Cultural and Nutritional Management Priorities

Good evening, friends. Welcome to this Advancing Eco Agriculture webinar. The topic tonight is a discussion and a conversation on how to make decisions and how to prioritize product applications and how to think about managing agriculture ecosystems for the greatest economic crop response and for the greatest crop benefits. So I've realized that there are a lot of conversations, lots of discussions, where people are describing the merits and the benefits of specific products. And what is often missing, even from many agronomists and consultants, is a discussion about what the priorities might be and how to prioritize which products to apply first and which products to apply, what the priorities in the sequence are to get the greatest crop response, the maximum economic results. I realized that as our system has developed that advancing eco agriculture over the last decade, we've had the benefit of a lot of crop experiences in different environments, testing a broad range of different products. And we've had the opportunity to observe a lot of different products. And we have really had the advantage of a lot of observation to identify which products are most effective and in what context. So I wanted to share some of those thoughts because I think some of the pieces that we've observed are perhaps not what you might expect. In fact, they're not what most people expect at all. I also wanted to share some thoughts on developing and using what we term synergistic stacks. How do you stack and combine different products and different combinations to produce the greatest crop response? So there's two different frameworks for this conversation. The first framework, which I believe is the very important framework, the most important, is how to deliver an immediate economic response while also having a long term regenerative impact on the ecosystem. I believe very to become the mainstream, to become the status quo into the future, then we need to deliver very strong economic benefits and economic results immediately, right out of the gate. The very first applications, the very first growing season, there needs to be a very strong crop response. So this first framework, the way that we've approached plantation and our work at advancing eco agriculture is within this framework of delivering an immediate response. So the first, the foundational idea is that the biggest limiting factor to extraordinary plant growth and yield and quality is limited photosynthesis. It's fairly well understood today by many people that what we have come to accept as being common and normal and routine is plants, which are photosynthesizing at only about 15 to 20% of their capacity. And when you can increase that photosynthetic capacity from 20% up to, let's say, 60%, it completely changes a plant's Performance, you completely change the quality profile, you completely change yield, but you don't. So when you what is in effect happening is you triple the sugar production every day in every 24 hour photo period. But that of course doesn't have the necessary, doesn't necessarily have the effect of tripling yields. Instead, a portion of sugar being produced are actually sent out through the root system to feed soil biology and you get this tremendous soil regeneration effect. But all of that as an aside, the most important driver for driving strong yields and strong economic response immediately is focusing on driving the photosynthesis piece. So when we started looking at this, ask the question of what are the biggest limiting factors that limit photosynthesis and what we realized looking at photosynthesis when many agronomists and many growers, when we immediately, when we begin speaking about crop yields and managing health and quality, the conversation quickly devolves to focusing on two possible pieces. One is we focus on genetics and think about genetics. And secondly, we have a conversation about minerals and about nutrients. How are we managing nitrogen and calcium, potassium and manganese and boron, etc. Etc. But in fact, assuming of course that we have reasonably good genetics, usually neither of those two are the limiting factors to increasing yields and increasing quality. There are other factors which are limiting photosynthesis from occurring. From my perspective, the first priority, the number one priority to manage is to make sure that we have a consistent supply of water. You look at the photosynthesis process, it almost seems redundant and unnecessary and you ask the question, why are we having a conversation about water? But in reality, the moment a plant has a limited water supply is the moment photosynthesis stops or is greatly reduced. In fact, in most cases it would stop completely as the plant switches to photorespiration. And so with the challenges that we have today with vagaries of the weather and climate, etc. I believe I know I'm speaking to a very broad group of growers and growing a diversity of crops in many different climates and environments. And the it's going to become increasingly imperative to be able to manage water and provide a consistent supply of water every 24 hour photo period, every day. We need to have a good water supply. Water consistency is extremely crucial. As an example of this, there's a tomato greenhouse that we were working with about five or six years ago in central Pennsylvania, where the yields were about 12 to 13 pounds per plant, with a variety that was producing 20 to 25 pounds per plant from neighboring farms. Similar environment, similar conditions, and this grower was irrigating once every three days, or, excuse me, three times per week, irrigating three times per week, and putting on a fertigation of nutrients one time per week. When he asked how he could increase yields to a higher level, I told him that he didn't require any additional nutrients or any additional attrition, but what was actually needed was a more consistent water supply and more consistent fertigation. I described that the optimum is fertigation, an application of both water and nutrients every day, every 24 hours in an indoor environment. He didn't want to do that, so instead he switched to doing irrigation five times per week and fertigation three times per week, which resulted in a yield bump. Exact same variety, same nutritional protocols, no substantial variation, but resulted in a yield bump, an increase up to 18 to 20 pounds per plant. That convinced him. And the following year he put in a system to automate both the fertigation and irrigation and that increased yields up to 25 to 27 pounds per plant. So this was all just an effect of increasing water consistency. The second priority that we need to really focus on is making sure that plants have an adequate supply of CO2, carbon dioxide. It's amazing to me, I believe, that plants, when we have a really healthy crop that is growing well, many of our crops are chronically deficient in CO2, and that we can substantially increase yields by making sure that we have strong CO2 release with gas exchange from the soil profile. As an illustration, as an example of this, when we're working with plants in indoor environments, say we're growing tomatoes in a greenhouse environment. If we have two greenhouses that are exactly identical, both growing the same variety, same temperature, same lighting, same nutrients, etc. Then if we take one of those greenhouses and we increase the carbon dioxide concentration so one will have the background ambient CO2 of 350 parts per million, plus or minus. And the second we increase the CO2 to 1100 parts per million, we get double the plant biomass and double the yield simply by increasing carbon dioxide. In a growing cornfield on a June or July morning, when you have the presence of enough sunlight and water, etc. For good photosynthesis, we have corn plants. Actually, there's a couple of points here. So, so we have this gas exchange that happens with the soil where the earth has this natural 24 hour circadian rhythm of inhaling and exhaling once per cycle. So there is this natural inhaling process that happens in the evening and exhaling that happens in the morning. So gas and air moves down into the soil profile in the evening and then moves out of the soil profile in the morning. What this means is that in early morning, so in the evening you have nitrogen and oxygen moving down into the soil, and in the morning you have carbon dioxide being released from the soil, both perhaps as a result, partially as a result of oxidation of carbon dioxide, or of carbon and organic material in the soil being oxidized as carbon dioxide, or as a result of microbial respiration. So you have these particularly high concentrations of carbon dioxide in the bottom couple inches of the air column, very close to the soil surface. You had this abundance of carbon dioxide in the morning. And this obviously can vary quite a bit based on the presence of organic materials, the presence of biology, microbial respiration, etc. Etc. But it can be as high as 14 to 1500 parts per million, in some cases even higher. Whereas the background air ambient atmosphere can be in the neighborhood of 350 to 400 parts per million, depending on where and when you measure. When you look at this, a cornfield that is growing on a warm July morning, which should have this abundance of carbon dioxide that was released by gas exchange with the soil overnight, you now can have a growing cornfield that is a couple of feet tall, can completely suck all that carbon dioxide out of the air and deplete CO2 levels in the local environment down to under 100 parts per million. In a couple of hours, two to three hours time, you can rapidly deplete carbon dioxide in the environment. That means that for the rest of that day, the rest of that growing period, the limiting factor for that corn plant is not water, it's not sunlight, it's not minerals, CO2. And I think this speaks to one of the fundamental pieces that we haven't understood or haven't thought about regarding organic matter. When I asked the question, why do we want to have high organic matter? Why do we want to have high organic matter soils? There are, there are many different answers to that question that I hear that we want to provide a home for biology, we want to provide a food source for biology, we want to be to increase soil structure and soil water holding capacity. All of those are good answers. All those are correct. But I think we've missed the most fundamental piece, which is that the reason we want to have high organic matter soils, the reason we want to have high organic matter is so that we can lose it. We want to lose it as carbon dioxide through microbial respiration. When we have a green growing plant that can absorb the carbon dioxide, obviously we don't want to lose organic matter as CO2 and release it into the atmosphere when there's no plants to absorb it. That's a loss of carbon from the system. We want our systems to sequester carbon, but we do need to have this active functioning carbon cycle where carbon is released from soil organic matter and is rapidly absorbed by green growing plants, where it is effectively sequestered and then transferred back into the soil. And even more is captured than what was actually released from the soil profile originally, which is the entire conversation around carbon sequestration, etc. So the most important reason to have organic matter is so that you can lose it while you have a green growing crop. This is how you achieve exceptional plant health and yield and quality, etc. All the things that we want to achieve. The third important priority to deliver a strong economic crop response is to make sure that we have proper quality sunlight. And this is worth mentioning in the context of environments where we have extensive periods of very high temperatures and directed sunlight. I think increasingly in the future we will see, and it's already beginning to happen, we will see crops be shaded with shade cloth and nets, etc. Because when we have too much sunlight or too intense sunlight, we actually increase leaf temperature to a point where the leaves are dominated by photorespiration instead of photosynthesis. So this is there is when you have. As plant health increases. Let me add one more thought here. As plant health increases, you don't. As plant health increases, a limited supply of sunlight is seldom a limiting factor, practically never, because as plant health increases, you get increased density of trichomes, these leaf hairs on the leaf surface and on the stems. And these trichomes are photon receptors, particularly their photon receptors in the infrared spectrum, which means that the plant can absorb photons and can continue the photosynthesis process purely based on infrared radiation, which is abundant in the atmosphere and in the environment constantly. Which means that really photosynthesis never stops. Photosynthesis can continue straight through the night. The qualifier is that that only happens on healthier plants which have high densities of trichomes, particular trichomes. As we get into this entire conversation about lipid concentrations and the integrity of leaf surface membranes and plants functioning as an antenna, etc. The key point being that there is when healthy crop, there is so much challenge with not having enough sunlight. There is sometimes a challenge with having too much sunlight. Then the fourth priority, the fourth area to really increase photosynthesis and deliver an immediate economic crop response is to there's two pieces a Combination of two pieces. One is foliar applications of minerals, a specific group of minerals that increase photosynthesis. And the second partner application is applications of inoculants to the root system, particularly at planting or transplanting. So let me talk about each of these foliar applications of minerals. I'm speaking not about minerals and nutrients in general, but four very specific nutrients. These four nutrients are. This is a good spot to be taking notes. The first is nitrogen, the second is magnesium, the third is iron, and the fourth is manganese. The emphasis and the focus on these four nutrients is because of their direct role in the photosynthesis process. Magnesium center ion of the chlorophyll molecule surrounded by four elements of nitrogen. Four atoms of nitrogen. So the core of chlorophyll is magnesium surrounded by 4 nitrogen. Interestingly enough, the hemoglobin molecule in our blood is an exact analog of chlorophyll, with one difference. The center of hemoglobin is iron surrounded by four nitrogens, where chlorophyll is magnesium surrounded by four nitrogens. Other than that, the compounds are identical, which I find to be really intriguing. The third. So I spoke about magnesium and nitrogen. And magnesium, the third element, which I mentioned, is iron. So iron is not a part of chlorophyll, but iron plays a critical role in photosynthesis in two ways. One is it is the wrench that is responsible for putting chlorophyll together. And secondly, it is the foundational enzyme, cofactor that is at the foundation of the carotenoid photon receptor pathway. So chlorophyll, in and of itself, collects only a very small part of the available light spectrum. And then there is all this range, all this range of carotenoids such as astaxanthin and zeaxanthin, etcetera, which also absorb a very small segment of the light spectrum. And when you combine all of them together, they collect a much greater bandwidth of the available light and then channel that into chlorophyll for increased photosynthesis. So these first three elements. If I ask the question, what are the nutrients which make a plant dark green? If I asked. When I asked that question to a primarily agricultural audience, the answer is nitrogen. We know that we put on nitrogen on a corn crop and it turns dark green. When I ask that question to people in the horticulture space who are growing petunias and hydrangeas, then the answer is magnesium. We know that when we apply magnesium, we get this very dark green leaf effect. And when I ask that question to landscapers and people in the turf industry, golf courses, etc. The answer is iron. In reality, all three of those nutrients are having producing the same effect. They're all increasing chlorophyll concentrations within the leaf. So it's possible to increase chlorophyll concentrations by as much as three to four times, which is one of the foundational contributing factors that can really increase photosynthesis volume. Then there's the fourth nutrient. The fourth nutrient is manganese. Manganese is perhaps the most important on the list and the most chronically and systemically deficient. The reason manganese is so important is because during the photosynthesis process, the very first thing that happens is when water is absorbed from the soil profile move into the leaves. The first step is water hydrolysis. Water molecule of H2O gets split into H and OH. The process of water hydrolysis splitting the water molecule is completely dependent on manganese. So this means you can have an abundance of water, an abundance of CO2, adequate sunlight, very strong amounts of chlorophyll. But if you don't have enough manganese and the water molecule doesn't get split, that is your blocker, that's your gateway, that is limiting your total photosynthesis volume. And 99% of all SAP analysis reports that we see coming back are chronically deficient in manganese, unless the grower is directly applying manganese to counteract it. And this is true because of the oxidation reduction phenomena and what is happening in soil profiles. So again, the list of four nutrients to address in foliar applications is nitrogen, magnesium, iron and manganese. Those are the big four that really need to be addressed consistently. Now, I'm not suggesting that you need to apply each of those four. I'm suggesting that you need to make certain that plants have enough each of those four. So if you have enough nitrogen, you don't need to add any more. You need to add whatever else is necessary to bring that photosynthetic machinery up to a much higher level of performance. What we have observed from experience is that most growers are deficient in iron and manganese, that we get a very strong crop response from applying those too. Now, you might ask the question, how do I know if I have enough? Given that many soils have enough iron and often have enough manganese, and yet plants are chronically deficient, there's a very simple, very simple test that you can do. First of all, iron nitrogen obviously is fairly available. The desired form is either an amino acid, nitrogen or urea. For most crops as a foliar spray, Magnesium is relatively easy to apply as preferably as magnesium sulfate. Magnesium chloride can also be an option in small doses on most crops. Manganese and iron need to be applied in the reduced form as a chelate. So you need to apply a chelated form of manganese that is derived from most commonly manganese sulfate. There's other reduced forms available as well, but manganese sulfate based chelate that is then chelated with an organic acid or an amino acid or whatever the case might be, because plants can only absorb and can only utilize manganese and iron in the reduced form. And if they're not chelated and they're sprayed on the plant lead surface, they switch from the reduced form to the oxidized form. So this is was one of the driving factors behind us developing our rebound line of trace metals. Rebound iron and rebound manganese was to be able to make sure that we had a very plant absorbable form. The second part of this stage four, the fourth priority, is putting on biological inoculants at planting or at transplanting. And I'm using the biological inoculants category as a very broad brushstroke to include both mycorrhizal fungi, bacterial fungi and whatever might be appropriate in a synergistic stack. Now, these two applications, the foliar applications of these four minerals and foliar applications of biologicals, or excuse me, I misspoke, soil and root applications of biologicals at early stages of plant development are the two applications which most consistently produce the greatest economic response for growers. They deliver very strongly and very quickly. I had a bit of a lost my train of thought there for a moment a few moments ago. Now something is coming back to me that I wanted to mention regarding the foliar applications of nutrients. How do you determine whether you need it? There's the obvious solution, which is the professional solution is to use a SAP analysis and to measure what is actually present in your plants and being able to see very clearly and very precisely exactly what's happening and what's going on. A very simple and yet very effective solution is also to put on an application and check crop response with a refractometer. So let's say you think your crop might not have enough iron or might not have enough manganese. You can put on a small, you can put a small amount of chelated iron or manganese into just a small bottle sprayer and spray a couple of plants, maybe a 4, 6, 8 foot diameter circle, and then come back with a refractometer. And test the treated area versus the untreated area in about 30 minutes. It's not going to take very long. In about 30 minutes, you should have an increased brix reading where you applied the product. If you have an increased brix reading, that will indicate that the plant needs whatever was applied and will benefit from whatever was applied. If you don't get an increased brix reading and the plant doesn't need it, you're not going to get an increased crop response and yield response. So that can be a very simple, quick and dirty test. In a field. It takes a little bit of time, takes a bit of energy, but it can be a very effective test to determine the effectiveness of a foliar spray before it's actually applied. You can do that with individual nutrients, you can do it with a cocktail combination, you can even do that with a tank mix that you want to apply to a crop and you can actually test the effectiveness of a foliar application before it's actually applied. You notice something really interesting? Mineral applications and biologicals didn't make it onto the list of priorities until priority four. The first three priorities to address were not minerals, they weren't biologicals, they were all other pieces that have a bigger impact on photosynthesis. Priority 5 is using cover crops and keeping your soils constantly covered to harvest as much CO2 as possible and to build a very strong soil microbial community. Priority six is using soil above amendments of minerals and rock powders, etc. Using limestone and rock phosphate and gypsum and whatever the case might be. So, in terms of delivering the maximum economic crop response, the greatest crop response, as quickly as possible, the management priorities need to be number one, make sure that you manage water and deliver water as consistently as possible. Number two, make sure that you supply adequate carbon dioxide. Number three, manage sunlight if you are in an area where you possibly have excessive or too intense sunlight and increased leaf temperatures. And by the way, I failed to mention this, but leaf temperatures is not ambient air temperatures, specifically leaf temperature. Leaves switch from photosynthesis to photorespiration on C3 photosynthetic pathway plants at about 76 degrees Fahrenheit. On C4 plants, it's about 86 degrees Fahrenheit, if I understand it correctly. Fourth priority is foliar applications of those four mineral elements and applications of biologicals. The fifth priority is cover crops and the sixth priority is soil amendments. So cover crops and soil amendments take the longest to deliver an economic crop response and they're lowest on the priority list. Sometimes get asked the question, well, if those are the lowest in the priority list and I'm dealing with a really challenged soil, something, a new farm that I just started managing, are you suggesting that I shouldn't do soil amendments and that I shouldn't do cover crops even when my soils are very challenged and are completely out of whack from a chemistry perspective? No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't apply soil amendments and cover crops, but I'm suggesting that you should first make certain that you address all of these other pieces. And then in conjunction with those other pieces, you can also add soil amendments and cover crops or whatever else you chose to add to the mix. But if you focus only on soil amendments and cover crops and you don't include the biological inoculants and the foliar applications, you don't manage carbon dioxide, you don't manage water, etc etc. If you don't manage those other initial pieces first, you will have the effect of regenerating soil health and developing plant health over an extended period of time, but you will not consistently and reliably deliver a strong economic performance from the get go. It takes longer to see returns from COVID crops and from soil amendments than it does from those other pieces which deliver such an immediate economic crop response. The second framework is. Let me just clarify this first framework that I described. This sequence of six priorities is when you want to deliver maximum economic performance and while delivering maximum economic performance, you want to also regenerate soil health and rebuild soil health over time. So it's not an either or conversation. You get to regenerate and rebuild soil health and you get to have maximum economic returns right from the get go. Then the second framework that I've seen some farmers and growers and managers choose is to say that, you know, we don't need to have strong immediate economic results. Instead we want to focus on longer term soil regeneration and regenerating the entire farm. So if that is your mindset, if that's pathway that you chose, and this is sometimes appropriate for some environments and some crops, if you're grazing grass fed livestock in a zone with 8 inches of rainfall a year, then this might make sense for you where you have limited economic resources. So I've identified a series of four, a set of four priorities, a sequence of four priorities for these types of environments and managers. The first priority is, and I partnered it up again, there's two pieces that are synergistic and complementary. That kind of need to be used together. The first is water and cover crops. So again, you need to make certain that your soils are constantly covered, that you're constantly harvesting sunlight and collecting CO2. And secondly, you need to make sure that you have as consistent a water supply and that you keep all the water that you get and you store and manage water very well. The second priority for these ecosystems is that you need to add livestock. I've found it really intriguing with the guests that I have hosted on the podcast. Many people who have a lot more experience than I do, Michael McNeil and Jerry Hatfield and Gabe Brown and others, all reference the fact that you could do many things with soil. You could use different types of fertilizers, different types of soil amendments, but soils would only change in a limited fashion until you changed, until you added livestock. And once you added livestock, the entire soil microbial population would shift and soil health would begin radically improving. Now, from my perspective, livestock are not only the four footed, four hoofed variety, they can also be the biology in the soil profile. So I would add that this is particularly true, particularly relevant for environments and ecosystems where we don't have the presence of livestock, fruit and vegetable production, and dry land, grains, etc. That we can add biological inoculants to mimic and imitate a great deal, perhaps all of the effect that cattle have on the landscape as well. So the second priority from my perspective, once we've addressed water, once we've addressed keeping the soil covered all the time, the second priority is adding livestock back into the landscape or adding biologicals. The third priority in these ecosystems and these management styles is adding foliar applications of nutrients. For all the reasons that I mentioned when I was describing delivering a maximum economic response, Even if you want to have a long term regenerative effect, the greatest effect on long term regeneration comes from foliar applications of nutrients which spike and trigger photosynthesis and result in sequestering and rapidly increasing carbon deposits and the carbon profile in the soil. And then the fourth priority is soil amendments of any nutrients, specifically of any nutrients or missing, or minerals which are missing in the soil's native geological profile. The reality is that on some soil, native soils simply don't contain some of the minerals that are needed that are necessary in an adequate amount. We know that many soils are deficient in molybdenum, for example, or in boron. So adding those necessary soil amendments can also give us a very substantial crop response. And again, if you notice the sequence of priorities, soil amendments is at the bottom of the list for both of these categories. And so I think there has been, particularly in the domain of biological and organic agriculture, there has been an emphasis on the application of foliar applications of nutrients, or, excuse me, on the applications of soil amendments, largely because that has been the resources that we've had been able to work with historically. But they're not the tools, which they don't give us the greatest economic response and they also don't lead the most efficiently and the most effectively to long term regenerative ecosystems. So those are the thoughts that I wanted to share. I'll add a bonus thought, which is that in our experience of implementing these systems and putting them together on farms, we get the greatest crop responses when we use what I've termed synergistic stacks. So a synergistic stack when you include different types of products into the same application or at the same application window. So I'll give you one example. There's many possible examples that it's just kind of limited by your imagination. But one example might be that you have you add a bacterial inoculant to the rhizosphere that has maybe have 20 different species or strains of bacteria that have the effect of increasing a plant's immunity, increasing water and nutrient availability, triggering a SAR effect, etc. Etc. Fixing, fixing nitrogen and mineralizing phosphorus in the soil profile and so forth. You combine that bacterial inoculant with a fungal inoculant, let's say, for the sake of discussion, mycorrhizal fungi. So when you stack the two of those together, you will usually get a much greater crop response than if you do either one of them by itself. Third, you might add a microbial biostimulant, such as a humic substance or seaweed, that will have the effect of increasing the effects of those biological inoculants even more. Fourth, you might add a nutritional product to increase the plant's nutritional integrity, such as magnesium and iron and manganese. You add those nutrients, now you're going to increase the plant's photosynthesis and the result will be a greater quantity of sugar sent out through the roots as rude exudates to feed soil biology. And now again, you get a greater biological response. And then. Fifth, you might also add a plant biostimulant. Instead of a microbial biosimilar, you might add a plant biostimulant, such as, again, seaweed would fit in here, or plant hormones such as cytokinins or essential fatty acids or some amino acids that you could add. So you could add a plant biostimulant, a plant nutrient, a microbial biostimulant, and bacterial and fungal inoculants. So those would be what we term a synergistic stack. And when you put together synergistic stacks like that, where you select products from completely different categories and put them together, it is very much a case where one plus one does not equal two. Often in biological systems, when you combine these different materials, 1 +1 equals 11 and you end up getting this very pronounced effect that is much greater than you would expect from adding those products, from adding any of those products individually. So those are the thoughts that I wanted to share. I do have an announcement as well and then I'd love to hear your questions. So if you have any questions, you can type them into the Q and A box down at the bottom of your screen and I'll go through those questions and answer all of them as clearly and as well as I'm able. I do have an announcement as well that I've mentioned it a couple of times on the webinars, the podcast. In the last year or so I for some time been working on developing a series of online courses and I'm excited to announce that if all goes well as planned, we are intending to launch those online courses the end of January. So you'll be able to find those at Academy Regen AG and sign up for it to get all the announcements about when we actually launch. We will be launching on January 21st with three initial courses and we hope to release we intend to release additional courses over time. So we've been sharing a lot of information on our webinars and on our podcasts about some of the things that we've learned and the systems and the tools that we've put together. But there's often a tremendous a lot of background knowledge, a lot of background information that is simply too much information, too much background to put into a one hour webinar to put into a 30 minute conversation. So the intent for the online courses is to do a really deep dive into the science and clearly describe the science behind how we put together foliar recommendations for nutri of nutrients, for example, or the science and the biochemistry and the plant physiology that is happening within the plant health pyramid and as we see plant health evolving and becoming resistant to different types of diseases and insects at different stages of development. So I'm really excited by the development of these online courses because I think they'll offer a more in depth look. We wanted to make that information openly available to everyone. So please, by all means, we'd love for you to go to the website, sign up, give us your email address, and we'll notify you the moment we launch and go live and you'll be able to access those online. So I want to thank all of you for being here tonight and for participating in the webinar as well. So I'm going to switch to questions. Couple coming through, David Widman. Hi, David, glad to see you here. Question do you foliar spray late in the evening, example 7pm to midnight? What we've observed is greatest plant absorption of nutrients occurs in about the same time window as peak cell division, which is from 3am to 8am in the morning. And for that reason, we typically prefer to put on foliar applications later in the day so that they are still present on the leaf surface in the liquid form when we get to that 3am to 8am window. In general, we tend to see much better crop responses with evening applications than we do with morning applications. It's a very good question, David. Thank you. Eldon Thiessen asked the question, how do you measure soil CO2? What are optimum levels and how is it modified? Eldon this is a good question that I don't, I don't know the answer to. I know that you can. There are today there are measurement tools such as the Solvita test, which measures soil respiration. And there's also the Haney lab analysis, which also measures the soil's capacity to release carbon dioxide. Those would probably be the two tools that I know of, the best, that can measure soil carbon dioxide. But I'm not sure we know the answer to what are the optimum levels. There are essentially two ways that carbon dioxide is released from the soil profile, and they're completely different. One of them is when you have a release of CO2 as a result of oxidation, the introduction of oxygen into the soil. So farmers from an earlier generation would describe how when they go out to cultivate corn, you cultivate corn and you get this very rapid and immediate crop flush, this flush growth response, where you get very rapid growth for the next three to four days after cultivation. And this has long been described as a nitrogen response. But that's not a nitrogen response. That is a CO2 response where you have cultivation introducing a lot of oxygen into the soil, oxidizing organic matter and releasing it as CO2. The plants are in a very rich CO2 environment, and so they grow very, very rapidly. They photosynthesize very efficiently and very effectively. So that's a CO2 response. And there's another story about CO2. Don Huber mentioned on one of the podcasts that they were able to consistently produce on a field scale in the late 70s. 78, 79 if I recall correctly, we're producing 450 plus bushels per acre corn on a field scale. Their key don't recall if Don mentioned on the podcast, or perhaps in a private conversation, he said that you can push yields with nutrients with fertilizer up to about 300 bushel per acre, 280 to 300 bushel per acre, and past that threshold, the limiting factor is carbon dioxide, not nutrients. And you can continue to increase yields past that threshold when you make sure that you address carbon dioxide. Well, the second pathway and the pathway that they were using to produce such large quantities of CO2 and maintain them through the season through microbial respiration. So when you have high organic matter content, soils, and abundant biology, that biology will release CO2 throughout the growing period. That's really what you want to have happening, and that's how you increase CO2 levels in a sustainable and regenerative fashion for the long term. It's a good question. Thank you for asking it, Ellen. Laurie Brown asked the question, is ordinary manganese sulfate totally useless as a foliar application or is it just less efficient than the reduced form? So here's what happens. So first of all, manganese sulfate is actually in the reduced form. It is in the correct form when it is in the bag. Then when you put manganese sulfate into a spray tank, you mix it with water, you solubilize it, it is still in the reduced form when you spray it onto the leaf surface and with very fine droplets. And those fine droplets dry out on a leaf surface. When they dry out, the manganese gets exposed to the oxygen in the air and it oxidizes and it converts back to the oxidized form once it lands on the leaf surface and the plants do not absorb it. So in order to prevent that conversion process, that oxidation process from happening, the manganese needs to be chelated when it is on the leaf surface. Thanks, Laurie. Jerry Snyder, is there an economical way to measure the CO2 level around a plant in the field? And Jerry, I think the answer to that question is with the Solvita meter, which can measure CO2 release and carbon dioxide release. So I don't personally have experience with the meter, don't have a lot of perspective or tips to offer on it, but I know a number of people who are using it and are intrigued by what they're learning and what they're observing. And I think it is a very accurate metric. Anthony Griffith asked the question for the second framework for longer term development of soil. You mentioned animals or biologicals. Can you give an example of biologicals Spectrum? And second, how is a simple way to know if the biologicals are working? Do you have to do a soil test? So, Anthony, these are both good questions when I refer to biologicals. Kind of our gold standard at this point. There are some other very interesting biological developments that are happening. There's a lot of research happening in this space by many different companies right now, and I'm very intrigued by some of the research that is emerging. But at this point, the gold standard for us is Spectrum. And we use Spectrum on, I think, just about every acre that we work on and every farm that we work on. So that is kind of our standard because we know it performs consistently and reliably. How do you know if the biologicals are working? The way you know biologicals are working is through respiration and the release of CO2. The Solvita metric can be one way of measuring and monitoring microbial activity. And the second, the test that I personally would favor is the Haney analysis, which is being conducted by both Ward Labs and Midwest Labs that I know of. I think Ward Labs is running the most recent version, the most recent iteration. Rick Haney has continued to develop and iterate on that test since he originally developed it. And I'm certain there's probably other laboratories around the country that are measuring or running this assay as well. I'm just not certain of who they are, who they might be. And I think that the Haney analysis is the least inconsistent of all the biological assays, and it correlates the most accurately and the most consistently with what we actually see happening in the field. So it's the test that I personally would favor. John, Meredith asked the question, is there anything else that determines when a plant switches between photosynthesis and photorespiration other than temperature? What can we do to extend photosynthesis longer, other than things like shade, cloth? Do healthy plants give a few degrees more? John, you asked some awesome questions here. So it's my understanding that the key determining factor between photosynthesis and photorespiration is leaf temperature. So not ambient temperature, but leaf temperature. Now, of course, leaf temperature is determined by a lot of other factors. It's determined obviously by exposure to sunlight, by air temperature, by the presence of water, having adequate water supply. There's various factors that will contribute to that switch. And there's things that you can do other than shade clothes to keep them cool. For example, in the Pacific Northwest, many growers have historically used sprinkle irrigation because they've had an abundant supply of clean and high quality water. So sprinkle irrigation and misting to cool leaves down and cool plants down, that obviously has the potential for other unintended consequences as well. And many growers are actually moving away from sprinklers towards shade plots because of the effect that all the water application has on soil health. But your last question, I think, is the really important question, do healthy plants have a few degrees more of a buffer? And the answer is that healthy plants stay cooler a lot longer. And specifically in this case, it's our observation that when you have plants that have a high lipid content, when you start, when you're able to visually observe the glossy, waxy shield, waxy leaf membrane, glossy, waxy leaf surface in the field, then a couple of interesting things seem to happen. First of all, and these are a connection of dots and hypothesis and amalgamation of thoughts and things that I've observed over the years, one is we know for certain that plants which have this glossy, waxy sheen leaf surface stay cooler a lot longer. Why exactly does that happen? It seems not only does it seem that they stay cooler much longer, it also seems they use less water. So I suspect that that glossy, waxy sheen on the leaf surface is very good at reflecting heat, is better at reflecting heat, and therefore the leaf stays cooler for an extended period. And also because you have this glossy membrane on the leaf surface, I suspect that it changes the way plants utilize water and that they actually need to use less water for transpiration and for cooling. So it definitely is true, and I can say from field experience, it definitely is true that healthier plants remain in the photosynthesis mode much longer in warmer environments than unhealthy plants. It's a really great question, I think, and it's a question that we have some field experience around. But there's a lot more research that needs to be done to understand this phenomena better and to look at what is happening with plants when they are in different states of health, different qualitative states in different environments. Greg asked the question, is it still safe to apply a typical nutrient mix as a foliar application for wine grapes if the weather for the next day is expected to be very hot, say above 95 degrees Fahrenheit? I always apply foliar nutrients after 5pm so, Greg I would say that assuming that the nutrient mix that you're applying is safe for cooler temperatures, then yes, it will generally be safe for warmer temperatures as well. However, the key difference is that it won't be absorbed as effectively, because peak absorption of nutrients from foliar applications really occurs while that droplet remains liquid on the leaf surface. So in environments where you have lower temperatures or higher humidity, or where you have a foliar application, a foliar blend of nutrients in the spray tank, which has a high point of deliquescence, then you have the effect of maintaining a liquid droplet on the leaf surface for a much longer period of time. And the environment that you described, when you have really high temperatures, the moment that droplet dries out, the nutrient absorption curve slows down tremendously. It doesn't completely stop, but it does slow down. Now, I want to add a qualifier to what I just said. Nutrient absorption from a foliar spray on the leaf surface occurs rapidly when the droplet is in the liquid form. When we are referring to simple ions and molecules being absorbed, such as urea, for example, or magnesium chloride. So when you have simple ionic solutions, plants need those ionic solutions to remain somewhat water soluble. But there is another pathway for delivery of nutrients into the cells and into the leaves, and that is through the process of microbial digestion from the bacterial population on the phyloplane, which has a symbiotic relationship with the plant, similar to the microbial population in the rhizosphere. So when you have very active bacterial population, they can actually consume minerals that were applied on the leaf surface and make them available to plants. Challenge is that that delivery mechanism is a lot slower, takes a lot longer. And we typically see, we see the response, we see the effect showing up on a SAP analysis, but we don't often see the flash bang crop response that we do with more simple nutrient solutions. David Widman asked a question. I'm seeing fields that have six rows of corn and six rows of soybeans, your wheat, between the corn, corn yields go up. Is this from being able to utilize more sunlight and capture more CO2? David, the short answer is yes. You see a very pronounced edge effect. In fact, a number of growers that we've been working with, I'm sure you've perhaps observed this as well. There are increasing the plant population in the outside rows quite substantially to be able to capture more of that sunlight and more of the CO2 that is not being harvested by the other crop, which is less efficient, so that that yield Increase is essentially coming from increased sunlight capture and perhaps to Some degree increased CO2 absorption as well. That would be correct. Laurie asked the question, would, would I keep the high priority for this CO2 in the case of fruit trees and bushes like we do for field crops? And the answer is absolutely yes. CO2 is also the biggest limiting factor for a lot of fruit and vegetable crops as well, because they are also very efficient at absorbing carbon dioxide. And generally the soils on which tree, fruit and bushes and vegetable crops are being grown deliver less CO2 than agronomic soils because they're not being tilled and not being oxidized. Stephen asked the question, is it possible to harvest CO2 from the soil for robust crop growth while also sequestering organic matter to maintain organic matter level in soil, or does it need to be regained in the off season with COVID cropping? Steven, this is a great question, and the answer is that a healthy crop by itself, let's say in the case of a perennial crop will, or even in the case of annual crops, a healthy crop should absorb all of the CO2 that is released from the soil profile in addition to CO2 that also occurs in the ambient air temperature. So you should have a net gain. As long as the soil is covered with green photosynthesizing plants, there should be a continual positive net gain. It's when the soil is bare and there are no green plants that you lose carbon dioxide from the soil that you can't regain. It's a very good question, Malcolm. That's the question. Hi, Malcolm, Is there a single tool that can measure multiple nutrients using SAP? Not that I'm aware of. There's obviously the cardi meters, but at this moment I'm not aware of a tool that is on the marketplace that can measure multiple nutrients. It's only the laboratory analysis through crop health labs that I'm aware of that is doing that reliably and consistently. There's one question here. I think I did think that I reviewed this. Robert asked the question. Please review the six principles. I thought I did repeat them twice, but I'll go. I'll give you an abbreviated bullet point list once more. First priority, water. Second priority is carbon dioxide. Third priority is managing sunlight. The fourth priority is foliar applications of four mineral nutrients, nitrogen, magnesium, iron and manganese. And the second part two of the fourth priority is biologicals in the root zone to the root system. Fifth priority is cover crops. And the sixth priority is SOL amendments. And we'll actually include that. You can always go back and listen to this recording again when we post it on YouTube and we're going to make it generally available as well. Dean asked the question. There's only a few questions left. I want to be respectful everyone's time and we'll drop off Are there benefits of feeding the microbial life with soil amendments, or does the plant, through the roots, supply sufficient energy? There may be benefits of using a biostimulant to perhaps kickstart microbial populations, but the reality is that when you have healthy plants, they deliver more sugar and more energy than you can ever hope to compete with with compost applications or any other applications. And I have this exercise that I go through doing the math when I teach live courses, and I think I might have done it perhaps in one of the webinars. I forget which one, or if I even did. I speak about it fairly frequently. But the foundational idea is that when you increase a plant's photosynthesis from 20% to 60% of its photosynthetic capacity, you triple the sugar production every day, but you don't get triple the plant biomass and you don't get triple the yield. What happens is that the majority of that additional sugar production gets sent out through the root.