Building Soil Organic Matter While Your Crop Is Growing

Good evening everyone. Or good afternoon for those of you calling in from the West Coast. And happy Thanksgiving. Thank you so much for joining tonight. Welcome to the webinar. Looks like we have a great crowd tonight. Over 300 people have registered from around the United States. Wonderful turnout. My name is Philip and I'm really honored to be introducing your class today. Before we get started, I'd like to remind everyone that this webinar is part of the ongoing continuous series of class with John Kemp that are created to give you practical knowledge about how to produce the highest value, highest quality, highest yielding crops, any crop in any area, using the generative agriculture model as developed by and mastered by John Kempf and his team, Advancing Eco Agriculture. It's our mission to make this information available for free to growers like you all around the world. So the title tonight's webinar is Building Organic Matter While growing a Crop. You can expect to learn three things tonight. First, you'll learn why many crops deplete organic matter. Two, you'll learn the science of building organic matter during the growing season. And third, you'll learn what you can do on your farm to achieve results. All right, so let's get started. John Kempf is the founder and CEO of Advancing Eco Agriculture or AEA as we call it. It's located in Middlefield, Ohio and since 2006 AEA has been a leader in developing farm management systems that rebuild soil health produce pest resistant crops leading to a reduced need for pesticides. John is a widely recognized agronomist specializing in helping farmers overcome severe disease challenges and helping them to produce premium quality crops. John grew up on a vegetable farm in Middlefield that he that started to fail as a kid due to reasons beyond anyone's understanding. As a young man he immersed himself in agricultural research to save the farm, which he did. The success was so profound that other farmers in the area wanted to learn how he was able to do it. To be able to outperform the best practices of the time. And the man for this knowledge became so great that he founded AEA with the men of helping farmers like you grow disease resistant crops, disease resistant crops using nutrition. And the question that drives John and everyone at AEA is what makes one plant resistant to disease and another plant two feet away totally susceptible to that same disease? This question is burned with such passion. John has studied under leading experts in agronomy and plant pathology such as Don Huber, McNeil, Robert Hamer and many others. And starting AEA, John has become a wide sought after speaker and a teacher. He's traveled throughout the country working with some of the best growers to help them improve farm profitability by improving yields and quality. And he has been featured in several major publications, including a major profile in Modern Farmer magazine, which you can Google. He was invited to speak to more than 200 countries, delegates of countries from around the world at the United nations on the topic of sustainable agriculture. He's been featured in major business publications such as Fortune magazine and even on cnn. And he has spoken to many industry groups such as the Pacific North Northwest Vegetable association, the Ohio Produce Growers and Marketers association, the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm association, the Pennsylvania association for Sustainable Agriculture, and the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service, among many others. And in addition to running AEA as CEO, he also owns and operates organic fruit and vegetable operation in Middle Ohio, which he calls his laboratory. So thank you again for joining us. Very excited about this web tonight and the ongoing series and so welcome. John Kempf.

John thank you, Philip. That was an outstanding introduction to live up to. Good evening, friends. I've really looked forward to having this discussion with you on this webinar about how to build soil organic matter while we are growing a crop. On the farm that I grew up on, we were growing fruit and vegetable crops very intensely, and we observed a very rapid depletion of our soil organic matter. At the same time, plant physiologists and other experts that we were speaking with were describing how really healthy plants had the potential to transmit the majority of their total sugar production out through the root system into the soil profile as root exudates. This seemed an interesting paradox that we were having very rapid depletion of soil organic matter. And yet at the same time, the crops that we were growing were said to have the potential to actually build organic matter while we are growing a crop. So learned many different pieces over the course of the next several years and asked many questions trying to understand the dynamics of what was really happening and how it is possible for plants to build soil organic matter during the growing season. That's really the topic that we want to discuss tonight. So when we look at the organic matter paradox, the question really becomes how is it possible that crops which transmit 50 have the potential to transmit 50 to 70% of their total carbohydrate production into the root zone to also deplete soil organic matter during the growing season? So this is really what we want to talk about and I'd like to share some of the observations and the experiences that we have had and also to really describe from a very practical, hands on perspective of what really needs to happen in order for us to build soil organic matter in the field while we are growing a crop. Because all the evidence that we have seen this is completely possible and something that we can do very, very readily. Before we get into this conversation, I'd like to also introduce the amazing team at Advancing Eco Agriculture that I'm privileged to work with every day. We have a very strong team of consultants who has extensive experience and if at any point you have any questions about any of the topics that we are discussing, feel free to reach out to our team on the phone. They have extensive experience in the regenerative agricultural models that we have developed and can really help answer your questions. I'm really pleased to introduce them and very proud to be able to call them team members. At Advancing Eco Agriculture, we have David Miller. David is based in Ohio and works with many farms remotely throughout the United States. David tends to specialize in fruit and berry operations and primarily works from his office in Ohio. He doesn't have the opportunity to visit farms very frequently but does an outstanding job and the farmers that he works with really enjoy working with him very closely. David has tremendous experience, is one of the consultants who's been with Advancing ecoagriculture for the longest period. And David also takes a leading role in Advancing Eco Agriculture in developing resources and learning about new research that is happening and developing information to answer the questions that we see that we ask when we are in the field. Problems that we run into that we don't have answers for. Jason Hobson is based in Indiana or in an airport as some of his friends claim. Jason has extensive experience. Before he joined aea, he was a farm manager on both the livestock and fruit and vegetable operation. Jason takes a leading role in doing in field consulting and spends a lot of time on farms out in the field, particularly on the west coast. Nathan Harman has prior experience as an urban vegetable farmer before he came to work for Advancing Eco Agriculture. He's based in Indiana and Nathan takes a lead role in our customer service function. So when you call Advancing Eco Agriculture at the office, there's a very strong likelihood that you will be talking to Nathan. Jenny Garley is based in California. Jenny has a very strong background in research, particularly in the area of food microbiology. Jenny is taking the lead in developing our field trials and our in field research and in particular she works with many berry crops in the California region, particularly strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries. Christian Ross is One of the newer members of our team, Christian, is based in California and has a very strong background in plant physiology and does a lot of work in crop scouting and working to support the growers that we're working with throughout the west coast and the Northwest region. Harold Schrock is based in New York. Harold has extensive experience as a livestock and vegetable farmer before coming to work for Advancing Eco Agriculture. He does extensive consulting work with orchards and vegetable growers throughout the New England states and down through Appalachia all the way into Virginia. Craig Dow has extensive experience in livestock production, spent 35 years in livestock production before coming to work for AEA and currently works with many farmers in Michigan and also in Canada. Gary Redding is based in Indiana and also in an airport. According to his friends, Gary has 30 plus years of experience as a large scale organic broadacre farmer in Indiana and as a farming consultant before he came to work for Advancing Eco Agriculture several years ago. Gary spends a lot of his time working with fruit and vegetable growers on the west coast and has extensive experience and observations in seeing the work that we are doing in the field. So feel free to contact any of these team members at any point. They have a lot of expertise and have seen many, have had many fascinating experiences working with regenerative farming systems in the field. Also, we are looking for additional people to join our team. Advancing Eco Agriculture is growing very rapidly and we have, we're looking for more people that can be part of our team of consultants and work with farmers in the field. So to move to the topic for the discussion, the organic matter paradox, the question is how is it possible when we have 50% of crop biomass below the soil surface in the form of roots and root exudates at the same time? We also frequently hear that many crops deplete soil organic matter. And the question that I am asking is how can both of these be true at the same time? And there's multiple possible answers to that question, but it led me to just the process of asking these questions led to some to the uncovering of some really fascinating research which I believe that all of you will find very interesting in your crop production systems. So to begin with, when we look at a plant's total sugar production over the course of its entire lifetime, that total sugar production from the moment the seed is planted until the time when the crop is finally harvested, we can consider that total sugar production as being a total of 100%. That total of 100% is divided into four almost identical quadrants. And I should point out as well. There is some variation here amongst different crop types. Take reproductive versus vegetative crops, for example. So there can be some differences from one crop type to the next. But this general guideline holds true for the majority of the crops that we are producing in the field. So the total sugar production is divided into four almost identical pieces, where we have 50% below the soil surface and 50% above the soil surface. The 50% that is below the soil surface is divided into root biomass, where 25% of the total sugar production gets used to build root biomass and 25% gets sent out through the roots as root exudates to feed. Soil biology. Above the soil surface, 25% gets used to build plant biomass, 25% is utilized to build fruit, assuming that we have a reproductive crop. Now, this is really interesting information. And when we consider that 50% of the total sugar production, the total energy production, is below the soil profile, that is a tremendous amount of carbohydrates and amino acids. There's a tremendous amount of sugar that is in the soil system. There is no. When we have a really healthy crop and we consider the amount of biomass that an average crop produces, we cannot put on enough organic materials. We can't put on enough molasses or enough sugar or enough humic substances economically to match what a really healthy crop can accomplish. So the piece that I'd like to point out, however, is that obviously this sugar profile, where this total of 100% is divided into four equal pieces, that distribution doesn't all happen at the same time. There are different stages of plant development in which the sugars are patterned differently and are compartmentalized in different places in different pieces. So when you look at the different stages of plant development and during the seedling stage, when the plant is still small, the majority of the sugar production at this stage is going upwards to the upper part of the plant to build plant biomass. And only a very relatively small proportion is going to the root system. In fact, actually, when we look at this, 50% of the total is going at this stage, even into the root system. But nothing is being contributed to fruit. All of it that is going up above is going into plant biomass when the plant becomes a little bit larger. When we begin entering the framing stage, we now have sugar production in the various sugar sinks going in three different directions. We have the sugar sink at the top of the plant, which is the apical meristem, where we're building plant biomass. Then we have root biomass below the soil surface, and then we also have the root exudates, and we have sugars compartmentalized into these three different sugar sinks. When the plant begins entering the framing stage, and actually we get to the point where we have very rapid plant.

Development.

A smaller amount of the plant's total sugar production is going to plant biomass, and the majority is actually going to root exudates at this point. So this is a very critical stage of plant development. And when we look at this, you might ask the question, well, the plant is building plant frame very rapidly at this stage. Why are we only sending a minority of the total carbohydrate and total energy production to the sugar sink at the top of the plant? And what is happening here is that the plant's total sugar production as an actual number is increasing very quickly because we have a larger plant biomass. So as the plant frame becomes much larger, it begins producing very large quantities of sugars, more sugars than it actually needs to build that plant frame itself. So it begins transmitting many of these sugars down to the root system and sent out through the roots as root exudates. This is a very critical stage in plant development because these root exudates, when we have, at this framing stage, when we have 70 to 80% of the total carbohydrate production in most crops at this stage, is transmitted out through the roots as root exudates, that's a tremendous investment that that plant is making that it hopes to recover in the future when it is filling fruit. And this is going to be the topic for another future discussion. But this is a really fascinating piece because this is how the plant actually builds energy reserves in the soil microbial profile that it can then tap into later in the growing season, when it is actually filling fruit and has the greatest level of nutrient demand. So at this stage, the framing stage, the plant is actually transmitting the majority of its sugar production into the root system and not into plant development as might be expected. This continues as we reach the pollination and the initial reproduction stage. And on this corn plant, for example, as soon as silking, as soon as we get emergence of the ear and we start to begin tosling, we reach the tousel stage. Even at this stage, we now have very little energy being used for plant development. And a lot of that energy has shifted to fruit development. And the plant is still transmitting a large number of sugars out through the roots as root exudates at this stage. This changes radically at the next stage of plant development, when plants actually begin filling fruit. Once they begin filling fruit, sugars are actually absorbed and nutrients are absorbed very rapidly and very aggressively from the soil profile and transmitted up to the fruit. So this is, at this stage of development, is when the plant needs to be able to tap into the nutrient reserve that it created during the framing stage, when it was transmitting sugars out through the root system as root exudates. So the compartmentalization of these sugars into these four different areas happens at different stages of plant, at different stages of plant development throughout the entire growing season. When we look at this, the really interesting observation that what we have observed in the field is that not all plants are photosynthesizing at their full capacity. In fact, many plants and many of the crops that we observe in the field are only photosynthesizing at a very small proportion of their total capacity. Many plants will have as much as or many plants, many crops are only photosynthesizing at 10 to 15%, sometimes as much as 20%, of their inherent photosynthetic potential. They're not producing anywhere near the level of sugar production, sugar volume that they have the potential for. So when we have a crop that has complete photosynthesis and is photosynthesizing very rapidly, we can see that we can visualize this as this large chart in which we have four different pieces. This is what a really healthy crop will look like. And I would add this qualifier, this division into these four different segments of 25% each only happens when plants are photosynthesizing at 60% of their capacity or greater. If that is not happening, as is true for the majority of the crops in the field today, when we have only usual photosynthesis instead of full photosynthesis, we end up with a much smaller quantity of total sugar production. And because we have that much smaller quantity of total sugar production, that sugar production also is no longer divided into four equal quadrants. Now, the plant biomass, the plant frame, and the fruit will actually absorb the greatest proportion of the sugars that that plant has produced throughout its entire lifetime. The result is that we have a much smaller root biomass and we have very little sugars sent out through the roots as root exudates. This is true because the plants need to utilize all those sugars for themselves. If we have limited photosynthetic capacity during the framing stage and in the initial reproductive period, the plant will utilize the majority of the sugars that it is producing to build plant frame. This is actually a very interesting observation because one of the things that we have observed. There is a great deal of discussion today, particularly in the fruit and vegetable production world, about premium Quality fruit having higher levels of nutrient density. And this has triggered a very interesting observation. We have to be really thoughtful about how we measure nutrient density. Nutrient density is a lot more complicated than just measuring the density of, say, magnesium or sulfur or iron or manganese or copper. And here's why I make that comment. What we have observed is many people try to work with plant health and try to improve plant health by constantly adding different nutritional supplements, by adding manganese, by adding zinc, by adding copper. The thought model, the paradigm that we have used historically, is that we need to add whatever is missing. What we have observed is in fact, the deficiencies in the majority of the farms that we work with. The deficiencies are not the problem. Rather, it is the excesses that are created by the deficiencies. Excuse me, it is the deficiencies that are created by the excesses of the products that we apply. So many of our deficiencies, such as zinc and manganese deficiencies, are actually a result of mismanagement and of excess of fertilizer materials that we have applied at the wrong stages of the growing season. And the reason this is irrelevant here, what we have observed is that when a plant achieves balanced nutrition, it has, in other words, it has the right proportions of manganese and copper and zinc and calcium and magnesium and nitrogen and phosphorus and potassium and so forth. There is this very rapid photosynthetic spurt that happens. There's just this explosion of photosynthetic activity. So a plant's sugar production might triple in a 24 hour period. And if that explosion in sugar production is sustained for an extended period of time, the plant's mineral content and its nutrient density, when, if nutrient density is measured in terms of mineral content, the mineral content actually drops. So the calcium content, the magnesium content and the phosphorus content and all the numbers uniformly across the board can drop by anywhere as much as 30 to 40%. Because the plant begins photosynthesizing so rapidly, it builds plant frames so rapidly that all the minerals become proportionately diluted out. And this happens when you have extraordinarily healthy plants. So when you have really healthy plants, it may not actually have a greater nutrient concentration or a greater mineral concentration. However, it will have a much higher concentration of the plant secondary metabolites, the phenolic compounds, the terpenoids, the sesquiterpenes, the bioflavonoids, phenolic compounds, all these aromatic compounds that plants produce as plant protectants. So if we want to truly produce food as medicine and have plants that have functional immune systems, these crops are Going need to have this top performing photosynthetic activity. And there is a very strong likelihood they will actually have a slightly lower mineral content or, yeah, slightly lower mineral content of the actual mineral elements themselves. So all of what I've described up to this point, the different stages of different types of carbohydrate synthesis or carbohydrate transport to the different sugar sinks at different stages of the plant's growth cycle, have led us to some very interesting observations about how that sugar transport into the soil profile produces changes in the soil microbial community. And this has led to the genesis of a very interesting chart that I call the Soil Biological Cascade that really describes that. This chart is an effort for us to describe the interaction that we see happening between plants and soil microbiology and how it is possible for plants to actually build soil organic matter during the growing season. So the first sequence, there is a total of six links in this chain, if you will, six links in the sequence. And it's really interesting actually, because it starts from plant to microbe to soil biochemistry, and then back from plant to microbe to soil biochemistry. A very interesting sequence, two sequences of three. The first step that happens is when we have crops that have this full capacity photosynthesis, they are producing sugars at three to five times the average level. And because they are producing sugars in this very efficient fashion, they actually have more sugars than they require for to build plant frame. And now they are transmitting the 50 to 70% out through the root system as root exudates at the framing stage, when the plant is building plant frame, as these sugars are transmitted out through the root system, and I'm using the word sugars, but obviously there's also amino acids and enzymes and many other compounds that are transmitted out through the root system that triggers very aggressive and very strong bacterial digestive processes. So the bacterial digestive process is when bacteria are utilizing these sugars as a food source. And remember that when plants are sending out sugars and amino acids through the root systems, these sugars are not combined with minerals. So bacteria are able to utilize these sugars as a food source. And they then extract minerals from the soil mineral matrix and utilize them to build their own bodies. This process is called mineralization. And in the bacterial digestive process is called mineralization. So during this mineralization process, as that bacterial population cycles, the nutrients contained within their bodies are now released back into the soil profile and can be absorbed by plants in the form of amino acids and organic acids and essential fatty acids that are now combined with the nutrients that were contained in the bacterial cells. As plants begin absorbing these microbial metabolites from the mineralization process, it gives them a very strong energy boost, where they become even more energy efficient than they have been up to that point, because they are now absorbing nutrients in the form of prefab components rather than the form of simple ions. So there's room for an entire other discussion in describing some of the background behind this chart. But for the moment, we'll just say that when plants begin absorbing this microbial metabolite, nutrition, the form of microbial metabolites, they become incredibly energy efficient. And when they reach that level of energy efficiency, they now have a surplus of energy. They have more energy than they can utilize, or that they need to build plant frame and to successfully reproduce at this stage, they begin producing much higher concentrations of lipids, plant fats, and oils. So when you have the higher lipid concentrations, the plant also begins transmitting these lipids into the soil profile. And you now have lipid transport down to the roots, and you also have lipids as root exudates. So when you have lipids as root exudates, something really interesting happens. The lipids as root exudates trigger a very strong fungal digestive process. Bacteria can't digest fats, which is why years ago, in my own cultural heritage in the Amish community, we, and even today we preserve meat by storing it in fat, because bacteria can't digest fats. So as we get lipid transport into the rhizosphere and into the soil profile, we now have very strong fungal digestive processes happening. And fungal digestion is quite a different process from bacterial digestion in that when fungi ingest lipids and carbohydrates and these various substances, they do not release them back into the soil profile. They simply digest them over and over until they form stable humic substances, until they reach a point at which they can be digested no further. So this triggers the humification process. And this is how, when we follow this chain and follow this sequence, really healthy plants that are at full capacity, photosynthesis trigger this entire chain of reaction that results in the formation of stable humic substances in the rhizosphere and in the soil profile while the crop is growing in the field. So it's possible, when it is completely possible, we have observed in the field that when we have really strong photosynthetic activity, we can actually gain organic matter concentrations in the soil. And as importantly, or even more importantly, we gain all the advantages of soil tilth. Soil porosity and tremendous root systems that are a result of transmitting all these carbohydrates down into the soil profile. So the question now becomes, how can we accomplish this result in the field? There's really two specific pieces that need to happen to build organic matter very quickly during the growing season. We need to have very aggressive photosynthesis and we need to have strong fungal digestive processes in the field. So when we look at these two pieces, if we look at peak photosynthesis, in order for aggressive photosynthesis to happen, as I was describing earlier, or alluded to earlier, what we're really looking for is not that we need high concentrations of X, Y and Z minerals. We need the right balance of the right nutrients and the right minerals. And in particular we need to have all of the elements that are very strongly connected to the photosynthetic process in the formation of or in the that is involved with chlorophyll production, that is involved in the photosynthetic process. There are five specific elements that we commonly see be imbalanced and sometimes in excess and sometimes in deficiencies. The five common imbalances that all result in low levels of photosynthetic activity. And these are some of the first that we start paying attention to. Magnesium, obviously is the center ion of the chlorophyll molecule. And the greater the magnesium concentration, the darker green the leaf is going to be because it has a higher chlorophyll content, the more sunlight it can absorb and the more sugars it can produce. In addition to magnesium, we also pay very close attention to iron for the same reasons, because iron surrounds the magnesium in chlorophyll, actually nitrogen and then iron. So both magnesium and nitrogen and iron are needed specifically and directly for chlorophyll production so that we have very strong photosynthesis in addition to that, in addition to those elements, manganese is one trace mineral that we find to be. It is approaching very close to being a universally deficient trace mineral. And this is very unfortunate because manganese plays such a key role in photosynthesis. Without having adequate manganese levels, we will never achieve these high performing levels of photosynthetic activity. And manganese has become increasingly deficient in the crops that we have been working with over the past decade as a combination of several different factors, one of which seems to be the ongoing use of glyphosate roundup in soil systems. Glyphosate tends to bind with manganese in the soil profile very strongly and also triggers the formation of a soil microbial community, which tends to oxidize the remaining manganese that is in the soil profile. And the second element is, of course, just the farming practices and farm management practices that we've used, combined with some of our climatic and environmental challenges, the last several years has resulted in soil microbial profiles which tend to leave much of the manganese in the profile in the oxidized form. A very common challenge is to see soil analysis come back with adequate levels of manganese, and yet the crop is manganese deficient. This is simply because the manganese is in the wrong form that plants cannot utilize. So it is highly likely, based on our experiences working with crops in all the states, across the entire United States and into Canada, it's very probable that you can have soils with adequate levels of manganese and yet still have crops with manganese deficiencies. So those are the nutrients that need to be addressed. And there is one more that I would add. Phosphorus is not directly involved with the photosynthetic process. However, it is directly involved in energy transfer in the adenosine triphosphate and other phosphate compounds. So we also see that phosphorus definitely has to be an adequate supply in order to have very strong sugar production and carbohydrate transfer to have really healthy plants. So, again, there's obviously more than those five are needed to have a really healthy plant from an immune function and immune system perspective. But those five are the foundational elements that are needed for very aggressive photosynthesis to see a very rapid sugar spike. The next piece that is needed is very strong fungal digestion. I used this image. This is image of a strawberry plant seven days after being transplanted. We used a specific fungal inoculant and fungal biostimulants. In this specific package. We used four of our products. We used BioCode Gold, which is a mycorrhizal fungi inoculant, and Spectrum, which is a bacterial inoculant. And then we also used Rejuvenate and Seashield. And we have found that that combination of four products triggers tremendous fungal growth. And we were able to observe very strong mycorrhizal fungi colonization and had a very aggressive, very strong fungal digestive system working in this soil profile. So there are many more images that I could utilize. But in short, we have found that actually, there's one piece that I would like to add. There's a lot of discussion today about bacterial fungal imbalances in our soil profile, that we have very aggressive bacterial communities and don't have enough fungal communities. And because of the cascade that I described earlier, we actually find that one of the best ways to build very strong soil fungal communities is to build really strong bacterial communities. Whenever we feed bacteria, we see that the fungal population takes a very strong spike right behind the bacterial population. So if you want to build really strong fungi, you also have to build, you have to feed bacteria the fastest way and the most direct route to building strong fungal communities is to build really strong digestive communities. So there's much more that I could discuss, but this is this webinar is just one in a series of an ongoing series of webinars that we'll be talking about, talking about various of these different topics. There's obviously much more in depth exploration that I could have done in many of these different areas. And hopefully in the near future we will be continuing to present many of these different links in the chain and hopefully be able to put a complete picture together of how all these different systems interact.