Dr. Jerry Hatfield on Why Should We Care About Soil Health

Hi friends, I am John Kempf, hosting this podcast. I am passionate about developing regenerative agriculture systems that improve soil health, produce crops that are completely resistant to diseases and insects, and produce fruit of such an exceptional quality that we can have a legitimate conversation about growing food as medicine. I've discovered that there are many people with incredible knowledge and information about soil and plant systems and how to develop regenerative agricultural systems. However, much of this knowledge and this information is scattered. It's found all over the place, some of it has been published in peer reviewed publications, but there are many incredible stories and a lot of knowledge that has not been published and that hasn't been shared with many people. I started advancing EcoAgriculture in 2006 to bring this knowledge together in a more coherent fashion and incorporate it into products and growing systems that growers can easily put into practice. It's my personal mission to have these regenerative agricultural systems become adopted globally and become the mainstream, the status quo against which all other growing systems are compared. To help achieve this goal, I want to share the knowledge that we have learned in the last decade and make it available to everyone while we have developed products at AEA that embody the principles of regenerative agriculture systems and make them easier for growers to apply this knowledge and these principles can be applied anywhere and when they are applied properly, they will always increase farm profitability and resilience to climate stress. If you have any questions, suggestions, comments or ideas, topics that you would like for me to discuss, Please connect on LinkedIn or on Twitter where my username is visionbuilder7 or you can also email me at john kempf.com I would very much like to hear from you and to hear your feedback. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast and thank you very much for listening. Enjoy the show.

Greetings friends and welcome to the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast. On this podcast we explore the science and practical application of regenerative agriculture ecosystems and talk about how to regenerate soil and crop health and quality, and also, very importantly, how to increase farm profitability. In this episode, I'm very excited to welcome Jerry Hatfield to our show. Jerry and I had a bit of a technology mishap. I actually interviewed Jerry a little while ago and we mysteriously lost the first several minutes of the audio recording, vanished into the ether somewhere. So I'm circling back around with Jerry to recapture some of the pieces that we spoke about in the very beginning and you may notice a short blip as the audio switches from one to Another a few minutes into the clip, but wanted to recapture some of those pieces. So, Jerry, thank you very much for joining us. We're very excited to have you here on the podcast.

Well, I'm glad to be here, John.

Jerry, you've done a lot of intriguing work with soils, looking at how soils and plants interact and how they are impacted by climate. What have been some of the highlights that have led you to the things.

That you're working on today and some.

Of the things that you're looking at.

You know, you look at. It's always interesting to look back at one's career and think about the paths that we take in terms of investigations and looking at the piece of this. But I think the largest thing that drives me is how can we improve the efficiency of plants to capture water, capture nutrients, capture light, and put that into. Into productivity? And we don't often think about you. We've got this basic process of photosynthesis, you know, that creates all the carbohydrates that really drives the whole plant growth process. But that system in itself is really interacts with the what happens within the soil, what happens within plant. You got this very complex set of interactions going on. But what drives a lot of our questions right now is what role does this whole soil plant atmosphere continuum have in terms of improving not only the productivity of the plant, but also the quality of, of the products that that plant is harvested for? If we look thinking about a grain with protein or a vegetable with a certain amount of material that we want in their sugar content and fruit, you know, all those different things, and so become very fascinated with just how some of these things that we do influences what the quality of that produce that we're trying to derive from that plant.

Today there's a lot of discussion about how if we want to grow healthy plants, we need to have a healthy soil. And there are lots of conversations around soil health and how to improve soil health. And you can do this and you can do that. But seems to me that perhaps we've missed one of the or several important pieces in thinking about soil health. And the question I would have for you is why should we care about soil health?

Yeah, I was going to say that's always an interesting question because I think that sometimes we're so enamored with soil health and saying, well, what's the perfect measurement of soil health that we lose sight of the fact of why do we want healthy soils to start with? I mean, if you just think about the whole process, I think in the whole Soil health arena really looking at a couple fundamental pieces of this, and one of the first pieces of soil health is what I would call the aggregation structure. What is really that surface of that soil look like? Because the surface of the soil is the interface between the soil and the atmosphere. And we know that those stable aggregates that are near the surface is what allows the rainfall or irrigation water to penetrate into that soil. And we say, well, we've improved the infiltration rate, we get water into it. But we forget that same aggregation structure is critical for the exchange of CO2 and oxygen between the atmosphere and the soil as well. And that may be even more critical than the water infiltration rates. And why that becomes important is because below our soil surface is a really complex set of biological components. Whether they be roots, all the microbial system that's there, the fauna that's living there, earthworms, bugs, everything else that's living there, all of those need oxygen as well. And so when we trap that off, we basically have, we limit our biological activity. But if you just take and extend that simple process of saying, all right, we're getting water into the soil, we're getting air into the soil, CO2 and oxygen into that soil, and that's driving the biological process. But it's that biological process that's going on that really determines the what those plants are doing in terms of being able to take up nutrients, how nutrients get cycled, the differences between a disease soil and a non disease soil, all of those things that we look at. And so you can think about the healthy soil as a healthy ecosystem below the soil surface, and you begin to drive this process forward. And the reason for caring really comes down to very simple things, is that we make that whole plant system much more efficient in terms of the use of water or the use of light or the use of nutrients, so that we're actually getting more plant biomass or more plant product, whether it's grain or fruits or vegetables or anything else per unit of the natural resources that we're putting in. And the soil health becomes the kind of the unifying factor that allows that efficiency to take place. It also allows that quality of that produce to be positively affected.

So in essence, what, what I'm hearing you describe is that soil health is a very big term that encompasses multiple aspects, but the big pieces are that, or perhaps the most fundamental piece is that it provides the environment in which biology can function to increase, which provides the environment for plants to really be a lot more efficient. You're describing, if I'm Understanding it correctly, you're describing soil health is needed and is necessary to allow biology to function so that plants can function. So you're really describing biology as being kind of this bridge, this mediator between what is happening in soil and what is happening in plants.

Yep, that's really the essence of it. And I don't know that we've ever. We don't put it in that context very often. We talk about soil health, we talk about the fact that we've improved infiltration or we've improved gas exchange or we've. We actually, it's even more fundamental than that. We'll talk about improving CEC or improving infiltration rates or aggregate structure, reducing bulk density. To me, those are, those are metrics. But in reality we need to put it together and say so what? And the so what is that we want that soil really to enhance our plant function at the end of the day, for multiple reasons.

In terms of how things get cycled, how they get released, how they begin to apply back to that crop. So now you think about the other piece of this is that we've released all this, we've made it available, there's plenty of oxygen for that root to grow quite efficiently. There's plenty of water for that plant not to have any suffering in there. And so we end up balancing that whole system so that plant can perform optimally. And when it begins to perform optimally is when we see a lot greater increase in quality. And it really, it makes little difference. If we're talking about a grain crop, a fruit crop or a leafy vegetable crop, we see in those crops and when we put them in those situations, much higher quality produce of. However we think about produce out there, if it's, if it's a lettuce, it's kale, or if it's tomatoes or strawberries, or if it's corn or wheat, we see a improved quality of all that just because of the simple thing changes that we made. That basically started with soil health.

So that's, that's a really. Jerry, when you talk about quality for all these different plants, some, some crop quality, we're talking about improved test, others we're talking about improved protein content. There's many different components of quality. How does one overarching characteristics such as improved soil quality improve all these various characteristics with different plants.

That becomes a dynamic that if we think about improvement, and let's just take grain for example, in terms of test weight, protein content, as one example in all of this is we begin to create a more balanced system within our soil so that we've got this balanced nutrients. And we're balancing that against all the different things of root function in terms of water uptake and gas exchange and exudates. And all of that is that we basically are taking that plant and saying that metabolically within that plant, we've created a condition in which that plant has the capacity to store more carbohydrates more efficiently and all the carbohydrate byproducts efficiently within that grain. And we end up with, with higher test weights, we end up with higher protein content, we can end up with higher oil content of what? That's what we're looking at. And it really is a complex set of interactions. But it all begins with saying, how do we improve the capacity of that plant and that soil to interact together in terms of extracting these nutrients, extracting water, and just allowing that plant to optimize itself?

We've been having this conversation about soil health and crop health, but I think perhaps we. We haven't discussed one very. In perhaps one very fundamental piece is how do we regenerate soil health? How do we improve soil health to a much higher plateau of performance?

Yeah, that's. It's. You're right. It's. It's very good to talk about the impact of what this means, but the question that producers ask is, how do we get there? And I constructed a while ago what I call the soil aggregation ladder. How do you build soils back up? And the first rung on that ladder is biological activity. We have to restore biological activity within that soil. And soil biology wants four things. It wants food, water, air, and shelter. And what do you want? You want food, water, air and shelter? The basic four needs that we have as humans is what the biology wants within that soil. You think about the shelter piece just very quickly to explain that. The shelter piece is soil biology doesn't want any more extremes in the environment than you and I do. They don't want to be exposed to real hot conditions or real dry conditions or real cold conditions. So one of the things in terms of shelter is basically to put some sort of COVID over that soil. Living color and every cover, residue, cover, compost, cover at the surface, because it modifies that temperature, moisture regime at that that soil is going through. Just give you an example. Conventional corn, soybean systems, early June, typical year, that soil surface temperature will be 120 degrees Fahrenheit. It'll be plus 100. You know, with one or two inches within that soil surface and extremely Dry. Well, that's beyond the range in which plants biological activity really functions. Well, but if we just add a little bit of shading, a little bit of residue cover to that, we take that soil surface temperature down to 86 degrees, 85 degrees, we keep it moist all the time. Well, that's the optimum environment for that biology to begin to express itself. So we don't cook that biology out of the soil. You know, at the same time, adding that root material and everything else is a food source for the biology to be working on. A lot of our modern agricultural systems is that we're not supplying food throughout the whole year. I mean, you just go back to corn and soybeans, basically, they're growing three, three and a half months out of the year. You know, what if you only, what if I only fed you three and a half months out of the 12 months, you know, and that's kind of how we, we do our biology is that we don't think about what it takes to feed that biological system throughout the whole 12 month cycle that's out there. And the other piece then is again going back to why do we do soil health in terms of the oxygen exchange is that a lot of these are anaerobic or aerobic systems. You know, they want oxygen as much as you and I. If you cut that oxygen supply off, you cut the biology off as well. So got food, water, air and shelter. And so all of these things fit together. And that's the first rung on this ladder in which we begin to build soils up. Well, once we begin to stabilize that, we see a lot of organic matter cycling, they begin to break down root material. You know, the more diverse we can keep the root system in terms of all this, the more diverse we see our biology. One of the things that fascinates me is that in our soils, where we've got diverse rotation, we see a lot different biological activity. We see a lot different CO2 and oxygen dynamics going on in that profile, which is indicative of the biological activity than if we have a monoculture. And so it's very interesting in all of this. And I think we're just on the cusp of really beginning to realize how the diversity of plants that we put on in a soil increases the diversity of the biological system. The unfortunate part is that if we talk about the soil microbiome, all the different things that make up that biological system in the soil, is that we probably understand 5% of that microbiome, 95%. You know, we don't really understand It. So we're. We're in a frontier, in my opinion, of being able to do this. So, you know, we've got organic matter cycling. Once you get the organic matter cycling, we see a lot of nutrient cycling going on. And those are what I characterize as the dynamic and invisible processes that are going on in soil. We don't see them, but we do see the outcome of. One of the outcomes that we see out of that, that we've talked about earlier is that we see that stable aggregates, because we know that those aggregates come from a biological system that's giving off exudates, forming that glue that makes that aggregate sand, silt and clay and organic matter really form together in a much better way than what we have. And then we also see the other outcome in terms of improved infiltration rates and gas exchange rates. So it's just kind of that ladder that we build up. As we think about all these things coming together, one of the pieces that.

I've just been amazed by is how quickly the entire ecosystem can improve and how quickly soil health can get to a much better place. So how fast do you believe we can regenerate soil health and improve soil health to a much higher plateau of.

That's a fascinating question because, you know, we often assume that soil is a very sluggish system, that it takes years and decades to see these changes in here. But we're seeing that within one growing season, we can begin to see changes in the aggregates near the surface. We change changes in the biological activity. We see all of these things going on. I think there are a. Of dynamics that are occurring very, very quickly in our soils. And you step back and you think about, why would that be? Well, it really is a function that biology actually works quite quickly. The impacts of that occur quite quickly. It may take centuries to degrade a rock to soil, but it may take only months to see changes in how that biological system is working. We've been able, in some of our experiments where we control the environment, we put different combinations of crops on there. We've seen that we can change the aggregates near that surface within one growing season. And those aggregates haven't fully reached the stable aggregate size yet. But the fact that they've already begun to change is indicative of that. We can take these soils through transitions. We can do it rather quickly, and we have a tremendous impact on this. We just have to understand that we as humans tend to think that we manipulate this system and can do anything we want with it. We need to Change our philosophy and say, how do we allow the biology to assist us in reaching the end goal that we want out there? In terms of soils.

Exactly. A moment ago you mentioned how you had observed having a diverse number of different plants produce very different soil microbial changes or soil aggregate changes than just having a single species. Can you describe a little bit for us what you've been observing?

Yeah, we have a very interesting experiment underway. And these are columns of soil. These are 18 inches in diameter. They're 24 inches deep. They're instrumented with soil water sensors and temperature sensors and electrical conductivity and CO2 sensors and oxygen sensors. And we've taken these 18 inch cores and we've divided them into basically pie shape. So there's a third of the core and it's divided all the way down to the bottom. So they're separate pieces except for drainage at the bottom. And we put in a no cover crop, we put in an oat cover crop and we put in a cover crop cocktail which was an oat, a pea and a radish. And in the, where we did the oat, pea and a radish, even compared to the monoculture oat, we saw an entirely different CO2 and oxygen regime within that, the soil columns, we saw a different change in the aggregate structure because we, we come in and we just collect samples right near the surface. When we finish these runs, all these different things are going on. But you also, this isn't just our observations out there. If you look at individuals that have been running cover crop cocktails in, you know, fields and things like that, the changes that they see in their soils and when they talk about the changes in organic matter and changes in soil much more rapid when they've got the cocktail than when they've got the monoculture out there. And that was what kind of fascinated this on this whole process of really what's happening in there. Well, if you think about this just merely from a standpoint that exudates are going to be given off by an oat, as opposed to the exudates from a legume or an exudate from a radish are going to create a diverse set of acts, exudates, which in reality probably create a diverse set of microbial aspects, because not everybody likes to eat the same thing. And so I think we just end up amplifying the diversity of the biological system within that soil merely by how we've changed that mixture of crops that are out there. And we see a little bit of the same thing. If we Think about adding a diverse rotation. If we add small grains into a corn soybean system, we see a much different response in terms of that crop than if we just have the corn soybean in part of this. And so, you know, you see a lot of this evidence that's out there. The real question that we're trying to ask is why are we. What's really in the, in the soil that's causing this reaction or what's in that system that's causing that change within the soil?

And what is your answer to that question?

Well, the answer to that question is that we're trying to understand all of this. We know that the microbial microbiological activity, because we actually collect out of our columns as well, is much higher in that diversity, that diverse system. So the answer is that we're trying to understand this, that we don't fully recognize how all these pieces fit together because is a question that we really have not asked very, in a very detailed fashion in terms of saying how do these things really interact within this? So this is probably one of the great front, in my opinion, one of the great frontiers in science right now.

Yeah, I see with the various farms that we work with, bringing cover crop diversity and bringing a strong crop rotation back to the farm can regenerate soil health. And it is amazing how as that soil begins changing, crops begin changing as well. And the best way that I know how to describe it is that crops begin behaving differently. We thought we knew exactly how a certain crop would grow and respond and how it would respond to certain climactic conditions. And all of a sudden it's as if though the crop begins behaving differently, it begins responding differently. And it's, it gets to be a lot of fun to see how crops change out in the field.

I can't disagree with that. I mean, if you really look at all of these things that are happening, John, is that I think we need to rediscover what the value of rotations are in this system. And if you look at where we've sort of progressed over the last 20 or 30 years, maybe even longer back than that, is that we, we assumed that we knew what crops were going to do, how crops are going to respond. But if now that we're going into much more diverse rotations, I think we have to rediscover some of the information that was probably available to us, you know, 50, 60 years ago when we had more diverse rotations and we saw different responses. And I think that this is going to be. If we, if we go back to this whole thing of regenerative agriculture. When we look at regenerative agriculture, what does that really mean? Are we regenerating the soil or are we regenerating our ability to understand how things behave much more in an ecological system? You know, and that we really need to look at all the parts that are available to us. And by looking at all the parts, I mean, what's going on within the soil? What's going on within the cycling that's going on within the soil? And what is it looking at in terms of plant response? We know that as we begin to bring these things together, the plant becomes more efficient. It becomes more efficient in its use of water, it becomes more efficient in its use of nutrients that gets out of the soil, it becomes more efficient in its use of solar radiation. And it captures. We tend to get a higher quality product out of that. We're tending to get more growth. And the other piece of this, which intrigues a lot of producers and why they're interested in this, is that when we begin to do these things, we're increasing their stability of yields over time so that they don't see the wild swings as the weather changes from year to year, as those yields become more stable. And, you know, you mentioned at the very beginning that it was really about increasing profitability. Well, you can increase profitability two ways. One is to improve the parts of your field that are costing you money. The other one is to improve your stability among the years so that you're not having these wild swings in yield reductions when the weather's bad.

Both of those are very important pieces. And yeah, just going back to you made a couple of comments that we have observed in the field, and they're, they're really exciting when they start happening. One of your comments was that not what are we really regenerating? Are we regenerating soils? Are we regenerating the thought processes and the models that we use? And I really think that a major, major part of the changes that happens is beginning to think differently about what is happening and looking at different components and managing them differently out in the field.

Yes. And it's, we're. I think it is the regenerative agriculture is that we're going to have to rediscover how agriculture fits into an ecological concept. I think that. And when we talk about these processes, it is not just about agronomic management. It's really placing that agronomic management in the context of the whole ecosystem that we're working in and I think that becomes the critical knowledge piece that we need to start wrestling with to be able to take us to the next level of how we begin to maybe rediscover these processes, but begin to place these processes into the next generation of saying, how do we take agriculture to the next level?

And one of the pieces that I believe taking agriculture to the next level that I'm personally really excited about is this idea of increasing water use efficiency and nutrient use efficiency. This is without question something I'm certain we have observed on some of the farms that we work with, where all of a sudden we're growing, we're able to grow a 220 Bush Breaker corn crop, and yet we're not applying the same amount of water that we thought we needed to apply to grow that crop. And I believe this is something that's going to become increasingly important, extremely important in the future as we have more limited water resources. And the same also holds true, of course, for nutrient use efficiency, where all of a sudden we're seeing that we are able to get the yields that we are, the targets that we're setting with less nitrogen applications and better nutrient use efficiency. What are the pieces that you have observed happening in the field in regards to those two pieces?

We've observed the same thing if you think about water use efficiency, because just looking at a field, you look at high yielding parts of the field and low yielding parts of the field, basically the same rainfall falls on that whole field. You know that if we just take water use efficiency and say that's productivity relative to the amount of water that that plant has available to it, is that some cases we have a soil limitation that, you know, we don't hold as much water, so it's already water limited from that standpoint. The other piece of this, because water and nutrients are actually intrinsically tied together, when we talk about why do we see limitations in water use efficiency, at times it's because the plant is nutrient limited so that it doesn't have those nutrients to grow. And therefore we may be expending a lot of water by that plant, but not getting much of return in terms of fruit or grain or even leafy production out of that. And so when we optimize both water and nutrients together, and then we begin to see this real increase in productivity and again back to the stability of that productivity. And you know, and so we've added that additional component and that is how efficient is that plan in capturing solar radiation? Because if you think about what that plan is doing, is it's taking solar radiation, is converting it into photosynthete. That's where all the growth products come from, both in the shoots as well as the roots, and they're mediated by water and nutrients. So the more efficient we can make that plant in capturing light and converting it into this. And then looking at. All right, where does that fit in terms of water use efficiency, you know, and a lot of that is due to how plants respond to early in the season. And I'll go back to this thing of why aggregates and gas are so important is because a lot of times we see limitations of plant growth early in the season because that plant is oxygen limited. We end up with a lot of rainfall in the spring, we flood that soil, we don't have the aggregate structure. We end up with a lot of yellow plants out there. Everybody assumes that's nutrients, but it's really gas oxygen limitation. And once we begin to limit the vigor of that plant early in the season, it carries throughout the whole season. And so we've already said, what's that?

And you can never quite catch up again.

You never catch up, you know, And I think this, what happens in the early part of the season really does set the tone for the rest of the season. It also sets the tone for how efficiently that plant takes up nutrients. And so all of these things, you know, call us crazy, but I think we. We have to look at how water and nutrients, light and light all interact together in terms of these processes to understand how do we really, again, take agriculture to the next level in terms of productivity, but also quality?

Jerry, within the context of all these various pieces we've been talking about, perhaps in a broader context, if you wish, what is something that you believe to be true about modern agriculture that many other people don't believe to be true?

I think one of the truths in modern agriculture that we need to discover is how important improving our soils really are to increasing productivity. I think we live under this false assumption that genetics will always lead to improved productivity. But if you look at this, I mean, you look at wheat production, you look at some rice production, some of these, we're seeing slight increases in productivity, but we're seeing that we're beginning to level off. So we're not getting the full capture of what that potential crop is out there. And so then that comes back and saying, all right, how do I manage that crop differently? And so I think that when I begin to discover is that we need to look at how does this system. And we put together this concept that we call genetics by environment, by management. And it really was set up in such a way to break away from the old classic genetics by environment interactions to genetics by environment, by management, to get producers to realize that they had a very specific role in their crop management that was beyond just hybrid selection. And it was really saying, all right, how does the management of their. Their soils, how's their management of their nutrients, how's the management of everything fit in to allow those genetics to be optimized? And when you start having that dialogue with producers, they begin to realize that there are a lot of options, but maybe a path of discovery about why is what's causing their yield limitation? Why aren't they getting the yields that they think they should be getting? What's causing that yield variation among the years that are out there? And so it's just ask what it's doing is leading to a point in which is causing them to ask different questions about the overall system that's out there.

Jerry, what is the possibility? What is the opportunity in terms of improved yield and quality? When we have this conversation about improving soil health and the impacts on test weight and yield, we talk about gas exchange, carbon dioxide improving substantially, improving photosynthesis, what do you believe that can mean for growers in terms of profitability? What really is the opportunity?

I think it's quite large in terms of profitability. And the reason I say it's in terms of profitability is think about an average field that's out here, and this would be an average grain field. I mean, we'd see a lot of variation in yield across that field because of the different soils that are out there. If we improve those soils in the lower or in the bad parts of the field, field that's showing more yield variation among the years is, if you can get those soils improved, automatically improve the overall profitability of that field, because producers are basically putting on the same amount of inputs, and they're putting on the same nitrogen, they're putting on the same phosphorus, you know, maybe even liming the same across that overall field, but still getting different yield responses. And so if you could just improve the return on your investment for what you put on there by improving the soils, you'd automatically improve the profitability of that field. And so I think that becomes a piece of this puzzle that we begin to look at the other piece of this in terms of profitability. And it goes back to the conversation that we had on water and nutrient efficiency, and particularly in the nutrient efficiency, because when we get these soils improved, Is that we have to put less nutrients on. And if you look at long term, no till producers is that, you know, a lot of them have reduced their nitrogen rates by half and still have the same yields out there because that soil is supplying so many of those nutrients. So if, if you can reduce your inputs, you can begin to improve your profitability as well, because you just begin to see a better return on investment. Again, it's getting the producers to start looking at their systems and saying, what are you getting in return for what you're putting into that? And I think that's the dialogue that we've got to have for this. And I think that once we begin to do this, then we begin to see that we can not only improve the overall levels of productivity, but as I talked about, how do you improve those that reduce that variation among the years in terms of increasing yield stability? And those are things that are important to producers, as I found, as I've talked to them.

Jerry, where would you begin? What would your advice be to a producer? What's the first action that farmers should take right now?

Well, one of the things I think they should take right now is if getting a cover crop onto that system, getting a, if you want to feed, want to start building soil health up, first, you've got to get back to increasing the biology within that soil. You can preach the biology within that soil by increasing the diversity of that rotation, putting that cover crop on and maybe even going to that cover crop cocktail, but allowing that crop residue layer to be there to protect that soil against the raindrop energy in the spring, allow those aggregates to begin to form all these different pieces. And it just begins with that step right there. You don't want to go to cover crops. You know, reduce your, reduce your tillage, keep that residue layer on the surface out there to protect that soil surface, Allow the biology to work and have a stable home in that. You know, you could even diversify the rotation, putting a wheat, corn, soybean system on this. I tell producers that when we reduce our tillage out there, we preserve that structure of that upper surface. Plants are like kids, they're lazy. They're going to follow an old root channel rather than make a new path to grow down through that. So we see the advantages of not disturbing that soil just on how that subsequent crop explores the profile from the previous crop. So all of these things, I think there are many different ways we can get there, but it's going to take an understanding of really what's happening within that field. And then an understanding of what the producer wants to do within that system.

So wonderful, Jerry. Thank you very much for joining us here on the show. And thank you to all the listeners who have been listening in. If you've found this insightful and enjoyable, please subscribe@regenerativeagriculturepodcast.com and please share with your friends and neighbors and other people who think you believe might be interested as well. Thanks very much for participating, Jerry. We hope to have this conversation with you again soon.

Oh, anytime, John. We appreciate it.

Thanks, Jerry.

This podcast was brought to you by a great company that I work for, AEA Advancing Eco Agriculture, the leader in regenerative agriculture since 2006. At AEA, we believe in challenging the status quo to find more profitable and regenerative ways to grow crops. We also believe that healthy plants are resistant to pests and disease, and that to grow healthy plants we must first think different. About agriculture. About empowering life instead of suppressing life. About regeneration versus degeneration. To achieve this, we formulate and sell products that help growers produce higher quality yield with less risk of crop failure. In short, we help growers make more money with less risk. Thank you for listening.