the individual farmer themselves. And that could be a whole interesting conversation that we could get into. But so I think policy has shaped the agriculture that we have today and will without question, continue to shape it significantly in the future. If. Oh my goodness, Doug, if you were the agricultural advisor to the next president, what would you be telling him to focus on the top agricultural issues? Well, this is not the appropriate venue to get into that conversation in detail because this is something I've given a lot of thought to for years. And so I don't have a simple answer. I have a thorough answer. The two are not the same. But it is striking to me that we do not have or don't behave as if we had a national food security policy. We don't behave as if food were connected to health and to public health, and we don't behave as if though food quality and nutrition actually mattered. So what we have is we have a cheap food policy rather than a nutritious food policy. And I could continue on in this vein for a little bit, but you get the idea in general of where my head is at, and this is something that I thought deeply about. The reality is, with careful policy management and guidance, I believe we could facilitate a significant transition in agriculture in the United States that would be incredibly healthy and beneficial to growers from a financial and economic perspective, as well as more importantly, equally importantly, from the perspective of providing nutritious food for our population and for the world population that has nutritional integrity. And that's where we really need to be thinking about. Question from Paolo. In berries, is it good to have some nitrates and ammonium in the plant SAP, or is it better to have zero? Our target would be to have abundant levels of total nitrogen, but to have nitrate and ammonium levels be at zero. And that's where we have the best disease and insect resistance. Question from Dr. Hi, John, I'm a student in Turkey and I really want to make an impact like you did to the US And Australian people. This is an Ask Me Anything webinar. So what do you suggest or can you show me a way? I think you are the best in agriculture. Thanks for the compliments. That's pretty high praise. I'm not sure it's exactly true. I always listen to your podcast and watch your videos. We live in a world. You know, I'm reminded of. I had a podcast interview yesterday, and in the course of the conversation, one of the. One of the discussions that came up was, how can we. How can each of us as individuals make an impact and make a difference? And I was reminded of this book that I read a couple of decades ago. It was by a Christian apologist in the Roman Empire era named Justin Martyr. And the one piece that I remember very clearly, most clearly, perhaps, is the title of the book. The title was we don't speak great things, we live them. And I think what has allowed my work to. To or my work, it's really. It's our work, our work collectively as a company at aea. To have such a reach and influence is a combination. It's a combination of several things. One is the place that we come from within, a place of authenticity and a truly desire to help people. And secondly, it is a place of practice, solid practice, supported by theory rather than theory supported by practice. And so if there's any advice that I could provide, it would be that you actually need to get experience doing it. And once you have that experience, to freely share and to widely share. Question from Dan. Can there be too much fully applied micronutrients which can become toxic, or can a plant regulate how much it takes up. Sam? Hey, John, we can't hear you. Would you be able to turn off your video? Well, I excess some with a foliar application. They don't have to do with soil applications. Sure. All right, testing this now. Can you hear me clearly now with the video turned off? Yeah, that's better. Thank you. All right, thanks for letting me know. Let's go back to the Q and A here. So the question of altitude, I haven't considered altitude. I don't know. There would be differences in solar radiation intensity and differences in the qualities of photons coming in, but I don't know the answer to that question. It'd be a fun conversation or fun rabbit hole to go down. Perhaps include a couple of folks on lighting and how you can make plants more responsive to different wavelengths of light, which is, I think, where we would. The direction we would probably need to go based on different nutritional profiles. So if you have a plant that has generous levels of iron, it will tend to have A broader range of carotenoids, which results in the interception of more different wavelengths and a better photosynthesis. So that'd be something interesting to play with, but I don't have a better answer for you than that at the moment. It'd be something interesting to explore. Question from Andrew. A follow up question to my comments on soil balancing on calcium. The total cation exchange capacity is in excess of 40 and the Melek 3 calcium is in excess of 10,000 parts per million. So I was asked a couple of questions on calcium balancing. Now, I don't recall exactly which one this refers to, but it's very challenging to try to. If you have excess of calcium in that situation, it's very challenging to try to resolve that with mineral balancing alone by, by adding acidities, let's say sulfur, for example. It's much more rewarding and economically feasible and realistic to try to bring about balance by changing the plant species and influencing the microbiome that way, which will bring about a change in the mineral balance. All right, Question from John Pierce. Hi John, you'd mentioned either lime or gypsum being potentially oxidizing. It would be limestone in this case, not gypsum. Calcium carbonate, the carbonate component has an oxidizing effect. Are there any considerations to working around that? Yes, the consideration is simply materials that have an oxidizing effect or practices or any influences which have an oxidizing effect are not inherently bad. They simply need to be balanced out with equivalent balances on the reducing end of the spectrum. So perhaps that is a function of a crop diversity mix. Perhaps that's a function of a specific cover crop. Perhaps it is a function of irrigation and water management. It's simply that they need to be balanced out on the other end of the spectrum. Question from John. Have you heard of anyone successfully injecting nutrients directly into the tree, such as drilling a hole and injecting chelated nutrients in the hole for dispersal on the SAP? I haven't heard of anyone attempting to do that either successfully or unsuccessfully. That doesn't feel like a great idea to me. Just intuitively the question that I would ask is why? Why is the soil rhizosphere or the leaf canopy so dysfunctional that that is such a high labor, high energy effort would be worthwhile? Seems to me like we're developing, we're shooting for the wrong target if this is our approach. But I'm, of course I'm missing context, I'm sure, for what exactly is going on here. But seems to me we'd be able to come up with more effective solutions than injecting nutrients into a tree trunk. Question from Paolo Blueberries show manganese and aluminum excess. How can I mitigate this? Soil pH is 5 5. You can. The the manganese is a reflection of soils that are very reduced, which is good because this is what the blueberries require. I'm curious if you're also seeing high levels on iron, but you can, you can simply reduce manganese availability by slightly increasing soil pHs and by also perhaps by managing irrigation water. If your so if your soils are very reduced, perhaps they're very wet and very waterlogged, that will tend to increase manganese availability. If you simply keep soil a little bit on the drier side, that will reduce manganese availability. If you add a slight oxidizing agent, such as a very low dose calcium carbonate, which will also have the effect of increasing ph very slightly, that will also have an effect on manganese availability. So those would be some of the tools that I might try, depending on what fits the context. Question from Eric do high voltage power lines affect crop health and production? It would seem, Eric, that they do affected in some slight ways, but not so significant in most cases that it's particularly problematic, or at least not in ways that we fully understand at this point. Question from Barry Is there any documented or proven nutrient imbalance solution to ash dieback? I'm not familiar with that disease, so I don't know the answer to that question off the top of my head. Barry but you know, I speak with a lot of confidence that as a result of the last few almost two decades of experience, I haven't observed a single plant disease yet that doesn't respond to nutritional balancing. So I don't know the answer in detail, but in concept I'm quite certain that there is an answer that if we do address nutritional balance, that you can overcome ash dieback or practically any other plant disease. Question from Christy how do you control thrips nutritionally? You make sure that the plants have balanced nitrogen profiles and have balanced carbohydrate, have very good levels of photosynthesis and give them a very high sugar content, very high brix levels inside the plant. You will not have thrips showing up. Question from Darren how successfully are foliar applied nutrients taking up, taken up through tree pores and lentils on branches when dormant? Quite successfully, actually. The next question is probably going to be what are the mechanisms for that and how does that work? And I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that they are. Some of the original research that was done on plant absorption of foliar applied nutrients was commissioned by the Atomic Energy Commission back in, I want to say, the late 40s or early 50s, thereabouts. And the investigators were Harold Witwer and Tookie. I actually think I wrote a blog post about their work quite some time ago, so you can find it on john kempf.com and they were utilizing radioactive isotope tracers and doing tracer studies, and they were able to document quite efficient absorption of foliar applied nutrients. Well, I say foliar applied nutrients applied to trees that were dormant in the bark and branches and trunk. So it can be very effective. Question from Jerry Daniels. How closely is the rumen of a cow compared to the biology of the soil? And in the thought process, can we feed both in similar ways? Well, I would say that speaking from a conceptual perspective, from a first principle perspective, the. The similarities and the parallels exceed the differences significantly. There are differences, certainly, but there are also many similarities, that the soil microbiome should be the digestive system and the digestive process of plants assimilating and providing nutrients for those plants. And there's a great deal of overlap in the species and there is a tremendous amount of overlap in the environmental considerations, the environment considerations that soil microbiome needs to thrive compared to the rumen microbiome. So it's. It's a very useful analogy to think about. All right, I think that wraps it up. There's one last question here in the Q and A. Are there any indicators that could be measurable, could be measurable that are impacted by the region of agriculture approach? Yes, there are a number of indicators. We could look at indicators in soils, we can look at indicators in plants, we can look at indicators in human health and livestock health. So I'll just. As one indicator that I think is a summary indicator of many. We could look at soil aggregation at depth. How many of us have good crumb structure and good aggregation to a depth of 12 inches, never mind 40 inches. And what is needed to get that to a depth of 40 inches? I've been surprised to learn in the last couple of years that getting soil aggregation at depth is actually not difficult. It's not any more difficult than producing plants that are resistant to diseases and insects with nutrition management, which at my mind in this point is quite easy and producing remarkable soil health is similarly quite easy. It just takes a very different approach. You know, in the native prairies, I learned just recently in a conversation with Christine Jones, the native prairies we, the prairies were described by the dominance of plant species that were present, the dominance of grass species that were present. We call them the tall grass prairies or the short grass prairies. So we think of the prairies as being dominated by grasses, which they may have been in terms of plant population, but they were not dominated in terms of species diversity. A number of the native prairies that have been studied, one of them that she described, they found the presence of 1600 plant species in a fairly small geographic area. And a minority of those species, a tiny minority of those species, were grasses, so. And the majority were forbs. And as we learn more about the contributions of different plant families, it's becoming increasingly clear that if we want to build soil aggregate stability and soil health at depth and build these amazingly resilient soils, the pathway is not that difficult, actually. It's simply that we need to include dozens of plant species from very different groups of plants that have a very diverse microbiome, and that's how we build soil aggregation at depth. So I think that is. I'm going to call that a wrap. There are a few other questions that aren't particularly a fit because they require more information and for me to get more information to be able to answer the questions well. So I'll follow up with some of you directly after this, after this webinar. So thank you all for being here. I hope you found the information valuable and useful. Thank you for your questions and I look forward to chatting with you more again in the future. Have an awesome growing season. Thank you all.