Ask Me Anything with John Kempf - July 18

Hi friends, welcome to our webinar or Ask Me Anything session this afternoon. It's the middle of the summer, it's the 18th of July. It's an absolutely beautiful day and I know that we have wide variation in weather all across the country. So there's lots of interesting challenges that people are having. There is this is the first Ask Me Anything webinar that is not publicly announced or I should want to say publicly. It hasn't. We haven't posted it on social media. This has been strictly internal AEA newsletter only and we intend to continue that doing that in into the future. So there were a few questions that were submitted in advance and I'm going to dive into those. My goodness. Looks like we have quite a few questions that were sent in in advance actually. So I'm going to go through these. I expect a lot of questions today. I'm going to try to move fairly quickly. I know I love the explanations are they're important, but I'm going to try to keep things brief where I can. The first question that came through, what do you recommend for ideal potassium management for crops that fruit continuously, such as zucchini and peppers? The answer is high levels of manganese. Elevated levels of manganese allow the plant to serve or serve in the plant as a potassium thermostat to a degree and allow the plants to self regulate their potassium absorption and utilization. Second question, is there an attritional cause for individual grapes ripening on a bunch much faster than others with 30 plus days difference between ripening times of the individual berries? It makes harvest timing a big challenge. Ooh, this is a good one. Yes, there is. This is related can be related sometimes to insect challenges, can also be related to temperature extremes during blossoming and pollination. And we have some previous experience with this. I'm trying to remember back. If I recall correctly, our solution was elevated levels of boron and manganese. In particular, when we got calcium balanced out, we got those trace minerals balanced out. We no longer had the variation in berry size even when we had temperature extremes during blossoming and pollination. Third question, do plants have the ability to regulate mineral nutrition they absorb through foliar sprays or are they forced to absorb what is present? I don't know that I would use the term forced to absorb. It depends of course on the form of nutrient that is applied because many of the nutrients are not particularly soluble. It depends on if you're applying soluble nutrients and so forth. But in general the plants will desire to absorb. They are designed and Configured and they to actively absorb nutrients through the leaves and they are usually non selective. So it is possible to. It's quite easy actually to create toxicities and to create excesses with foliar application. So we do have to be cautious to not, not over apply. Yeah, I think I'm good just hearing my children and hearing some of the children in the room next door. Wanted to make sure the rooms, the doors are locked in. All right, next question. What may be possible, a possible cause for leaves developing a twisted petiole and turning themselves upside down. I've seen this in several occasions. There's a couple of tomato cultivars that do this quite readily. See it most commonly on tomatoes. Potatoes. Don't see it so much in tree food, although I've also seen it on nut trees. And it can be. There are some herbicides that can produce this effect, some very light doses of herbicide residue. So if you see it very uniformly across an entire block, that would be one of the things that I would consider. It can also be produced by a combination of very low levels of calcium and very low levels of zinc. And I would suspect there's probably other nutrient combinations that can cause it as well. But I would particularly look at calcium, zinc and possibly herbicide. Residential question from Davis Stella. Why do native plant communities fend for themselves so well but our commercial crops take so much effort from the farmer to be healthy and productive. The wild land around my farm is lush, vibrant and healthy while my crops look quite unhealthy in comparison and oh boy. Well, broadly it's because our agricultural systems and the way we've managed our soils, we haven't managed our soils for them to be healthy and to produce disease resistant crops. So when you met once, once you manage mineral attrition of the soil itself, mineral balance and microbial balance, your crop should be as healthy as the wild ecosystem. And there's also. There is also a genetic component. What are the genetics of the plants that you are producing? Are they optimal for your environment and ecosystem? But there should not. You should be able to produce domesticated plants in a cultivated scenario that are as healthy as the wild ecosystem that is around you. And then there's a follow up question. Why is liming of the soil a necessity in many operations? Obviously it adjusts ph as needed calcium. But how has our crop production evolved to need what seems like a significant soil modification across the board? The most, the most common reason why liming is needed on a regular basis. For the record, liming is not needed on a regular basis on farms where the soil ecosystem is managed well. We work with many soils that have a history of intense liming applications or where it's common in the area to put on regular limestone applications. And once you shift how you manage the soil's fertility, the need for regular limestone applications disappears. And there are several reasons why it disappears. But I'm going to leave that for another for another moment. For right now I will say that the reason regular liming is a necessity on many operations is because many fertilizers are very potent acidifiers, as is liquid manure and a couple of other inputs as well. So if you are regularly adding liquid manure, if you're regularly adding acidic fertilizers, chemistry fertilizers, then they will create the need for regular limestone applications to purely from a PH perspective, once you start looking at remaining mineral balance balancing biology, that need disappears Question from Kevin Royer hi Kevin, can farms switch to regenerative organic farming from conventional without getting premium pricing for their product? Short answer is yes. I've interviewed many farmers in the podcast and we work with many farmers who do not receive premiums. And then the follow up question is is there enough yield boost or cost savings to make the investment in the change worthwhile? And the answer is a resounding yes. Without question. There is a very tiny minority of the growers we work with who receive premiums. If I had to guess, I would say off the top of my head, it's it's less than 10% for sure. It's probably in the 5 to 7% range at best. The majority of the growers that we work with are getting rewarded for the transition for the work that they're doing purely based on improved crop performance and improve quality, improve yields, etc. Question from Mads Gerner I'm starting a small farm on on 7 hectares in total, combining intensive market gardening with perennial fruiting crops. We have 50 plus different species and many different cultivars. Does it make sense to use SAP in this context? Certainly not on all crops across the board I would expect. We had one of our consultants worked with a group of groups, growers. This is now probably close to a decade old information, so we need to update this, but they were working with greenhouse tomatoes, small scale greenhouse tomatoes, and working with that crop and observing the economic crop response that they were able to produce. They determined that it requires a commercial crop value of $5,000 or greater in order to justify the use of SAP analysis based on the improved crop performance that can be resulting from it. From a purely economic dollars and cents perspective, I would suspect the cost of shipping has increased since then. I would suspect the use of season long SAP analysis might be a bit more and I don't know if if that tracks with with what the crop value has been, but I think generally you could say seven to $10,000 crop value is somewhere the ballpark of what is needed to justify the use of season long SAP analysis. Question from Henry Peters what could be the possible causes for macadamia trees to have a higher than normal brix reading? For example 20 to 25 and the young and old leave nutrient levels on a SAP analysis seem well balanced, but the trees are not looking healthy at all. Loss of many old leaves, low harvest, and the farm has very poor water quality. There's a long list of things that could be possible causes. I wrote a blog post on why we do not use bricks analysis as a management tool. If you just go over to my blog@john kemp.com and do a search for bricks or look at the the tag index, look at the library and looks for bricks readings, you'll find a couple of the blog posts that I wrote on bricks and I I've given the answer there in that blog post and it could be dehydration. Could be dehydration because of poor irrigation water quality. There's quite a long list of possible factors that can lead to an artificially inflated brix reading. Oh my goodness, 43 questions. That happened quick. I I do enjoy all the questions, so thank you, but I'm I'm going to try to keep moving here. Question from Catalan can we treat blueberry scorch virus through nutrition? The answer is yes. Virus and viral expression responds in particular to elevated levels of, or I should say generous levels of selenium and molybdenum and perhaps some of the other very high atomic weight trace minerals. But the the one reference that I've been able to find in the literature for viruses generally is selenium. We know that zinc also has a has a contributing role as well. So the short answer is yes, you can manage viruses with nutrition management, and it takes particularly abundant levels of the trace mineral metals to accomplish that. Are there any cover crops that can be planted? Question from Dennis Are there any cover crops that can be planted in front of CC to help with rootworm control? I'm not sure exactly what CC is, but root worm makes me think that it's perhaps corn cover crops for rootworm control? I can't think of any off the top of my head although I would suspect there probably are some, I just don't know what they are. And I will also say that you can balance the minerals and the nutrition inside the seed with seed flare and make sure that the seed and the young seedling has generous levels of magnesium, sulfur, aluminum and boron. And perhaps also use a couple of immune elicitors and get effective control of root worm using an attritional approach in the season even if you don't have a cover crop ahead of it. Question from Carolyn Skimming this quickly, My plants are getting munched on I think by snails. So after listening to your recent Ask Me Anything, I applied some foliar iron and now have pretty happy plants. My question is about tomato and geraniums that are getting either leaves or flowers eaten by worms. Do you have any suggestions to what inputs these plants might be missing or what they might have too much of? It's a good question Carolyn. I would suggest that you look at our webinar on the Plant Health Pyramid. I give some very specific recommendations for managing magnesium, sulfur and molybdenum and boron and I think that will solve your problem. Question from Peter if applying a foliar feed of magnesium sulfur mo to boost plant immune system, what form of these elements would be best and what is the ideal part per million for the spray makes to be the context is recently Albrecht Mineral Balance Soil Soil Biology inoculated with Johnson sue compost extract trying to prevent Allium leaf miners and flea beetles and young Brassica transplants in the early spring. So Peter, the easy answer for your question is look at our product. We have a product at Advancing Eco Agriculture that is called Photo Magic and we put Fotomag together specifically as the solution for this problem. Question from Anthony hi Anthony, if a tree has a fungal or bacterial issue, can raising foliar nutritional copper above normal levels with foliar spray reduce the need for copper fungicides? What are the negative consequences of raising leaf copper levels above normal levels? A couple of good questions Anthony. In general, yes, you can use copper as a nutrient and get copper nutrition inside the leaf and it will have similar bactericidal fungicidal effects as copper that is applied on the leaf surface. However, obviously much lower application rates are required in order to produce this this beneficial effect inside the plant. And what are the negative consequences? It depends on how high you go. You can easily go three to four times higher than the common recommended levels with no particular downsides that I'm aware of. At least you have to go really high you have to go to levels above 30 parts per million before I'm aware of there being any particular detrimental downsides and those elevated levels above 30 parts per million. I don't, I don't know this for certain about plants and plant microbiomes. I'm speculating at this point. I know that in soils when you go above 30 parts per million, you begin really compromising the microbiome that's in the soil profile. And I suspect there's probably a similar threshold in plants. It would, it would seem logical that that would be the case, but I don't know that for certain. So, so that's the one piece that I would keep in mind. Question from Paul can we talk about fungal to bacterial ratios? I speak about fungal to bacterial ratios in some depth in one of my webinars on YouTube where I talk about how to build soil organic matter quickly. And the short version is with my current level of understanding that might be very. I might have a very different answer to this question in a year or two from now once we have the DNA lab operational and are generate able to generate lots of data on the soil microbiome. But as of this moment I'm much more concerned or think it's important to pay much more attention to absolute levels of fungal and bacterial populations rather than just pure to the ratio. Because the reason I say that is because the total levels of both fungi and bacteria in most soils are so abysmally low that it's completely pointless to talk about a ratio. If, if we think about it on a scale of 0 to 100 and we want the levels of both bacteria and fungi to be at 100 and on a one to one ratio, it's pointless to be squabbling about having a less than ideal ratio when fungi is at 5 and bacteria are at 1 or vice versa. Where fungi is at 1 and bacteria are 5 and say, there are some who say, oh well, you have a bacterially dominated soil and that's the cause of all your problems. No, that's not the cause of all the problems. The cause of many problems is that we don't have nearly enough fungi or bacteria in that ecosystem. And before we should can engage in a conversation about ratios, we first need to have a conversation about total levels. And the other point is that the, the bacterial fungal biomass ratios, I mean the microbiome is determined by plants. If you want to change the microbiome, change the plant species that's growing. That's a bit of an oversimplification, but there's a There's a great deal of foundational truth there. Question from Luke how do Brix levels affect lepidopter larvae in almonds? The same as they do and the other larvae and other plants? I would refer you to Tom Dijkstra, webinar on our YouTube channel, where he goes into some detail. The short answer is when you get Brix levels and leaves again, as long as it's not affected by drought or by other I'm not a fan of not a fan of looking at Brix levels for the very simple reason that it's too variable and you could very easily get a Brix reading that is above a certain threshold and that I might say let's say it's 8 brix and still have larvae for the very simple reason that you haven't. You have nutritional or mineral imbalances, so I would prefer to look at SAP analysis mineral ratios and use those to predict disease or insect susceptibility rather than Brix readings. Question for Davis I grow trees in a field nursery setting. Trees are grown in rows 10 or 12ft apart, similar to an orchard or vineyard using AEA products. The amount of foliar applied products in a tank mix is calculated on a per acre basis, So products in the spray tank would be 18% of a per acre rate. Davis, you're asking a question about a topic that I've been intending to write a blog post about or do a webinar on, and it's just not climbed up the priority list yet. There is, there is particular language and there's there's correct terminology to use to describe this concept of of sprayer concentration mixing. And it's escaping me right now. But Stephen Beerling talks about it in the podcast interview that I did with him. It's worth checking that conversation out, or at least I think it's in. I've certainly had this conversation with Stephen on several occasions, but Stephen's approach to foliar applications is based on tank concentration rather than on a per acre rate. And the his point is that if I'm putting on a per acre rate on full grown trees, in the case of his orchard setting, he's putting on 200 gallons per acre. If he's actually, I shouldn't say fully grown trees, fully leafed out trees in the summer, he's putting on 200 gallons per acre. In the springtime at bud break, he's putting on 25 gallons per acre to get the same degree of coverage. So if he goes by the per acre rates, he's Getting a mix that is eight times more concentrated in the springtime as he is later in the summer. And so instead of looking at things from a per acre perspective, he's calculating them on a concentration perspective and the concentration would be similar to his 200 acre or 200 gallons per acre concentration. So he's applying less product per acre but the tank mix concentration is the same and he's producing similar plant responses. Question from Darren. I'm interested in your thoughts on any relevance of biblical agricultural insights that you have seen make a difference. For example, resting the land on the seventh year. I've come across two individuals who've done that. Darren, you ask really good questions that would merit an hour's conversation in and of their on their own. But the short answer is that I also have observed a couple of farms, actually more than a couple, a number of farms who take a sabbatical year. But they don't just, they don't just ignore the land and walk away from it. They're actively growing cover crops on it. They're actively seeking to regenerate it. The one farm received such spectacular results from this process, they actually moved to doing it one year out of five instead of one year out of seven because they found that the increased performance and productivity that they were able to achieve more than made up for that one year supposedly not being in production. And the short answer is that those growers who actively seek to align with with foundational spiritual principles, those farms and those plants just simply seem to perform exceptionally well consistently. Question from from Reald Is waite as oxidative as limestone in the microbiome? It's not my understanding that that is the case because the case of limestone, the oxidation component is coming from the carbonate which is not present in Wallacenite. Question from Phil Small scale CSA and home gardens often suffer from pest pressure and poor nutritional quality because they are too small to use tests like plant SAP. They have a wide variety of crops. What are the low hanging fruits or must dos for these kinds of growers to improve their crop quality? Phil, I I put together an entire webinar to answer this question. It is I did a presentation for the Bionutrient Food Association. It is on their YouTube channel. I think it's like 90 minutes long and I describe what are the foundational broad picture pieces that you need to accomplish and that you need to work on and focus on to eliminate the need for customized management. So I would refer you to that resource. Is there any particular reason why I'm not even mentioned in the Common Ground movie? I don't know. I wasn't asked. And I'm more popular in some circles than in others. Perhaps, maybe, I don't know, it didn't even occur to me. I'm also not I don't show up. My face doesn't show up anywhere on video, on recordings, publicly, or at least I try to avoid that happening. So I'm not particularly a video or movie friendly subject. I suppose you might say that's probably as much of the reason as anything. Question from Aaron do you have any experience with AE products and controlling Swede, Midge and brassicas, especially broccoli and cauliflower? The answer is yes we do. And again comes back to managing the nutritional balance around nitrate and protein conversion, using Photomag to facilitate that process and so forth. Please connect with some of our AEA team members. We can help with that question from Mr. Anonymous, who prefers to not be identified what nutrient profile can you guess for spider mites, Amelia bugs beetles, downy mill and thrips on chilies? Rainy season warm and humid. That has nothing to do with it. By the way. Saturated soil that might have something to do with it. Plastic mulch is heating to the sun. SAP Peach 58 refractometer sugar 16. Both of those numbers are largely meaningless without knowing a lot of other additional information. The good news is I don't have to guess for spider mites. Guessing is for people who don't have data and we have collections of a great deal of data for spider mites. I'm completely certain that you have elevated levels of ammonium. The plants are in photo respiration mode. They're breaking down proteins using proteins as an energy source because they don't have enough sugars and same for mealybugs beetles down to mildew thrips. All of these pieces it's I can't go through. I'm not going to take the time to go through and give you a a detailed breakdown, but you don't have good protein metabolism and protein conversion. And with the case of downy mildew, there's a high. There's a combination of phosphorus and manganese and silicon that you do not have enough of some of those three elements. Thrips are an interesting one, but they're also related to protein metabolism, having adequate levels of molybdenum and boron. Question from Andrew what treatment plan would you recommend for tar spot in organic corn? Can you briefly explain what the pathway is for the accelerate product to increase soybean yields and when it is too late to apply that particular product. So for a tar spot treatment plan, you have to pay attention to the trace mineral metals, you have to pay attention to boron, you have to pay attention to calcium, silicon. The AE products of MicroPack and Micropack would be a really great fit here, and that would probably be what I would recommend. Accelerate is particularly designed to increase the initiation of reproductive buds. It can increase the number of pods per node and increase the number of beans per pod relatively easily. So once you are at the stage where you are getting close to the end of the blooming and pollination period, then Accelerate is no longer going to continue to have a significant impact on increasing the number of beans per acre. However, at that point, even if you can successfully set many more beans per acre, you still have to fill them. That's going to require additional potassium. And Accelerate, it doesn't contain potassium, but it contains lots of potassium synergists that really enhance the plant's ability to absorb and utilize potassium and becomes more potassium efficient. So there is still a crop response from later applications, but not as significant as it is from earlier applications. My goodness. Lots of people are looking for instant diagnosis on their disease and insect problems without without a SAP analysis. Here's Elmer asking without analysis, what is the most common issue in its remedy? When carrot flies have a field day with carrots, it's improper protein metabolism. These plants are not metabolizing hydrogen properly. They are not forming complete proteins. Look at the levels, look at the minerals that are on level two of the plant health Pyramid. This is what you need. The four minerals that are described in level two of the Plant Health pyramid. Solve the problem. Question how to lower brix in macadamia trees when you have to produce a healthier tree and to get it to produce more fruit, get rid of the refractometer as a management tool. Start using SAP analysis as a management tool and adjust minerals accordingly and if necessary, also fix water quality. What creates poor calcium availability? Question from Reynard. That could be really poor. Soil biology can create that. Low levels in the soil can create that. You need a. You need a target of 70% base saturation on the Albrecht test, like a Mele 3 or a. An ammonium acetate extraction or on sandy soils, a minimum of a thousand parts per million. Sometimes you have very sandy soils. They'll show you have 70% base saturation, but it's only at 5 to 600 parts per million. And that is not enough. You need at least a thousand parts per million. You need good biology and you need adequate boron supply. Those three pieces will contribute to calcium availability. And also I'm speaking of this and thinking of this in terms of my historical training on mineral balancing, which is very relevant. But we also have lots of tests where when you address biology, you know, going back 15 years ago, we maybe not quite. Yeah, it's probably as close to 15 years ago. We were doing some of the early stage testing for the product that is now known as Rejuvenate. That's a part of our soil primer application. And we did. We ran a series of tests on 10 farms where we just did field scale trials. Pulling a soil sample on before it was treated, then leaving an untreated area, applying a second soil sample after. Excuse me, pulling a second soil sample after the treatment the following spring. This was fall and spring and then again the following fall soil sample collection. And on these 10 farms, they were widely scattered geographically, all across, mostly across the Midwest in the northeastern United States. And four of the 10 farms showed significant increases in calcium on the soil analysis. When I'm talking significant increases, one of them jumped from 50 to 70% base saturation. It jumped by 600 parts per million. And there was no calcium applied. It was just a function of biological release as a result of putting on the. Was before the soil primer. That was just. With a rejuvenate application. Question from Eugene. We have more than two weeks of higher than 100 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures. Vegetables have stopped growing. I'm irrigating every day and applying foliar applications every week. And the foliar applications I add 0.1% calcium chloride for a high point of deliquescence. Should I add more? No, you should not. If you want to increase the point of deliquescence in a high heat environment, I would recommend the. You. I would. I would recommend avoiding chloride because chloride is simply going to increase the water requirements. So I would recommend using materials like calcium nitrate or something like that. Even though nitrate brings its own set of problems in particular in that high heat environment. I think I may have spoken about this in a couple of recent podcasts, but pay particular attention to sugars and perhaps adding some sugars to the foliar mix. Question from Matthew. Want to know your opinion? Using plant growth regulators to increase yield, specifically experimenting with Tre continol freeze dried coconut water as a source of zeotin and a number of other compounds, gibberellins and have had mixed results at best and some strange morphological effects. Any input or ideas would be appreciated. Interesting question, Matthew. Not one that I can answer in just a few minutes. But the short version is that these applications are one, they're very concentration dependent as you're discovering. Triacontinol and some of these other compounds are effective at part per billion concentrations. It does not take much. And when you over apply them, then yes, you get plants be behaving in very unexpected and strange ways. And also the. The particular stage of plant growth when you apply them can have a tremendous bearing on their effectiveness. And the third point is that usually it is better to apply these materials in a. What's the right way to say this? In their natural substrate rather than as purified compounds. So for example, applying willow bark extract instead of salic, salicylic acid. The willow bark extract has a lot of the other associated compounds that buffer out and allow the plant to regulate the salicylic acid much more effectively. So those are some of the things that I would keep in mind. How come fruit turns yellow and aborts before ripening? Having troubles with cucumbers and squash. This could be a result of poor pollination, could be a result of not having enough nutrition. And if it is not enough nutrition, it's probably trace minerals like boron and manganese. What role does silicon play? Question from Luke. What role does silicon play in the plant's immune system? And is it better to apply silicon as a foliar application or as soil applied? The best source of all is to develop really good soil biology and to have the plants absorb silicon from the soil. But in the growing season, once, once you have something, you have issues that you want to address. Foliar applications tend to respond faster. The plant responds faster within a matter of a day or two or three. Whereas with soil applications, with the fertigation system or so forth, it might take a week to 10 days. Question from Fernando. Is there a problem to or challenge to the microbiome applying boron and molybdenum with a compromise spreader in a solid amendment? Given a lack of application equipment, the. The key piece is that you need to get good distribution. So particularly with higher boron application rates, I would say that if you use a pelletized boron, if you have good application equipment and you're looking at higher application rates, it's not that difficult to get good boron distribution. But molybdenum is a different matter because of the very tiny amounts that are required. And so my preference would be to spray molybdenum onto the soil. But if that is not an option and we're using where we have the necessity of applying it with a compost or with a granular fertilizer spreader, then I would suggest still solubilizing the molybdenum, turning it into a liquid and then spraying it onto the compost as it's being loaded or as it's being mixed or in some way getting that liquid material fairly blended through the dry product that is being applied. Because if you're applying ounces per acre of product, then it's not. You're not going to get good distribution of that if you put a dry material into a compost mix. Is effectiveness of foliar nutritional sprays increased at night during the dark photosynthesis cycle. The most effective timing of foliar sprays is in the evening. And it's not. It's. It's my understanding that that is primarily because it remains liquid on the leaf surface longer because of a lower dew point and remaining having more abundant moisture levels at night and more effective humidity at night than during the day. Question from Luke. Is molybdenum more effective as a foliar application? Soil applied for nitrate reductase. It needs to get into the plant. So you can do that foliar application very quickly, get an immediate response, or you can apply it to the soil. And it does work very well in the soil as well. Question from Vance. What have been your observations in the effectiveness of foliar nutrient applications through center pivot? Lowest Application rates are 7/10, 7/2-1700s of an inch, provided I can apply above the canopy as an alfalfa. Is this an effective way to apply nutrition? Yeah, man, this is a good question and I have conflicting experiences, so I don't have a good answer. We have a number of growers who've applied products through the pivots on corn in the Midwest, particularly in the southwestern part of the corn belt where it's quite dry and they get very good responses from that. Then we've had people try something similar on potatoes and they're using SAP analysis, putting on manganese applications and so forth through the pivot and just not even with small amounts of water, just not getting good crop responses, not getting good plant absorption of manganese. They put on a similar or even a smaller application rate with a sprayer and they get an immediate crop response. So in the case of the corn crops that are responding nicely, I guess the question is how much better would they respond if it were sprayed on versus applied through the pivot. So that's. I have. I have some conflicting observations there. What we've observed so far is that the foliar sprays seem to perform better than the pivot applications generally. Would you expect. Question from Matt. Would you expect that as soil health improves with the use of mineral microbial products that the need for these products would diminish in a well managed ecosystem? Yes. The goal and the objective should be to develop regenerative soil and crop management systems that are self perpetuating and self regenerating to the point where we do not need to constantly add additional external inputs. However, what those ecosystems look like and what those management systems look like on different farms is what's the proper, what's the right way for me to communicate this? If you are growing, there are some ecosystems which I am persuaded are going to be dependent on inputs for the long term. If you're growing strawberries on the same soil year after year after year, then it doesn't matter how to what degree of microbial friendly products you use you, you are in a production system that I think is going to require the dependency on the use of continued inputs. That's obviously an extreme on all the way on one end of the spectrum. But if we're growing crops like potatoes, where we're introducing heavy tillage or carrots, the list goes on and on. When we're, when we're producing crops that are damaging soil aggregate structure, soil microbial communities, we need to find some ways to offset that damage and that could be with other management practices, that could be with other things that we're doing, or it could be with products. Those are pieces that we have to figure out in each farming context. Question from Rafe on edta chelated iron and manganese. You're much better off using amino acid or organic acid chelates like the AEA rebound product than the EDTAs. EDTAs do work, but that depends on how you define work. They will make this. They will increase SAP analysis levels or they can increase SAP analysis levels of iron and manganese, but not nearly to the zone.