Changing Agronomy With Biology Webinar with John Kempf

Well, good afternoon and good evening, friends. I think we are at the top of the hour and so we'll go ahead and get started. The topic for our webinar tonight is how to change agronomy with biology. And just to provide a bit of context for this, for the conversation, I had several interesting conversations with a group of researchers who were studying and trying to understand how growers in the field were using the Albrecht system of agronomy. And what they had observed is that in many cases there were farmers, many farmers and agronomists, and within the particular, within the university research system, they were finding that there was not a lot of support for Albrecht based agronomy and making recommendations for assault amendments based on the CEC cation exchange capacity and so forth. And yet when they spoke with growers and agronomists who were out in the field, particularly in the biological and regenerative agriculture community, there was very strong consensus by many growers that they used, they saw good results from using the Albrecht system of agronomy and making recommendations for fertilizers and for soil amendments based on CEC balancing and adjusting the percent base saturation of nutrients. So we had a very interesting conversation to try to understand, okay, what are the, what are the differences? Why are growers in practice actually seeing good results? When researchers who are studying the system and trying to understand how these, how these soil amendments are actually applied and how recommendations are made, why are they not able to replicate it? So in the context of this conversation, I realized that, you know, within our work at advancing eco agriculture, we don't use the, we don't use these soil analysis reports and make recommendations from the soil analysis reports as it was historically recommended and as is very commonly understood. And the context for this is that when I first learned agronomy and first learned how to interpret a soil analysis report and how to make recommendations, the thought process was relatively linear and was very algorithmic. We have a soil report that shows we are deficient X pounds of a certain nutrient, that we don't have adequate levels of calcium or phosphorus or sulfur, whatever the case might be, and we're simply going to add what is missing. So what I realized is that today we don't make recommendations like that anymore. In our agronomy work that we do at aea, we don't make linear recommendations of just applying nutrients or applying slow amendments to supply the nutrients that are missing and then applying crop removal rates. But that in fact we have this whole other area that is, we take into consideration the impacts that Biology is going to have. What impacts is biology going to have on nutrient release, nutrient availability, and also what impacts are the plants going to have? Because we find that some plants are actually going to greatly increase nutrient availability if we are growing the right plants following a nutrient application. So I've been thinking about, okay, how do we organize this thought process? We've kind of grown into doing this by default. But how can we effectively communicate the way that we're making recommendations and share that information with other people? So that was really the genesis for this conversation and the discussion on the webinar tonight. So I want to be taught tonight I'll be talking about the effect that biology can have on nutrient availability and how we should manage that and how we should take that into account when we're making recommendations for soil amendments or for crop fertilizers? Because what we've realized is that, and this has been true for the last, I'd say for the last five or six years, we no longer make recommendations based on linear algorithm of calculating that we need a certain quantity of a specific nutrient and then applying that quantity. It's no longer pounds in, pounds out by any stretch. So throughout this discussion tonight, we have a couple of other panelists were not able to make it, unfortunately. So I'll be doing most of the presenting at any point. If you have any questions during the webinar, you can see down below at the bottom of your screen. You can ask a question in the Q and A box. Just type in a question and I will be happy to respond to that. I'm going to try to track those and monitor those at the same time as I'm sharing the various thoughts that I've put together. Changing agronomy, how do we change how we make recommendations? And what I really particularly I want to focus on really practical applications. I want to describe the thought process, the theory, not the theory, but the science, and the principles that are behind how we make recommendations. And I'm going to try to move through this pretty quickly, perhaps 30 minutes or so. And what I'm realizing is that I actually am not able to see the Q and A while I'm in the presentation mode. So I'm going to flow through the presentation fairly quickly, try to give you all the practical information, and then after that, switch to Q and A. So any questions that you have, feel free to ask them, type them in the box, and I'll respond to those. All right, so first piece, we believe that biology trumps chemistry. This is a very simple statement, but it Has a tremendous amount of meaning. And the basic premise is that you can have really screwed up soil chemistry. And as long as you have good biology, you can still grow a really healthy crop. But if you have poor or dysfunctional biology, it doesn't matter how good the chemistry is, you will not be able to grow a crop that is resistant to diseases and insects. So when you're growing a crop in biologically vigorous soil, it can overcome imbalanced soil chemistry. So let's say for the sake of discussion, that you have soils which show up on a soil report as being severely deficient in potassium and manganese and phosphorus, for example, when you have really good soil biology, and we have seen this countless times over and over again, when we have really good soil biology, then even though the soil levels on the soil report of phosphorus and potassium show up as being really low, for whatever reason, on the plant SAP analysis report, the plants never show as being deficient. Plants have adequate levels of phosphorus and potassium throughout the entire growing season. And in some cases, this happens on crops with a very heavy nutrient demand. For example, we've seen this quite a few times with tomato production, where once the tomato plant gets into the fruit filled period, it begins absorbing a tremendous amount of potassium. And the order the crop removal numbers for tomatoes for very high yielding crops can be as high as 200 and 200 to 240 pounds of potassium per acre. And about 80% of that can be absorbed in the last four to five weeks of the fruit fill period. So there's this tremendous nutrient removal that happens in very short periods of time. And in some cases we have observed where soils might have potassium levels as low as 50 parts per million on a soil analysis. And for whatever reason, farmers were not able to apply the potassium or did not get the potassium applied that they wanted to apply. And we were able to supplement with really strong biology and got this tremendous potassium absorption spike. And so what has happened, this happened initially. Now, over a several year period on some of these soils, We've gotten to the point where we actually apply only a relatively small amount of the nutrients that we would expect to be required based on the crop removal rates. Because we know that some of these soil types can consistently release the nutrients that the crop needs, Provided that we have good biology. But then, of course, we've also experienced the opposite to be true as well. Where you can grow a crop in a soil that has absolutely perfectly balanced chemistry, the percent base saturation of calcium and potassium and magnesium looks picture perfect. Phosphorus levels are exactly where they need to be. And yet the crop itself can be a complete disaster because the soil biology is dysfunctional. It's simply dead. It's not performing, it's not working. Even though from a chemistry perspective, if we were to look at the lab report, the lab report says that we have incredible soil chemistry and yet we're not able to grow a really healthy crop. This scenario speaks to one of the frustrations that I have had with some groups who are teaching and training agronomy. This is less true today, perhaps, I believe, than it has been sometimes historically. But there are some schools of thought which say that our goal as a farmer, our goal as agronomists, needs to be to get a perfectly balanced soil report. We need to have calcium at 68 to 75% base saturation. We need to have magnesium at 12 to 16%. And they develop all these specific numbers and specific ratios to say we need to have these nutrient levels at these ratios, at these numbers. And when we do that, everything else will be fixed and everything is going. All the other challenges that we have are going to be addressed. They're going to take care of themselves. The premise is that the goal, not the premise, but the implication of this paradigm is that the goal of a farmer should be to develop a perfectly balanced soil report. I very strongly disagree with that idea very strongly. The goal is always first, second and third is to grow a healthy, profitable crop. That's the goal. The goal should not be to make a pretty looking piece of paper from the lab. One of my mentors described this in a slightly different way when referring to soil calcium levels and remineralizing, rebalancing soils. Gary Zimmer from Midwestern Bioag used to say that being on the road to Rome is a lot more fun than actually getting to Rome. And he was using that to describe amending calcium levels in soils over time. To say that if you apply, let's say you have a soil that has 50, 55% base saturation calcium, from a crop response perspective, it is much more effective and you get a much bigger crop response by putting on small applications of calcium amendments over an extended period of time. So for example, applying 500 pounds per acre of 200 mesh calcium carbonate once every six to 12 months, let's say once every 12 months over a total of a four to a five year period, is going to get you a much bigger crop response and much more absorbable calcium than simply putting on 2 tons per acre of ag grade limestone all at one shot. Because now every year you're putting on a small amount of limestone, you get this chemistry acid alkaline reaction, and you get this flush of available calcium that the crop can absorb in that growing season. So our goal as agronomists and growers should not be to develop an ideal soil report. It should be to grow a really healthy crop. And over time, our soils should become more aligned and closer in the range of optimal nutrient balance. But that shouldn't be our number one goal right out of the gate. So typically, historically, when we have considered nutrient recommendations and applications, the calculation to determine how many nutrients to apply, what nutrients to apply, relatively simple, relatively straightforward. First, you add what's missing. If you don't have adequate levels of potassium or phosphorus or calcium or whatever the case might be, you add whatever is reported as not as being inadequate on the soil report. Secondly, you apply the crop removal rates of npk, which I find to be an interesting concept. I would just ask the question, if we should consider adding crop removal rates of npk, why don't we also add the removal rates of calcium and magnesium and sulfur and some of the trace minerals, but particularly calcium and magnesium and sulfur can be absorbed in very substantial quantities, often matching some of those, the quantities of N, P and K on many crops. So I think there needs to be a broader discussion around adding crop removal. And then lastly, I realized that there is typically no consideration for the possible biological release of nutrients. And that's specifically the piece that I want to focus on tonight is trying to get a grip and a handle on account for what nutrients can biology release and how can we manage that. So there are some cases in which we can apply soil amendments of calcium or phosphorus and get no change on the soil report. We've observed this on a number of occasions. How does this happen? Why does it happen? There's a very interesting example in a case study of a farm that David Miller worked with a number of years ago. This was a dairy farm in central Ohio. And this farm had the soil analysis calcium magnet that the cation ratios were relatively well balanced. Calcium was a little bit on the low side, about 65% base saturation and slightly acidic. PHS 6.3 CEC of 9.6 and very low phosphorus numbers, low enough that we felt, looking at the overall nutrient balance, that phosphorus was the limiting factor that would slow down forage production. Crop production on this farm in the initial soil report Bray 1, phosphorus was at 23 parts per million and the Bray 2 was at 35 parts per million. This farmer applied 500 pounds per acre of rock phosphate on four times, four different applications, applied in the spring and the fall for two years, then did a follow up soil analysis 23 months later, 23 months after the first soil report, with all of those applications of rock phosphate, the phosphorus levels on the Bray one were unchanged. It didn't move at all. There was still 23 parts per million. And the Bray 2 had slightly increased by 2 points. But essentially a rounding error, not enough to be statistically significant in any way, had increased to 37 parts per million. So this is just one example. We could pull several dozen examples of case studies similar to this out of our files. And so now the question becomes, okay, why did this happen, how did it happen and what can we do about it? So the key was that this particular farm was in the process of transitioning to organic. Actually, I think they might have been just recently organically certified before that was a conventionally managed farm. And through a variety of historical management practices, the use of anhydrous ammonia glyphosate, triple stack corn, etc. There was almost no functional soil biology. There were no earthworms present. And so as a result, the rock phosphate application was not digested, was not processed, and there was no phosphorus response. And at the same time, we know that other farms in the exact same area, similar soil type, we could do a similar application of rock phosphate and the phosphorus numbers would move from 23 parts per million to as much as 100 parts per million on Bray 1. So in some cases we're seeing this very rapid phosphorus response, in other cases, not at all. And the major difference, in fact, I would go so far as to say the only identifiable difference that we know of, that we were able to determine was the difference in soil biology. So the question that we need to ask to understand how to make recommendations is how do plants and biology influence soil chemistry? I would suggest the conversation is often framed around biology to study and identify. Say, okay, we have this group of bacteria or this species of bacteria that has been identified as being a really good phosphorus solubilizer, or we have mycorrhizal fungi, which are really good phosphorus solubilizer. But in reality, while there is a need that this is very useful, very powerful information. And while I believe very strongly that we do need to address biology, make sure we have the right biology in the soil system, it's really not the biology that drives the process. The biology is just a consequence of what is happening with the crop and with the plants, because it's really the plants that drive this entire system and drive the entire process. And this is for two reasons. One reason is that plants can signal the soil microbes to release specific types of nutrients and attract specific types of nutrients. So plants can actually signal the soil microbes to increase the release of phosphorus or of calcium or of manganese or iron, for example. So they have an effect on what is happening in the rhizosphere in the microbiome by these signaling mechanisms. But secondly, and far more importantly, I believe, is the fact that the soil biology in the rhizosphere is largely dependent, it could even suggest completely dependent on the photosynthesis that are released through the root system as root exudates as an energy source. So the vigor, the activity, the aggressiveness, the soil microbial community is in direct correlation to the quantity and the volume of sugars sent out through the root system as root exudates. Which means that the healthier the plant is, the more actively it's photosynthesizing, the more photosynthase it's producing, the more robust soil microbial community is going to be. This is why I'll be speaking to this in future webinars in the next few months. But this is why I'm such a strong advocate of the use of foliar applications, because I see that foliar applications, which are correctly designed to increase photosynthesis, can increase a plant's total volume of sugar production by a factor of about 3 to 4x in every 24 hour photoperiod, which turbocharges soil biology. So you can actually have using inoculants, using all these various pieces can be a very important tool. It's a critical tool. But if you really want to accelerate biology, start paying attention to the photosynthesis engine during the growing season. And that's one piece that I wanted to point out. When we look at these adjusting recommendations to account for the influence that biology can have, it's very important that we also give that biology the support and the food sources that it needs throughout the growing season to release the nutrients that we want it to release at the same time. So one of the drivers of the mechanisms by which plants and biology influence nutrient release is these various signaling mechanisms where plants can actually signal specific microbes to release nutrients that are in short supply. And this is a homeostatic process that plants can actually signal for specific nutrient release. So they can signal that they specifically need phosphorus or that they specifically need iron. This is quite well documented. And it's very intriguing that we have this symbiotic relationship working back and forth, where plants can actually communicate what their needs are to the soil biology and then the microbes in the microbiome will actually release those specific nutrients. So there's very interesting, when you think about that, there's one key piece here which is that when plants signal the need for specific nutrients, that signal is often, obviously it's transmitted out at as compounds or in some cases as electrical signals through the root system and through the root exudates. But those signals are often acted upon by very specific microorganisms, by very specific bacteria or fungi. So what happens when a plant signals that it needs an increased supply of phosphorus, but the bacteria or the mycorrhizal fungi, or the trichoderma or other organisms that solubilize phosphorus are not present? The result is that you don't get any phosphorus release? I think that idea in a nutshell, is the basis and the foundation for why I believe it is so imperative to use inoculants. Because if it is true that we can change how we manage soils and how we manage our crops, and we can begin providing an environment for biology to recover. Soil biology has an incredible capacity to recover and to rebuild a population of soil profile. But it's very possible, not just possible, but it actually does happen that in many cases that recovering population can be missing many of the key microbes that are needed for nutrient release and for disease suppression, etc. I believe that it is very important to actually add inoculants to make sure that we have the specific nutrients that the plants are relying on and that they are signaling for nutrient release. Because what we have seen is without the inoculants, we don't get the same nutrient release patterns and we can't rely on the soil to release nutrition. So an additional interesting point is that biology regulates and controls biochemistry in the rhizosphere. So I often get asked the question, or all types of questions about ph. What should soil ph be for various crops and so forth. The reality is that we need to, as agronomists and growers, we need to manage PH in the bulk soil environment as well as we can. However, in the rhizosphere right close to the root system, biology controls ph. Biology controls everything that happens in that environment. So they can actually regulate PH and regulate nutrient availability right in the rhizosphere, right in the root system zone very tightly. So usually they work to keep ph relatively acidic as low as 3.5 to 4.5, right in the rhizosphere right in within a few microns of the root surface. And when you think about that, such an acidic ph, not only do we have all this biology working very aggressively and very actively, and the biology of course is producing enzymes to trigger nutrient release and so forth. But in addition to that, this acidic environment is also an environment that is very conducive to releasing complex nutrients. So in that sense, ph is really the tail that wags the dog for many agronomists and growers. In that we would be wise to give much less consideration and attention to ph and pay much more attention to the biology which actually has the capacity to regulate and manage and control the ph in the rhizosphere. So I mentioned this point already. When the needs of bacteria or fungi are absent, then the nutrients remain complex. This is why we need to add inoculants. These biological effects of nutrient release only happen when microbes have the right environment. So it doesn't matter how many inoculants that we add and it doesn't matter what we want to happen and what we want to change. On our soil report and a crop nutrient perspective, if the microbes don't have the right environment, then we're not going to get the response. So the question is, how do we, what defines the right environment and how can we manage that? So the right environment means three things. It means having a good soil aggregate structure, it means having good gas exchange, and it means having a food source. So I want to talk about each of these very briefly and just to comment also. So actually let's speak to each of these pieces very quickly. So good soil aggregate structure. The reason we need good aggregate structure is because soil aggregates are essentially a colony for the bacteria and the fungi. For every all these organisms to thrive in, we need good crumb structure. Very importantly for the second point as well, which is so that we have good gas exchange. So I want to talk about gas exchange for just a second. There is this idea, this paradigm, particularly within the biological agriculture community, that we need to have aerobic soils, that we want our soils to be dominated by aerobic bacteria and aerobic organisms, and that anaerobic organisms are bad and that they produce diseases and the degradation of bio of organic materials and do not produce stable humic substances, etc, etc. I am not able to find evidence to suggest that that is true. Or let me say, let me say a little bit differently that I'm not able to find evidence to suggest that that is perfectly true. So when you think about aerobic versus anaerobic environments. Or a different way of saying it would be of oxidized versus reduced environments. There are different types of bacteria and various organisms that thrive at different parts of the spectrum. So this is an entire spectrum. This is not black and white. It's a spectrum. It's a range. So you have some groups of bacteria and some organisms which thrive in highly oxidized environments or extremely aerobic environments. So if you till your soil or if you have potting media, for example, and you have a lot of aeration, you have one group of bacteria that can thrive in this highly aerobic environment, then you might have. On the complete other end of the spectrum, you have soils that are completely packed and compressed and there is no gas exchange, no gas flow. These are soils that are intensely anaerobic, where you have completely anaerobic fermentation and no inclusion of oxygen at all. Or, for example, when you have saturated environments, when you have flooded fields would be another example of that. But there is a middle part of this range that is. So it's the middle of the spectrum. It's not completely aerobic, it's not completely anaerobic. In this range, you have a group of bacteria that are termed the facultative anaerobes. And what that means in plain English is that they can thrive in both slightly aerobic and slightly anaerobic environments. So the reason this is important is because this is worth talking about, is because many just could borderline, say all but the great majority of the beneficial bacteria and fungi, particularly beneficial bacteria that we desire to have in our systems. All of disease suppressive bacteria and all of the nutrient solubilizers belong in this group of the facultative anaerobes. So what appears to be true is that we do not want to have soils which are completely aerobic that have the presence of high levels of oxygen or that are very oxidized. But what we do want is we want soils that can breathe very freely and we have very strong gas exchange. Because when we have good gas exchange, that means we have good carbon dioxide released from the soil surface, which is actually a major limiting factor for really healthy and well growing crops. This could be a topic for another conversation. But when you have a really high yielding factor or a high yielding crop, a healthy, high energy crop, in many cases, the limiting. When you balance nutrition well, one of the limiting factors to rapid photosynthesis is carbon dioxide availability. You want soils where you have really good gas exchange to release carbon dioxide from the soil, microbial communities, respiration, and secondly you want to be able to have oxygen flow and oxygen exchange into the soil profile. But the interesting part to remember is that when you have oxygen flowing into the soil, it's not going to remain as oxygen gas in the soil for a very long period of time, in fact, usually in minutes, that oxygen is going to be utilized by chemistry reactions involving nitrogen. The nitrification cycle, for example, will use oxygen very quickly. So there is usually not very much oxygen actually present the soil profile. But what we do need is we need very good gas exchange. And then the third point, very important point that I mentioned earlier, is that they need to have a food source. And this food source is where you can really drive biology in the growing season by having plants that are photosynthesizing very well. There is one point worth mentioning, which is that in some cases, so to some degree, the premise of this entire topic is that we can use biology to release nutrients and we should not be completely dependent on the use of soil amendments. Or we should consider how to take into account the nutrients that can be released without using soil amendments. And in some cases we have soils that we cannot develop, or it's very. Shouldn't say we cannot. But it's very difficult to develop good soil biology without first correcting some of the major nutrient imbalances. The major one that comes to mind for me at this point is when we have either there's three possible elements when we have very high levels of magnesium and a very narrow calcium to magnesium ratio, then we can have really tight soil with poor aggregate structure. The same can be true of sodium when we have high sodium levels and in comparison to calcium. And the third element is sometimes not measured. Actually it's often not measured on an Albrecht type soil report, but it is usually measured on a saturated paste analysis that would be bicarbonates. So when we are irrigating fruit or vegetable crops with irrigation water that has high levels of bicarbonates, those high levels of bicarbonates will actually also really tighten up soils and develop soils that have very poor aggregate structure. So in either of those situations, we do need to address the fundamental biochemical imbalances in order to allow the soil to develop good aggregate structure, good crumb structure, so that we can have really aggressive soil biology. This is one scenario in which it's very important to address the nutrient imbalances that are present. And then an additional point is that correcting nutrient imbalances doesn't mean that biology is going to recover all on its own. So we can begin growing cover crops. We can Begin managing our tillage differently, we can begin making a lot of the changes that might be needed to produce an environment where biology can really thrive. But that doesn't mean that it's going to recover all on its own, or that doesn't mean that specific strains are going to recover on its own. This is the situation where we need to add inoculants to reinoculate specific things that are missing. So how do you actually. How do you make recommendations as an agronomist or as a farmer? How do you read a soil report and make recommendations? Taking these various ideas into consideration, the first step is change recommendations for both fertilizers and soil amendments to create a biological response. Let's not just this is what we have done. And I think a fundamental piece of our success at AEA is we have not waited for soils to change. And definitely they do improve gradually over time, obviously. But we have actively worked with our recommendations to try to produce a change in the soil biology and to produce a nutrient response as quickly as possible. So the four major points that we work with, that we keep in consideration, we're making recommendations, is, first of all, don't apply suppressive materials that suppress biology and don't apply a surplus of soluble nutrients at the wrong time. Classical example is soluble phosphorus and mycorrhizal fungi. Third, add the inoculants. Make those inoculants a part of the recommendations that you're making for the grower. And fourth, make recommendations to provide the correct environment. So making recommendations to not apply suppressive materials, kind of the classical examples would be anhydrous ammonia, potassium chloride and phosphate fungicides. Of course, this list can obviously be expanded. These are the three heavy hitters that really do a number on soil biology. So anything that we can do to reduce the application of these materials is going to have a corresponding net benefit for the soil biology. The second point, recommending to not apply a surplus of soluble nutrients. I struggle sometimes to understand why some growers insist on applying large quantities of nitrogen or of phosphorus at the beginning of the growing season when they're planting a crop, or sometimes even months in advance of planting the crop. It absolutely makes no sense from an agronomic perspective, from an economics perspective, and it has an incredibly strong suppressive effect on the soil biology. So when you think about the plant and its signaling mechanisms, kind of the example that I referred to earlier, if you think about mycorrhizal fungi, one of the things that mycorrhizal fungi are very well known for is the capacity to solubilize and release phosphorus and make phosphorus available to the crop. So what happens when you are planting a crop such as? I don't know, it can be corn or soybeans or wheat or spinach or peppers. When you're direct seeding a crop and you apply a fertilizer starter in the furrow on the seed that contains high levels of soluble phosphorus, those high levels of soluble phosphorus are going to directly suppress and shut down the development of mycorrhizae. So now the seed germinates, the crop begins growing, and three months, or not three months, but three weeks down the road, let's say for the sake of discussion, the crop has absorbed a lot of the phosphorus that was applied and now it needs additional levels of phosphorus. So it sends out its signaling mechanism to say, hey, I need more phosphorus. But guess what? There's no mycorrhizal fungi present because the soluble phosphorus shut down the mycorrhizae. So now you have actually created an ecosystem, created an environment in which that plant is dependent on being spoon fed phosphorus for the remainder of the growing season. The same, the same holds true of nitrogen applications. There are dozens of bacteria that have the capacity to sequester nitrogen, make nitrogen available to the crop throughout the growing. Any crop, this is not just legumes, but any crop at the growing season. But those bacteria will be shut down when you apply a surplus of soluble levels of nitrogen. So this we need to. I'm not suggesting, let me just clarify, I'm not suggesting that we need to immediately stop all applications of soluble nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers. What I am suggesting is that we reduce those applications to the quantity that we know the crop actually requires and try to apply it as late and in a small quantities as possible and partner it with microbial biostimulants so that we don't have that suppressive effect. So the additional piece, when we're making recommendations for growers, let's actually include as a part of those recommendations the need to add inoculants. So there's a broad array of very important inoculants that I believe need to be added. Plant growth promoting rhizobacteria. All types of different disease suppressive bacteria, bacteria that actually produce a SAR response, a systemic acquired resistance response, so they trigger an immune response. In the plant. You have phosphorus solubilizers and other mineral solubilizers. Mycorrhizal fungi, trichoderma. It's important to have and to provide a broad array of various microbes and this is actually the reason why in our work at advancing eco agriculture, we developed the inoculant called Biocode Gold, because we wanted to have one inoculant, one package that would be easy and effective to use, that included this entire array of all of the important elements. Very importantly, make recommendations to correct the environment. So if you have soils that are very compacted, that don't have good gas exchange, it's important to make recommendations for tillage or for cover crops or for whatever is appropriate for that particular ecosystem to develop a soil profile where we have really good gas exchange and also make recommendations to provide food sources. Ideally, that would be with the use of foliar sprays through the growing season to increase the volume of sugar production. But secondarily, we can also use biostimulants and apply to food sources at the times that we are actually adding an inoculant. So you make all of these recommendations, the farmer makes some changes in the field. What changes can you expect to see? What can you expect to see on a soil report and what can you expect to see in terms of crop response? There are two particular nutrients. I could provide many different examples, but we're going to focus for the moment on two nutrients. First, one is potassium. Most soils, silt and clay loam soils in continental North America for certain, contain approximately 42,000 pounds of potassium per acre in just the top six inches. How many crops are you growing where the root system is limited to the top 6 inches? There are some vegetable crops for which that is the case, but for most crops, the root system actually is substantially deeper than that. The point being simply that there are tremendous untapped reserves of potassium in the soil profile that can be released relatively easily. When we have aggressive biology that has a food source and is functioning as it is needed to. We've seen this happen over and over again. Where the key for many crops, for really high yielding crops, high test weight, exceptional fruit quality is really dependent on supplying adequate or even a generous supply of potassium during the fruit fill period. We find that when we have really aggressive biology, really aggressive biology can actually output. Crops that are grown in soils with really aggressive biology can substantially outperform crops where potassium is being spoon fed and applied every week through the irrigation system. Biology can outperform that, and that is quite remarkable. Similarly, this slide is incorrect. Most soils contain 9,000 pounds of phosphorus. It says potassium, but it's actually meant to say phosphorus can contain greater than 9,000 pounds of phosphorus per acre in the top six inches. I believe that it will become critically important for us to understand how to release nutrients from the locked up soil reserves in the future. If we continue to use phosphorus at our current rate in agriculture as well as in industry, then we will have depleted all of the world's known phosphorus reserves in the next 25 years, approximately 20 to 25 years. So we have at the most a 25 year supply. It's going to become imperative for us to understand how to tap into this phosphorus reserve that is in the soil profile. The reality is there are some exceptions where we have sandy soils and so forth based on the geological profile, but for the most part, most of the soils that we have in North America and as well as many countries around the world, we have an adequate phosphorus supply in the soil profile if we can figure out how to release it. And we know that phosphorus solubilization is something that mycorrhizal fungi and some strains of Pseudomonas bacteria and other organisms are particularly good at, given the right environment and given the right support. So those are the overview of the thoughts that I wanted to share. I am going to switch to the Q and A. Have a couple of questions here. First question is. Hi Chris. Oxidative versus reductive environments. What are the results of introducing large volumes of ozonated water through the drip irrigation system? So when I was describing oxidized versus reduced soil environments, ozone O3 is actually going to have a very strong oxidizing effect. And so I don't have personal experience with applying ozone in irrigation systems, but I do have experience with applying hydrogen peroxide in irrigation systems. A number of years ago, we were working with a group of growers who had installed hydrogen peroxide injectors in an effort to control Phytophthora and Fusarium and Rhizoctonia and these organisms, every one of those organisms, and very true for many disease organ. Not all, but many disease organisms of the soil profile thrive in oxidized environments. And so the idea was that the hydrogen peroxide would serve as a sterilizing agent in the soil profile. And before they even told me what the results were, I said I would predict that the application of hydrogen peroxide is actually going to increase the disease susceptibility and the disease intensity, which they reported was actually the case. So applying hydrogen peroxide actually made their disease problems worse rather than better. This is obviously less true if you're applying it. It's not true at all if you're applying it to the plant foliage, but to the soil. Adding oxidizers is a really bad idea because it has a very strong disease enhancing effect. Great question. Next question. Similar to that is starting to spray ozonated water on fruit and vegetable crops for disease and to some extent insect control. What might we expect to see in regards to plant health, good and bad? It's an interesting question. I wouldn't expect to see any negative plant responses that I'm aware of. The only question that I would have would be that we know today that we have these communities of synergistic bacteria, phytosanitary bacteria that live on the plant leaf surface that are actually very important for control of airborne bacterial and fungal diseases and also to digest nutrients that are applied as foliar sprays and from dust and so forth. So I would have a question about how the ozone might possibly negatively impact the microbes on the phyloplane on the leaf surface. But I don't know for certain that it would have a negative impact. So that would be something worth exploring and thinking about. Next question we have is, will tillage break up or degrade the biology that we are trying to build? This is a fascinating question around which there are many very strong opinions. Our experience is that tillage is not by definition bad, that you can actually have a very. You can very much have a positive impact on soil biology with tillage. And by using tillage wisely, tillage can absolutely be overdone. And it has the potential to have a very negative effect as well. And the way that it has been used historically has often contributed to a negative effect. I'll completely acknowledge that. So it is thought that tillage will in particular have a negative impact on fungi. And because it breaks up fungal hyphae and fungal colonies and so forth, as well as introducing a lot of oxygen into the soil profile. The key, I believe, is to leave an undisturbed zone for the fungi to rebuild back into the soil profile. So perhaps, depending on the challenge with the soil, perhaps the tillage needs to be very shallow. Only the top 20-30cm top 3 to 4 inches. And then we have a zone below that in which we still have a fungal population that can thrive and that can then rebuild and reinoculate the remaining soil profile. Or if we need to do vertical tillage, perhaps we have deep aeration where we're tilling 12 to 18 inches deep, or perhaps even deeper to break up a plow plan or hard pan. And we space those 30 inches or more apart so that we have an undisturbed zone in the center from which fungi can grow back in throughout the entire soil profile. We find that when we're actually measuring it, tillage is not by definition bad and doesn't necessarily suppress soil biology. It can have that effect. But if you have really compacted soil and then you till it and you introduce bitter aeration, it can actually have a very strong positive impact on the overall soil health, soil profile. Another question from Del, Del Christianson, how do you measure soil and biology activity? Isn't that the million dollar question? I get asked that question every single presentation that we talk about soil biology. The short answer is that as of this moment we are using and very much like the soil analysis or the microbial analysis that is termed the Haney analysis that was developed by Rick Haney in conjunction with Texas A and M University and the usda. We are currently using Ward Labs for that analysis. And I think it is a very useful analysis. We really like it. The best way to describe how that analysis compares with the rest that are available is that I would say that it is the least inaccurate, let's just put it that way. There's many different types of microbial bioassays or microbial assays, but we don't find that for the most part we can't use the information to actually make recommendations. It's not useful. It's not useful data. And that is not true of the Haney analysis. We can actually use that data to actually make recommendations, which is very important. Another great question, how can we inoculate soils with foreign microbes so that particular soil survived the existing microbiology? So I think what you're asking, Jason, is if I'm interpreting your question correctly is when we are adding an inoculant. This could be a two part question when we're adding an inoculant. First is how do we know that that inoculant is going to survive and actually develop a viable population? Or conversely, if we have a really aggressive inoculant, how do we know that that's not going to displace the native soil microbes and the existing microbiology? So I'll answer the second question first, which is that is there any danger of displacing currently existing microbes? And I would say that the answer is practically never. The only instance where I know that that might even possibly be a consideration would be with trichoderma. In some soil conditions we have trichoderma, which can be very aggressive and can possibly displace some other fungi. But at least this is theorized to be possible and has suggested to have happened and have occurred in a couple of cases, but we have not observed it yet. And I believe that it's really, again, going back to a point that I made earlier. Plants control which microbes thrive and survive and which don't because they are going to feed those microbes that they have a synergistic, symbiotic relationship with. So to the first part of the question, how can we ensure that an inoculant remains the soil profile? This is a very important question and I think speaks to the quality and the integrity and the strength of inoculants that we need to use. Because when you're putting an inoculant, a bacterial or a fungal inoculant out into a soil profile, you're introducing it into a probably hostile environment, comparatively speaking. So what we need to do is apply those inoculants at the same time that we're applying a food source and give them a food source that they can proliferate on and grow very quickly and establish a viable population. So one of our favorite pathways and mechanisms for applying inoculants is to apply them either on crop residue when we're incorporating crop residue, or adding them to cover crops when we are incorporating cover crops so that we establish a strong population. So I would also suggest that if you have a good inoculant, it should be successful in establishing a viable population. In the first application, we often recommend to our growers to do repeat applications two to three times to make sure that we that we have a good population established. But there should not be the need to continually reinoculate the same inoculant year after year after year for indefinitely. If that is the case, if that's true, then that inoculant is likely not effective and not delivering the performance that you think it should be delivering. So then the next question that you are probably asking or thinking about is, well, how do we know whether the inoculant that we actually applied is producing a response and has actually established itself or not? How are we measuring that? And we don't have a good measuring tool. The way that we're measuring that today is just from an experiential perspective to say, okay, this soil used to not provide adequate phosphorus levels or adequate nitrogen at all. We used to consistently have these types of problems with nutrient availability, and we've added this inoculant. We've done all these other things, and now we no longer have that problem. Phosphorus supply has changed, nitrogen supply has changed as compared to the untreated area, it has not changed and we still have the same problems that we did. So we're really approaching it from a very experiential perspective to say, okay, have we gotten the results that we would expect from using this inoculant or not? And that's really kind of the best tool that we have at the moment. I shouldn't say it's the best tool that we have. That's the tool that we're using at this moment on a really large scale. Okay, Bill asked the question what is the inoculant source that I had mentioned again? And what about Spectrum? So the inoculant that I had mentioned is a product called Biokoat Gold and that is an AEA advancing Eco agriculture specific product that includes a bacterial broad range of different bacteria, phosphorus solubilizing bacteria, disease suppressive bacteria, immune triggering bacteria, chitin digesting bacteria, quite a broad range, as well as a group of fungi, the mycorrhizal fungi and the trichoderma and so forth. So, and I think the, the question that you're asking about Spectrum Spectrum is a bacterial specific inoculant. It's one of our workhorses and one of our favorite tools that we use on most of the farm. Actually it's, I can probably safely say on every farm that we work with, but it is, it's a very powerful bacterial inoculant, but it is bacterial only. It doesn't have any of the mycorrhizal fungi or the trichoderma, which is why we sometimes use the Biocode Gold instead of the Spectrum. So great question. Thank you, Bill. Jonathan Correa asked the question when is the best time to apply biostimulants? So biostimulants can mean either sometimes that is used to refer to a plant biostimulant to stimulate plant development, and sometimes it is used to refer to a microbial biostimulant to stimulate fungi and bacteria and archaea and various soil microbes. So the best time to apply it is, is when you need the greatest nutrient release or when you are applying an inoculant. So if you are applying an inoculant, it's very powerful to partner that inoculant with a biostimulant to get the greatest response and to get the best establishment. And then throughout the growing season, let's say you have a crop that you know is approaching peak nutrient demand because it's getting to the fruit filled period, then putting on a biostimulant either through the Irrigation system or whatever delivery system we have to apply to the soil will give us a peak microbial response and nutrient release response from that biostimulant. So that would be my response, my answer to that question. Okay, I seem that I have to move a little bit more quickly here. We have quite a few questions. Thank you for contributing, by the way. So Tim Redmond asked the question, how do we apply what is a practical way for a small farm to get these various biological organisms into the soil profile? There's a broad array of potential delivery mechanisms with these inoculants. They can be mixed in water and sprayed onto the soil profile or onto a cover crop. That can be one way of getting a very consistent application and one that we really like and use a lot. To some degree. You can also add them to compost, to a composting process. But our experience with that has been that that is much more inconsistent. We don't get the same consistency of results when we apply it with compost as when we do an actual soil application. Another question, does total alkalinity play a role in how So I would say that total alkalinity, obviously, yes, it does play a role because it plays a role in aggregate structure and soil crumb structure. So when you have extremely high levels of calcium or carbonates or bicarbonates, when you have calcareous soil that is going to. Or sodium, whatever the case might be, that is going to degrade aggregate structure. So obviously it does have an impact, but it's really the minerals that compose that total alkalinity that are having the effect on soil aggregates. Dennis Demel asked the question, what about dry weather conditions? And then the effectiveness of biological inoculants? This is a really good question. So there's a couple of pieces here. First, for the initial establishment period, we see that we get the greatest response when inoculants are applied to soil that has moisture greater than 60%. Now, for those of you who are not familiar with actually using a moisture meter to measure the moisture levels in soil, 60% is dusty dry. It's very dry at 70%. 70% soil moisture is where soil will first begin appearing dry visually. And at 60%, it is usually dusty dry. So the reason that you can actually apply inoculants when soil appears to be quite dry, and the reason for that is because the bacteria, this is less true, actually. It's true of fungi as well, but particularly true of bacterial inoculants is that they can actually tap into the moisture that is adsorbed onto the soil colloids that plant roots cannot access, so they can actually establish themselves in what we would perceive to be very dry conditions. So obviously optimal conditions would be when you have have just had a recent rainfall or when you have wet soil where the population can really thrive. That is always going to be the optimal conditions, but you can actually apply them when it's comparatively dry and still get very good establishment. Really great question. Thanks Dennis. Can I offer some recommendations for books to get more information on these topics? A lot of the pieces that I've spoken of tonight have really been from a very experiential place of experiencing and thinking about how we make recommendations differently from the way that we've made them in the past. If there is any really good book, a comprehensive book on soil biology, I would recommend a book titled Soil Microorganisms and Higher Plants by Enni Krasilnikov from the USSR Academy of Sciences, published in the late 70s. And we actually have a PDF copy of that available. If you want to email AEA and respond to the webinar invite, then I can make sure that we get a copy of that for you. And in the future that will be on the AEA website at some point, but it's not there. Now. Mary Lee asked a question. What do I think of inoculating biochar as a soil aggregate and structure changer? So we actually have worked with a number of growers, tomato, particularly tomato, high tunnel growers, who have been working with inoculated biochar. And I am very, very impressed. We haven't seen substantial changes in terms of changing soil aggregate structure, but we have seen very substantial changes in the soil's carbon to nitrogen ratio as measured on the Haney analysis and in total fungal biomass at very small application rates. So applying biochar I would want to, I should do a double check and refresher, but off the top of my head I want to say we were applying biochar at a rate of perhaps £40 or so. Actually money, even £40, I want to say maybe £20 per acre combined with compost, humified compost and an actual inoculants. So when we inoculated the bio jar and then combined that with the compost and applied that as compared with compost without biochar, we got a substantial increase in the fungal populations, a much broader carbon to nitrogen ratio and a much more disease suppressive soil. It was a very pronounced effect, very remarkable effect. That's been one of the few cases where we actually have good data. We have growers that have used biochar and a broad range of other crops. But on that crop we know we have good data for and we've seen some very nice crop responses. Luke asked the question, where does manure application fit into a biological program? Is manure from confined animals bad and the manure has had time to become anaerobic. Are you saying to go bad? I'm assuming that means to become anaerobic before there is the chance to get it spread. In general, just as a general statement, we usually find dry manure applications from a bedded pack or dry manure in general to be beneficial. Don't see very substantial negative impacts almost ever from a biology perspective, even if that manure is anaerobic. On the other hand, we see very negative effects from liquid manure frequently, particularly if it is, if it is anaerobic. So for either of those situations, there are an abundance of good microbial inoculants that are available today to manage those situations and turn a potentially negative product into a major positive. So for liquid manure pits, we use and we often make recommendations for an inoculant called OP8 combined with rejuvenate, which is a bio stimulant. And it will turn the most toxic liquid manure pit into very clean, high quality fertilizer very quickly. It gets rid of all of the toxic gases, digests all the sludge, breaks down all the residue, turns it into a true liquid. It's really profound. And then the same holds true of dry manure as well. We can apply biodigester as an inoculant to dry manure piles and completely change the quality of that manure, even when it doesn't need to be turned, doesn't need to be managed. If it's just added as it is being piled, that will change it very quickly. So you can turn a potential negative into a major positive. Drew asked the question, hi John, what sources do you recommend to read to learn about the many microorganisms that are good at solubilizing nutrients in the soil? Honestly, for a very specific topic like that, today we live in the world of 2018, I would suggest go to Google Scholar and search for exactly that and you will find many white papers that will speak specifically to nutrient solubilization. And if you want to narrow it down in more detail, you can actually search for specific nutrients and you will find a lot of the research that is available out there. I'm not aware I'm giving you that answer only because there possibly might be really good books that have been published on this topic. I'm sure there probably are, but there's none that I am aware of at the moment that I've read that I can give a glowing endorsement to. Many of them that have good information are difficult to read, and many of those that are easy to read don't really have great information. So I'm sorry that I don't have a better answer for you. John asked the question, is maintaining healthy biology in soils, Is that ever a self sustaining process? Can one create an environment that maintains the benefits of positive biology or does it necessarily need inoculation to continue its benefits? That's an awesome question, John. Thank you for asking that. So the answer is yes, you absolutely can develop an environment and manage it in such a way so that it is self sustaining. And so this is, I speak, have spoken a number of times and will continue to speak about what I refer to as regenerative soil systems. And the key to that long term sustainability, where you have sustainability that is years or decades long, is not just in managing the soil environment, although that's very important, but really in managing the plants. Because when you manage plants to produce a lot of photosynthes, a lot of sugar and send them down to the root system, plants really control what is happening with biology. So as soon as you start growing really healthy plants that are resistant to diseases and insects and are sending large volumes of sugar to the root system, you can fundamentally change soil biology to develop a very disease suppressive microbial profile in the microbiome that lasts indefinitely and there should not be the need for continued applications of inoculants. I very strongly believe that to be true and I have observed that to be true as well. And that's, that's really exciting and something that I'm really passionate about is developing systems to that point of development. A question Wayne asked the question, please comment on the role of colloidal silver as implant protection from diseases and insects. Hmm, slightly off topic, but an interesting question. The short answer is that silver is a very strong bactericide fungicide and also has virustatic properties as well. So there are actually a couple of patents out there and in the very near future I expect there will be several silver based products on the marketplace to be used as disease and fungal for fungal bacterial control for control of many different plant diseases. So the question was how can colloidal silver impact that? I'm not off the top of my head familiar with the interactions of silver and silver biochemistry inside the plant. My one reservation would be that possibly silver might be absorbed by the plant and then not translocated and not moved through the plant very readily, that it would just be as a topical application. So I'm not sure whether it would have a systemic preventative effect, but I can definitely see where it would would have the potential to be effective as a topical treatment on the leaf surface. I did some research. This is quite a few years ago I worked on a project with a group of wheat grass growers who were having problems with mold in their germination chambers. For germinating wheatgrass, we use colloidal silver at if I recall correctly, 3 parts per million colloidal silver in their total nutrient solution and completely shut down the mold and the yeast growth practically overnight. So it was very, very quick response. Van asked the question what is one thing that conventional ag producing corn and soybeans could do different that would reduce costs and looks like that's the end of the question. Consistently, when we work with corn and soybean growers, the single greatest ROI application, the one application that has the greatest return on investment, is a seed treatment of a microbial inoculant. It costs a few dollars per acre and it generally produces a very nice crop response. That is the lowest cost input that produces the greatest response almost. I would say the only other thing that comes even close is a well designed and a well executed foliar spray. And to answer your question a bit more directly.