Electrolyte Nutrition vs. Biological Nutrition | ACRES USA Webinar with John Kempf

All right.

Hello everyone. We're going to give it another minute waiting for some people to sign in here. So where are you off to next, John?

Pennsylvania. Mexico. Texas. California.

Tennessee. We're in Mexico.

Chihuahua.

Good. Be a nice distraction from the Midwest weather.

I don't need more distractions.

Not distraction. Change of diversion.

Huh?

Yeah, change of, change of pace. Yeah.

Good.

All righty. Well, we will kick this off. So welcome everyone. My name is Paul Meyer. I'm the editor of Acres USA magazine. Welcome to today's webinar and today's presentation and Q and A is with John Kemp, the founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture and many other things. He continues to work with us at Acres usa and we're glad for that. Today's webinar is sponsored by USDA's TOP program, the Transition to Organic Partnership program. And we're grateful to them. And the format for the webinar will be about 30 to 45 minutes of John talking with some slides. Moon, not quite that, followed by some Q and A. If you have questions, go ahead and type them into the Q and A box down there. The chat is enabled as well, so you can chat there. And we will throw in our information acresusa.com we do have a couple of events coming up starting in March and then in April and we've got quite a few across the summer and we will throw some, some links for that. And then of course you can learn more about AAA@advancingecoagriculture.com so with that I will turn it over to John.

Thank you, Paul. Hi everyone. Today's topic, and I'm, I'm going to go against some of what Paul just said. I do have a slide deck, but there's a part of me that almost would rather just present without the slide deck. And I welcome lots of interaction. If you have any questions of the topic that I'm talking about, feel free to fire them over. And Paul, feel free to interrupt me at any point if there's something relevant that is right on target. The topic for today's webinar is, well, let's just pull it up here. But it is electrolyte nutrition versus biological nutrition. And one of the topics I've spoken about at length, but I'm starting to realize I perhaps need to focus it a bit, is how we manage the transition from a chemistry addicted soil to a biologically driven soil and form of plant nutrition and driving plant nutrition. There's this realization that what we are terming regenerative agronomy, essentially is the art and the science of managing an off ramp for chemistry. As we manage an on ramp for biology, and you don't have to begin studying soil biology and biologically driven nutrition very long to hear the challenge being clearly articulated, that we understand, for example, that mycorrhizal fungi and phosphorus solubilizing bacteria can be very effective at solubilizing phosphorus as long as you don't apply soluble phosphorus fertilizer. The moment you apply soluble phosphorus fertilizer close to the seed at planting, then the signal, the plant never sends the signal, or the carbohydrates to the mycorrhizal fungi and to these various bacteria to solubilized phosphorus. So you pretty quickly recognize that there's this catch 22. How do you manage the transition? Because as very frequently happens in many soils that are very drug addicted or very chemistry addicted, if you just discontinue the use of soluble nutrients, then you can have a yield loss or a yield drag effect. And so the question really becomes, how do you manage this transition? How do you develop biological nutrition without sacrificing yield, without sacrificing quality, and get away from the drug addiction, from the chemistry addiction? So for our conversation today, I'm going to focus in specifically on nitrogen management and how we manage nitrogen recommendations in our consulting work at Advancing Eco Agriculture. And in the future we can have other conversations specifically about phosphorus and specifically about potassium, because there are some similar concepts that overlap. But the specific details of execution can be very important with each of these major nutrients. In the case of managing nitrogen. Well, actually, let's offer some context. When I talk about electrolyte nutrition, I chose that word very deliberately. There's so easy to, so easy to generate confusion when we talk about salt based fertilizers, because in common layman terms, we usually associate salt with sodium chloride. But that's actually not what we're talking about. When we talk about salt fertilizers, we're talking about nutrients or chemistry compounds that have a very high salt index. So for example, sodium chloride is the foundation of the index at 100. But you can have materials such as potassium chloride or urea, which actually have a salt index higher than 100. In other words, they are saltier than salt. So how does that make sense? Well, essentially what is being described from the salt index is the electrolyte capacity, the electrical conductivity that is contained within the chemistry compound itself, and also the effect that it then creates in the soil solution. This is particularly important because I'll address another possible domain of confusion which Is measuring soil electrical conductivity Caryere Reams years ago. This is less common now, but there are still people who are paying attention to the soil's electrical conductivity. The rule of thumb that Cary Reams provided five decades ago was that we needed during the production season, and particularly as we approach grain fill periods and heavy fruit loads, if we wanted to produce a nutrient dense, high quality crop, we needed to have soil electrical conductivity at a minimum of 200 and a maximum of 800. If you went above 800, which is easily possible using electrolyte, high electrolyte content fertilizers, you would have the possibility of getting a burnout, leaf blackening of the edges and crispiness. If you went very extreme from a high salt index perspective, or on the lower end, if you went below 200, you would have reduced growth, reduced vigor, reduced nutrient flow. The challenge of course, there's a couple of challenges. One is that you can have an EC in the optimal range of, let's call it 600, without actually providing proper nutrition. You can provide a high EC number simply by adding salt having high levels of sodium and chloride. The other challenge is when we consider soil's ability to deliver nutrition in the context of electrical conductivity. It is easy to ignore or disregard or just be ignorant of the difference in EC values between soluble nutrients and microbial metabolites. So what you should expect, as would be expected when you have microbial metabolites, if you have the rhizophagy cycle working very well, you have abundant biology. Mycorrhizal fungi, bacterial populations and so forth, they will absorb nutrients from the soil, such as nitrates and ammonium and other elements. And in this biological sequestration process, if you were to look at it purely in chemistry terms, you could say that they associate those soluble salts with carbon. And that's of course looking at it from a chemistry perspective instead of from a biology perspective. But in essence, what happens is these soluble electrolytes get buffered out and they are buffered from an EC perspective. So all of a sudden the EC levels drop. In other words, what I've just observed generally, and there's all kinds of variation here depending on what the dominant electrolytes are in soil and how aggressive biology is. But you can have a soil that has an EC, an electrical conductivity of 700, that is dominated by electrolytes, soluble nutrients that does not perform as well, and the plants do not perform as well as another soil which has an electrical conductivity of 200. But that is driven by biology because the biology, the microbial metabolites, because they include carbon and because they include living organisms, will have a lower electrical conductivity, but at the same time provide higher levels of energy to the plant. Hope that makes sense, because this is an important concept and this is why measuring electrical conductivity alone is too simplistic of a measurement to really understand a soil's nutrient delivery capacity. So let's dive into the details. I'm in this discussion today. I'm kind of taking for granted that people are familiar with the rise of ag cycle. They're familiar with plants absorbing living microbes and microbial metabolites as a form of nutrition. If they're not. If you're not familiar with those concepts, you can find that information online in a number of different places. But I'm just going to take that for granted and dive right into nitrogen management and how we manage nitrogen differently using this biology first approach instead of a chemistry first approach. And let me see if this works. I'm going to have to move the zoom bar here. All right. Why is this not progressing? Let me. I didn't want to do that. Try this. Well, I'm not sure what's going on here. Hopefully I can get it to move. All right, so we know and understand that nitrogen, the various forms of nitrogen, whether we're talking about calcium nitrate or UAN28 or 32, or ammonium thiosulfate or urea dry or melted, all have very high salt index. They are electrolytes. They have a very high electrolyte concentration. They increase the electrical conductivity of the soil solution very rapidly. And there's all kinds of other challenges. But the short version is that if we have high concentrations of nitrogen, that is perhaps one of the most effective methods in terms of fertility management. There's other things like having bare salt exposed to the sun and so forth that are very challenging. But in terms of the way nutrition and fertility is managed, applications of nitrogen in large concentration to the soil are perhaps one of the most detrimental things that we do to. That prevents us from building soil microbial populations. So our approach is. Excuse me. Our approach is providing the on ramp for biology while we provide the off ramp for chemistry. So for just for a moment, I'm going to take a quick diversion to talk about the on ramp for biology, and then we'll get to the off ramp for nitrogen. That's where we're going to spend most of our time, because that's where there's often the least degree of confidence and familiarity with the approach that we commonly take. So the on ramp for biology is really a combination of two things. One, well, it can be three things, three different positions and there's actually refining this technology. We're going to have some exciting updates here in the coming year on the way we manage our microbial inoculant applications with some of the things that we're learning. But the short version is one is we apply a microbial inoculant that and this is very important, that contains microbes that have the capacity to fix nitrogen even in the absence of legumes. I'm talking about Azoda, Bacter and Azospirillum and others as a seed treatment. So we use a seed treatment of BioKoat Gold. Second, when appropriate. And if it didn't get applied in the fall, we generally recommend spectrum be applied in the furrow. And this is just another application, another dose of various microbes that have the ability to fix nitrogen. And third, and this application two and application three are kind of interchangeable. The the third is a fall application with on top of residue or on top of a cover crop of spectrum applied with our fall soil primer. So the ideal in my opinion is to have a fall application because we get more nitrogen fixation and there's just. We've measured lots of. There's quite substantial benefits from a nutrient release perspective from a fall application versus a spring application in the furrow, wet planting, but whatever fits in operation. So application two and application three are kind of optional. So those are either spring or fall spectrum plus BioCoke gold seed treatment. That's the on ramp for biology. Now in order to have that biology work, well, if you want to shut it down very effectively, it's really easy. Just put on 10 or 15 units of nitrogen or 20 units of nitrogen in the furrow at planting and you will shut down nitrogen fixation for the season. So we have to avoid that. So our recommendation to providing an off ramp for nitrogen management is to position nitrogen differently and put it in a different position in space and in time to the biology as much as we can. So there's a few pathways here. One is spreading out nitrogen applications over the course of the season based on the plant's requirements and when its peak requirement curves are. And the other is spacing nitrogen when we are making applications and in such a way as to do as the least amount of damage to the microbiome as possible. So what does this look like in terms of practical application? The just very broadly I'm going to use corn as an example because it is the crop where there are the most questions about. There's the greatest lack of clarity, there's the greatest need for understanding. And this, this recommendation I'm going to give you kind of an outline of a. And this outline is only a starting point. It is a kind of a baseline template that is intended to be adapted to a specific context, a specific farming and soil context. I'm, I'm making this baseline recommendation assuming that I know nothing about a farming operation, I know nothing about how much nitrogen is being contributed by compost or by cover crop incorporation, cover crop production, by soil history, rainfall. Like this is, this is just a very high level kind of blank slate approach. And this is an approach that is framed around a common threshold, a common range of 200 to 200 plus units of nitrogen application. So if you are in a farming context where it's common to put on 200 units of nitrogen, this is the way that I would start the baseline. So first I would begin with a nitrogen application at planting, but not in the two by two or, excuse me, not in the furrow. In a perfect scenario, the closest that I want that nitrogen application is to be in the 2x2, preferably even farther away. I would be happy to have it 3 to 4 inches away from that seed. And you know, this reminds me of a quote from William Albrecht years ago, might even have been quoted in John Shriever's books on, on soil management. But the quote is something to the effect of fertilizer placement is the art of placing salt fertilizers so that plant roots can avoid them. And it's taken mainstream agronomy 50 years, 40 or 50 years to figure out what he intended to communicate by that. But we're now coming to understand this antagonism between biology and chemistry, nutrition. So anyway, back to the point. My target would be 30 to 40 units of nitrogen at planting or before planting can also be strip tilled, but it can be applied at or before planting. And I want this particular nitrogen application at the time the seed is planted. I want this nitrogen to be converted or in the form of ammonium and nitrate. I don't want urea applied at the moment of planting at this particular stage. And the reason for that is because nitrate in particular, when I think about the beneficial aspects of nitrate, I mean, I've, I've spoken about nitrate negatively and the negative consequences that it has for plant health, for disease resistance, for insect resistance, and for yield. The yield drag effect that it causes, the energy drag effect that it causes, the increased water consumption that it causes. There's many negative things to say about nitrate, but it is accurate to also note that nitrate does provide a very strong plant growth effect. The reality is the, the beneficial effects of nitrate, I think of nitrate almost more as a plant hormone and having a hormonal effect than I do as an actual nutrient. So I want a small amount of nitrate in the first several weeks of seedling growth and development to drive root development and to drive vegetative biomass, which of course drives photosynthesis. And so I was having a conversation this last week with someone who is primarily using urea and urea application strip till, but he's putting on urea applications 30 to 40 days before planting, which is perfectly fine because in that time window you're going to have some degree of nitrification. And by the time you see, or yeah, by the time you plant 30 to 40 days later, you will have a small amount of nitrate and ammonium that is needed to really drive the vegetative growth and the root biomass that we're looking for. Then, in addition to that nitrogen application, I also want to include sulfur at a minimum of a 10 to 1 nitrogen to sulfur ratio. And I would actually suggest going even higher. And I'm going to. I have some more things to add about sulfur, but I'm going to skip forward to talk about the next application, which would commonly be either a side dress or top dress application. I see I'm one slide ahead of myself here. So we're going to come back and expand a little bit on sulfur. So. When you have a corn seedling, there's some variation, of course, depending on how far south or north you are and the speed of growth. But general rule of thumb, somewhere between V3 and V5, you would come in with a side dress or a top dress application. And here's where I would want to see an additional 30 to 40 units of N. But in this case, in the form of urea. And I've spoken in plenty of other places about the additional plant efficiency effects of urea. The ideal would be to see this as melted urea, as a side dress or as a fertigation. But it depends on the context and what fits the application capabilities. And here again, I want to include sulfur and the target. The most common form of sulfur, you can apply either. You can combine either ammonium sulfate or ammonium thiosulfate. I don't really have a strong preference for which form we use in this application and in the planting application, but the target is between these two Applications between planting and side dress, I want a total of 25 pounds of actual sulfur per acre. And this is a rule of thumb that I learned years ago that you can include in the math, but 25, the first 25 pounds of sulfur you can consider, and you can include the math as 25 units of nitrogen. So let's say for the sake of discussion that you put on 35 units of nitrogen at planting, excuse me, at planting or before planting, another 35 at side dress. Now you're at 70 units. And you include in that 25 units of sulfur. That will give you 95 units total total nitrogen equivalent. Your plant growth response, yield response, quality response, will count those first 25 units of sulfur as a pound of nitrogen in terms of their actual yield response, the yield effect that they produce. And then, of course, one of the pieces that I want to get to is these two applications. To get the highest performance. I want to also include our nitrogen efficiency program, of which the sulfur is one component. We'll get to that in, in just a bit. So the nitrogen efficiency program essentially is taking these various forms of nitrogen, combining them with the form of sulfur, either AMS or ats, and then adding humicarb as stable humic substances into the total solution at 3% of the total solution. And if you use humic substances, we've tested this quite extensively. If you want to use other humic acids, you'll need to use about 5% of the total solution to get the equivalent response that you get from a 3% inclusion rate of humicarb. Humicarb, excuse me. Humicarb would be my first preference. I also like including rejuvenate if it's possible, but as a, as a more bio stimulant having a more pronounced biostimulant effect. But rejuvenate. We had this conversation at a conference that I spoke at earlier this week. And rejuvenate. I would consider rejuvenate as an additive. Humicarb is primary importance. That definitely needs to be included. Rejuvenate produces the biggest, biggest effects on soils that have the lowest microbially active carbon. So if you have soils that simply don't have a lot of microbial active carbon, you don't have large organic matter levels that can supply carbon to the soil microbiome. That is where the benefits of rejuvenate and more soluble carbohydrates show up, then rebound molybdenum, because we need molybdenum for the nitrate reductase enzyme in plants and in microbes. Usually including that at a rate of about a pint per acre in the planting application and in the siders application. And then for all of these various applications, basically our rule of thumb is a minimum of 10 to 1 hydrogen to sulfur ratio. And in those first two applications, a minimum total of 25 pounds of sulfur per acre, which, depending on the form of nitrogen, the context that you're applying it in, we're talking about applying a total of any units of N plus 25 pounds of sulfur. So that's not a 10 to 1 ratio. That's what is that, a 4 to 1 ratio or something like that for those two applications. And then so those are the two that we rely on heavily. And the combination actually, let me back up just a bit. This, this nitrogen efficiency program. The reason for this design humicarb complex carbon sources to serve as a buffer for the free electrolytes. And the intent is to provide humicarb and to either tap into the soil's microbial active carbon or to use rejuvenate for microbially active carbon to have all of the nitrogen that just got applied be bound up and be utilized by bacterial cells as rapidly as possible. When that happens, you now have nitrogen that is available but not soluble. It's not going to be leached by a rainfall, and it is still available to plants in the absence of free soil moisture. So even if it dries out or if it becomes too wet, this form of nitrogen gives you greater stability in the soil and a much longer delivery period to the plant that you can have more confidence in. All right, then the last two pieces. And again, this is specific to corn customizing, customize and adapt this to different crops in different contexts. But I want to see an additional application, a one or two applications foliar of foliar urea. Our usual target threshold is about 10 units of urea per application or 10 pounds, excuse me, 10 pounds of nitrogen per application. And the rule of thumb this is. I've had people on the podcast and growers who've used this. We've talked about this across a broad range of different crops and different environments. And the rule of thumb is that when a plant absorbs a pound of urea, a pound of nitrogen as urea in a foliar, at minimum, it will produce a yield response and growth response, the equivalent of four pounds of soil applied nitrogen at minimum, at best, it can be up to 7 pounds. So if we do two applications of 10 pounds of nitrogen, that's 20 pounds of nitrogen foliar in the form of urea. If we go with our 1 to 4 ratio, that's the equivalent of, what did I say, 20 pounds times 4, 80 pounds of nitrogen. That's the equivalent of 80 pounds of N soil applied. The beauty. So this is that means these two foliar applications are 80 pounds of nitrogen that we did not have to apply to the soil, we did not have to suppress biology, we did not have to provide electrolytes to the soil. And we got the same or greater plant growth and yield response. Plus it's a fraction of the cost. I mean, you only have to apply 25% of the end. Sure, the application costs and additional labor costs can be considered in and it's still a lot less, a lot less expensive. And of course, if you're putting on a foliar application with urea, this is also the perfect opportunity to put in some additional trace minerals. And this is where, this is where growers are really pushing the limits on yield response and growth responses is when we combine trace minerals and really accelerate plant health with these foliar applications. So the effect on all this is net effect. Instead of applying 200 units of nitrogen at planting, or as a combination of planting and side dress, or pre plant, we've only applied 80 to the soil plus sulfur, plus various forms of carbon that have buffered it out. We've positioned it and moved it later into the season. The case of a side dress, we've put as little as possible at planting and we've tried to keep it away from the inoculant that was applied in furrow and on the seed. And the effect is that that inoculant now has the opportunity to establish itself on that developing root system and it has the ability to start fixing nitrogen. And yes, that ability will still be somewhat buffered and reduced because of the nitrogen application at planting. But there is, there is this win, win combination where you still get some effect of the microbiome and it starts working on some level and you've limited the excess of electrolytes from the nitrogen supply. So and you combine this, you compound this over year, over year. You take this approach a couple years in the row, in a row. And what I'm describing, I'm describing a scenario where again, this is a very conservative recommendation that I have high confidence in, will maintain or increase yields in almost any setting, in almost any context. Now, with a little bit of experience and knowing a bit more about the farming operation, if I know that there are cover crops that are being included, or if the soil has A history of high organic matter levels and the ability to deliver strong nitrogen. I might take that 40 units of nitrogen at planting and cut it down to 10. A very common approach for us would be to reduce the nitrogen application at planting even further from 40 units and keep or slightly increase the units of nitrogen at the side dress application. And now we have even more microbial development and microbial buildup in those first critical several week time periods. So this is the kind of the art and the science of providing the off ramp for nitrogen applications while providing an on ramp for biology. You take this approach for a couple of years in a row and all of a sudden this is common experience for growers. Actually, let me back up just a step. So what this means in year one, if we go with 40, 40 units plus 2 units of 20, you've applied a total of 100 units of nitrogen over the course of a season. And of course, this might all be customized based on SAP analysis or observation. But it's very common for growers to reduce nitrogen applications in year one by 30, 40, 50% while getting the exact same or higher yields than they got with 200 units applied up front. It's a very common phenomena, very common experience. And you take this approach for several years and become more comfortable with it, start reducing your nitrogen applications at planting and at side dress even further. The reality is the microbial inoculants that are contained in Biokoat Gold and Spectrum, they have the ability to fix large quantities of nitrogen and deliver it to the crop. But those types of products are often not successful in mainstream agronomy environments because they've been shut down by excessive electrolytes. And I've been framing this conversation of excessive electrolytes in terms of nitrogen, but of course, it's more than just that. It also includes the phosphorus applications and potassium applications, other types of applications that are commonly made in these scenarios as well. So, trying to think if there's any important thoughts that I missed, I think that's pretty much a wrap for. I'm going to pause my screen share there. That's pretty much whoops for the key topics that I wanted to talk about. And if you have any, I mean, I'm here, I'm happy to answer any questions and go into more detail onto this type of approach generally. But if you want to dig into getting recommendations for your specific context, I would highly encourage you to just reach out to our team at aea. We're happy to help make a set of recommendations for you because this can be customized A lot to fit what a farm's application capabilities are in terms of fertigation or foliar spraying or side dressing or top dressing pre planters. There's lots of customization that can happen here that can make this baseline recommendation even more effective and we'd love to work with you on that. So with that, I'm going to open it up for Q and A. I can't believe I talked for 35 minutes. How's that possible?

Just happens because you have lots, lots to say. That's good. So again, we will do some Q and A here. If you could type your Q and A into that Q and A box, that would be be slightly simpler logistically than typing it into the chat function. So first question Cole is asking, what about revenant in place of rejuvenate in NEP programs?

I'm drawing a blank. I'm not. Oh, nitrogen efficiency programs. The. That's a good question. So revenant. Revenant is going to have a stronger microbial stimulant effect than rejuvenate, but it doesn't supply soluble carbohydrates like the rejuvenate does. So I don't have a lot of experience with it. It will definitely stimulate biology. I would say if you have reasonable organic matter levels, I would probably chose to use revenant instead of rejuvenate because what will happen is your soil biology will tap into your soil's microbially active carbon and it'll have the effect temporarily of drawing down that microbial active carbon and depleting those reserves. But that's fine. That's exactly what you want to happen. You want it to combine and buffer out that nitrogen and they'll both be absorbed by the crop.

Great. Chris is asking, does the soil have to have a minimum level of soil organic matter for the soil bacteria to take up and immobilize the nitrogen applied at planting fast enough to stop it from leaching?

Yes, it does. And I don't know what the number is off the top of my head. I would be looking at the, what is it called, water exchangeable carbon on the Haney analysis as an index for that. And there's even with that, there's variation and variability in the number based on the form of nitrogen that you're applying and the rest of your total. Your soil's total carbon supply. So unfortunately, I don't have enough experience with the HAENI analysis in different moisture environments to have confidence in putting out a number out there right now that's universally and broadly applicable.

Joel's asking, we apply urea through the pivot. Is that different from spraying it on with the drone?

Yes, it is. It's a great question, putting on urea as a pivot. I mean, the question is how much of it is absorbed by the plant versus soil applied. So there's nothing wrong. I'm a fan of putting on urea application with the pivot, but you don't get the efficiency response of a foliar of £1 nitrogen from a foliar being the equivalent of £4 from the soil. Doesn't hold true for a pivot application because the majority is being applied to the soil and absorbed through the soil. So that's a great. A pivot application is a great way of applying it, later, applying it when the crop needs it, getting good absorption, good coverage. Absolutely a fan of that. But you don't get quite the efficiency gains that you do with a foliar application.

Right. Catherine has a couple questions. How would liquid dairy manure compare to the more chemical forms of nitrogen? They say they don't use any of those. And what characteristics of liquid dairy manure should we take into consideration for nutrient management and soy biology? There's another question, separately, about dry dairy manure as well. So maybe you could hit both of those.

Yeah. So the reality is that the form of nitrogen in dairy manure is going to be some combination of urea and ammonium primarily, and organic nitrogen, nitrogen that's contained in proteins and so forth. So the form of nitrogen itself is generally quite friendly. And there's slight variation between liquid and dry. But I'm sure you're familiar with what the availability curves look like. Depending on time of year of application, you might expect to get anywhere from as little as 30% to as much as 70% of the total nitrogen contained within the product to be released in the first year. But the challenge with dairy manure, as much as I love it, is that it usually has a very high salt index, has a very high salt content because of the sodium chloride that's fed to dairy cows. So this is this common pattern that we observe if soils have a history of lots of dairy manure applications or even just a lot of dairy manure in the recent history, in the last year or two, we can see very high sodium chloride levels, very high sodium levels, which doesn't have. It's not quite the same negative effect as high nitrogen, but does have all kinds of other negative health effects on plant performance and the microbiome performance. So I'm a Fan of dairy manure in moderation, I guess would be my way of summing up that answer. Good.

And then also Catherine's asking, how effective is using legumes between corn rows to provide nitrogen for corn later in the season?

That's a good question. One that hasn't been well studied and well documented. Earlier this week I spoke at no Till on the Plains and no Till on the High Plains in Colorado. And while there, people are going to laugh at my lapse in memory here, but I spoke with a fascinating gentleman who had some really good experiences putting together in. In my presentations. I was talking about rise of the rhizophagy cycle and quorum sensing and how we have this idea that plants inherently compete with each other for water and nutrients, but that if we have enough microbial diversity to stimulate quorum sensing, we can actually have all the plants in an ecosystem collaborating with each other and sharing water and nutrients. This gentleman, I believe the seed company was called Arrowhead Seed, but I could be mistaken. He was describing how they had developed a cover crop combination of seven different species of COVID crops that they were seeding into corn at between V3 and V4 and consistently across thousands of acres. Across seven years of experience, they had never observed a negative yield response. They always got a positive yield response from as low as 7 bushels to as high as 30 plus bushels per acre in a dry land environment in western Nebraska, Kansas and eastern Colorado. And so I look at that and I'm sure based on this conversation this actually Paul, I may have. I may. I think I may have texted that you because I would want his story to show up in acres. It was a pretty awesome story. So legumes were a part of that mix? I think they might have been. Two out of the seven species were legumes, if memory serves me correctly. And while the nitrogen contribution wasn't being measured directly, the fact that there was a yield contribution would tend would lead me to believe that there was probably some degree of nitrogen contribution from those cover crops.

Good. Very quick question from Gerardo. Where can he get a products in.

Canada by calling our AEA team? They have the answer to that and I don't.

Good. Dolph is asking. He's experimenting with direct drilling soybeans into roller crimped cereal rye in western Europe in an organic system. Last year he's seen a slow start of the soybeans. This year he's doing some test strips with infra applications of palletized feather meal. 13% nitrogen. Any thoughts on how much to apply without suppressing the symbiosis with rhizobium.

That's the proverbial catch 22. I would almost suggest, and I don't know if this is logistically feasible or not, but I would almost suggest putting on the feather meal, perhaps two to three weeks. Well, it's going to be a challenge because the rye will just suck it up whatever is available. The challenge with feather meal is that it releases very slowly, and you actually need that nitrogen push quite quickly with the seedling. So to drive seedling growth and emergence in size, what I would almost suggest is that you combine the feather meal with a form of sugars or starches to drive microbial activity and increase availability faster. I mean, perhaps the least expensive form is just simply using cornmeal. What happens if you ground up corn and use cornmeal and blended it with the feather meal and applied it in a combination? Now you have a sugar source to drive biology and to drive nitrogen release earlier. So I would expect if. If we get the right combination and the right soil type, or for your soil type, I would expect you would be able to put on less feather meal and replace that expensive feather meal with less expensive cornmeal and get a greater seedling response. And. But overall, I'm not terribly concerned about the feather meal having a suppressive effect on the microbiome.

It would.

If it released in large amounts, it would have the exact same suppressive effect, but because it tends to release so slowly, I'm not super concerned about it. Good.

Cole is asking, would you prefer foliars with melted urea and AA nutritionals to be done with a ground sprayer at 15 gallons per acre versus a drone at 3 gallons per acre in a very high concentration? Essentially, how does the concentration change the effectiveness? Can the melted urea high concentration have a negative effect?

We're not observing high concentrations to have a negative effect, which surprises me a little bit, to be honest, because if you're putting on 10 pounds of nitrogen at 3 gallons, that's the majority of the solution, and it has very high electrical conductivity. But the corn plants seem to not have a negative effect. I suspect that if you did it very frequently, like if you did it every couple of weeks or a week or 10 days apart, they might. But occasional applications, we are not seeing any negative effects. I think if I were to look at it purely from an idealistic perspective of what would be optimal for the plant, it probably would be with higher volumes of water from a ground rig. But occasional applications with the drone we're not seeing any downsides that. Well, let me say it differently. We're not actually I'm not aware of anyone who's run side by side comparisons between a drone and a ground rig. So there might be negative consequences but we are still seeing the positive yield results from the drone applications. That's the accurate way of stating it.

Paul's also asking if going this is specifically for annual rye grass and crimson clover is if going with the 30 days pre plant urea and sulfur dry spread before corn planting, would you increase those rates with COVID crop use that will be taking up whatever becomes available until planting and termination?

That's a good question. Probably I would and then because I would expect that to be absorbed by the COVID crop and then I would expect that to be released later. So I probably would increase the application and then I would probably reduce siders applications later.

Good. Tara is asking, I've started hearing about plasma activated water. Do you think it has a role in your on ramp off ramp analogy? Would it boost biological functioning while allowing weaning off of synthetic nitrogen? She says whilst. So I assume Tara's in, in the UK or somewhere, that's like.

That's like pinning a butterfly to the wall with a pin. Feels a bit uncomfortable. So the short answer is we've seen lots of field experiences and field data with SAP analysis and else elsewhere and in other ways with plasma treated water and all of the data that we have seen so far has not been positive. That being said, there have been several users who have reported very positive results and who've also reported that the treatment machines are very much not set it and forget it. They require close observation and close management and that when well managed the product that they produce can have very positive effects. And that I think hasn't been well understood historically and a lot of people who've been using them have failed to see positive responses. So that could be a function of a lack of awareness and a lack of management I suppose. But that's. I would offer that as a caveat that as of this point the actual data that we've observed hasn't been optimistic for plasma treated water.

Karen is asking is it best to address 5 1/2 to 6.5 pH by applying 1 ton of calcium carbonate for first before applying other soil amendments?

It depends on what other soil amendments are required. If you have, let's just say for the sake of discussion, you have a very sandy or very low phosphorus soil and you have the opportunity to apply phosphorus amendments such as rock phosphate, the Perfect time to apply rock phosphate is with acidic soil pHs, because you get greater release and greater availability. And I would then follow that with the limestone application. For most anything else, a limestone application first probably makes the most sense.

Okay, Rico is asking would your opinion be what would your opinion be about using facultative anaerobes in furrow as a way to consume the nitrogen electrolytes as a way to stabilize the salts?

The. There's nothing wrong with that approach inherently, other than the fact that it takes time. And that time window that is required for consuming those salts is the exact time window that we need to have good colonization of the rhizosphere and of the root system itself. So nothing, nothing inherently negative about that idea other than I still would desire to move the salts away from the root system in time and in distance.

Good. And sue is asking, is it possible to adapt the system you described today to an orchard or vineyard with the foliar applications have a similar effect in orchards?

Absolutely. I use this as an illustration of a concept that we refine and adapt to orchards, to vineyards, to vegetable crops, to soybeans, to small grains. The same concept is we want to put on as little as possible at the beginning, but still enough to stimulate strong root biomass and plant biomass and then position as much later as possible, kind of as late as possible without producing a yield drag effect and as much foliar as possible, essentially. See, here's the interesting. I missed mentioning this. We actually get a positive microbiome effect from foliar applied urea and we get a negative microbiome effect from soil applied urea. Why? Because when we apply it as a foliar, we get this strong photosynthesis response and vegetative growth response that produces a lot more sugars and sends more sugars out through the root system as root activity exudates. So it's actually possible using foliar nitrogen to have a nitrogen application benefit soil biology instead of have a negative effect on soil biology. So, in short, we prefer nitrogen to be foliar as much as possible, as late as possible. And if we. The reality is, if it were possible and feasible logistically, I believe the highest performing crops that have the greatest positive effect on the microbiome would be if we did as little as 5 to 10 pounds of nitrogen at planting and we did the rest full year over the course of the season. That would really drive biology and give us an off ramp for chemistry and an on ramp for biology. In a single year, you would see dramatic improvements in soil biology with that approach if it were feasible logistically.

Joel is asking is it easier to change from conventional to regenerative in dry land or in irrigation?

Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so the I think yeah, they both, they have different challenges, but I don't think one is necessarily easier than the other.

Jonathan Burkholder is asking in an organic context, would you see similar results with amino acid nitrogen, such as soy hydrolysates foliar applied and would you still recommend 10 units of actual N with aminos?

I don't have a good answer for that question because over the last several years I've seen variable performance from amino acids in hydrolysate form, from soybean hydrolysate or something like that, corn steep liquor or CSL powder has been more reliable and more consistent. But it's challenging to speak broad. There are a number of different products in the marketplace and they don't all perform the same. And I kind of suspect that sometimes even the same product from the same manufacturer has variation from batch to batch. I suspect that I don't know that for sure. But it's becoming apparent that a number of these amino acid products aren't absorbed by the plant leaf as effectively as we would like and they don't produce the crop response that you would expect them to produce based on the amino acid content and based on the nitrogen content that they contain. So I've become a bit more cautious and around the organic amino acids. If we have a crop that an organic crop that needs nitrogen and our primary source is a soybean hydrolysate or something similar, my cautious direction generally would be to plan on applying heavier amounts than you would expect and apply them earlier than you would expect. Because if for some reason you have delayed absorption or slower absorption that takes a longer period of time, you want to get it out there as quickly as possible. So there's just, there's I've seen lots of variable crop responses from those products which I'm a little disappointed by, to be honest, because I would prefer that they work as well as urea. I would prefer prefer to use them. And to your question about quantity required, amino acids are supposed to be more energy, slightly more energy efficient than urea, just in terms of net energy contribution to the plant. You should be able to get about 6 lbs. 5-6-lbs of amino acids should produce a similar crop response as £10 of urea. But again, question is, is it being absorbed effectively or not? And if it's not, then you could easily End up in trouble.

Good. I'm going to paraphrase Dolph's next question. He's coming from a Western Europe standpoint, I think, where, you know, the regulations are really pinching farmers on what they can apply, nitrogen wise. He's asking how a farmer in an organic system can get enough affordable nitrogen to build up soil if manures aren't easy to get. And Dolph, if I didn't paraphrase that correctly, you know, type something back in, well, I would.

There's a few thoughts. I spoke about how sulfur, the first 25 pounds of sulfur can contribute to your overall nitrogen requirement. There's this common pattern. I mean, the rule of thumb here in for commercial production, depending on which state university you listen to, irrigated or dry land context, is that it takes anywhere from 1 to 1.1. And I've even seen numbers as high as 1.5 units of nitrogen to grow a bushel of corn. Well, leading organic growers, it's very common, very common when people start taking a biological approach to quickly get that number down to 0.65 to 0.75. And leading organic growers who are using cover crops, incorporating compost, doing different things, using microbial inoculants to deliver nitrogen. In terms of the nitrogen that they can measure, or I should say that they can estimate from COVID crop contributions and manure contributions, they're commonly in the 0.5 pounds of nitrogen per bushel of grain range. So the we're coming to understand that the source of nitrogen, where it comes from, if it is coming from biological decomposition of COVID crops and so forth, produces a different yield response than fertilizer nitrogen. And the quantity of nitrogen required is actually less. So that's, that's the first part of the answer. And then the second part of the answer is that you can of course look to cover crops for nitrogen contribution. But as we talk about providing this on ramp for biology, I think we commonly fail to appreciate how much nitrogen biological fixation can deliver. In terms of what is most common for growers is just observing what is missing, realizing that their corn crop, they have a 200 bushel per acre corn crop and they only applied and that they can only account for 50 units of nitrogen coming from COVID crops. And where did the other 50 units come from? To even get up to 0.5, it means the other 50 units came from microbial delivery, microbial fixation. So I don't know if I've directly answered the question yet, but I would say some combination of COVID crops ahead of the crop. Cover crops interplanted with the crop plus microbial contribution can absolutely deliver the majority of the nitrogen that a crop requires even to be a high yielding, high test weight, high quality crop.

Good. Thanks. Joel is asking at what ratio should molasses as a carbon source be added with urea as a chelator, we commonly.

Have been adding rejuvenate at 3% of the solution either on a weight, weight or volume volume basis, rejuvenate is obviously a lot more than just, than just carbohydrates. The intention is not to provide enough carbohydrates to balance out the nitrogen from a carbon to nitrogen ratio perspective, but just enough to accelerate it and to get it started moving faster.

And then you talked about a V3, V4 application. Is that foliar or soil applied that's.

Commonly side dressed, top dressed or fertigated. Okay.

Garth is asking. He's a, he's got a small orchard too small to do plant tissue analysis, SAP analysis. What are other ways to have a feedback loop in an orchard that size or garden observation?

It's worth noting that on an orchard, I've been framing this conversation in terms of nitrogen. Perennial crops, tree crops in particular, require just a fraction of the nitrogen of an annual grain crop. Not exaggerating what I'm saying, it's probably 10%, 10 to 15%. The actual nitrogen requirement is very, very small when we look at SAP analysis. To give you a comparison on SAP analysis on grain crops, we're at peak demand periods. We're commonly looking at desired ranges of 3 to 4,000 part per million nitrogen. And on tree crops, it's 3 to 400 parts per million. So the quantity required is much, much smaller.

Here's a related question. For an orchard or vineyard, would you apply small amounts of nitrogen foliar spray starting at or near bud break? What's the equivalent to planning timeframe? When would you ramp up, then reduce the nitrogen foliar?

In this case, I, I struggle to make recommendations for just, just broad generic recommendations for tree crops and vineyards because there we customize even more. We have a higher value crop and putting on too much nitrogen costs us substantially more with those crops than it does with with a grain crop. So as a, as a general rule, we apply minimal to no nitrogen in foliars until we have SAP analysis data that validates that we need it. Because, because in those systems, because we're not adding nitrogen to the soil, generally, the biology, there is an on ramp for biology that is even faster and it's very common for biology to deliver all the crops requirements with no need for foliar applications. So I would just be very cautious about putting on foliar applications of nitrogen on berry crops. Berry crops and orchard crops and vines etc. They generally do not need it.

And time frame for doing that. I think he's asking when, if, if you did.

If I did, I wouldn't do that before I had three to four fully developed leaves at the earliest.

Good. And then microbes on the leaf, how do they react to urea?

If I had to speculate, I would speculate that there is a short term negative reaction because it has a very high salt index, of course, particularly when you're applying it in a very concentrated form. So I would expect in a short term, measured in a matter of hours or a few days, there would probably be a temporary suppression. But urea is absorbed very rapidly into the leaf in a matter of six to 12 hours. It's a hygroscopic material which is very valuable, has a very high point of deliquescence. And what that means is that as rapidly as that urea gets absorbed and starts having an effect on positively increasing photosynthesis, any short term negative effects are going to be rapidly reversed because with higher photosynthesis you're going to have more sugars going to the. Excuse me, to the leaf surface and stimulating that biology in the phylosphere.

Good, thanks. And then also about urea. What liquid urea source do you recommend which would indicate gallons per acre?

I can't believe I forgot to mention this. This is such an important question. Thank you for asking the question. So fol your urea, dry urea. There's lots of growers who are melting their own urea or just purchasing melted urea. Melted urea is essentially just the dry 4600 greenhouse grade that is dissolved in the water solution. You can purchase it in concentrations as high as 2100. 1800 is more common and easier to do on farm or perhaps even slightly less. There's a number of videos you can see online about melting urea, but it's. I almost missed mentioning this very important piece for foliar applications. Best performance. In fact I think it's. It's almost mandatory is we need to look for forms of urea that are termed lobi, which stands for lobiuret B I U R E T. You want low bioret urea. Bioret is a metabolite, a toxin that is produced as a byproduct of the manufacturing process. And it has very as I understand it has less than significantly less than positive effects from a plant health and growth perspective. When applied as a foliar. When applied to the soil, soil biology tends to mitigate that effect. But applied to the foliar as a foliar you definitely want low bio at urea.

Good. Yeah. And then using foliar urea, do you recommend using a microbial inoculant to enhance absorption?

No, not as a foliar. Foliar urea gets absorbed into the leaf surface very, very rapidly. You're not going to speed it up. Adding biology and the salt index, the electrolytic electrolyte content of foliar is usually high enough that it's not particularly hospitable environment for most microbes anyway.

Jacob Landis is asking can you speak to the efficiency of fish emulsions for organic corn foliar versus soil and crop timing fish emulsions?

I don't have a ton of experience with fish emulsions. We work on a large enough scale that even on the organic growers we work with, the fish emulsion just isn't a viable source. Using usually in in large enough volumes to be a substantial source of nitrogen. So it can be an okay microbial activator but we don't see it being widely used as a substantial source of nitrogen. I think that to some degree kind of speaks to its effectiveness already. It is it. I think it can be effective. But the limited observations that I do have growers are often applying relatively large amounts 10, 20, 30 gallons per acre early on in a transition period. In short, I think the way that I would say it is you're probably better off depending on getting the majority of your nitrogen contribution from COVID crops and biological fixation rather than from liquid fish. That should be the band aid good.

And has pinion been tested yet on corn and would it be compatible with urea or a nutritional foliar?

We did. There has been some testing opinion on corn. We're expecting to see a lot more this season. We're expecting to see it used quite large scale on corn this year actually with the leaf blight incidents that occurred this last year. And it broadly we want to. We're still learning but broadly I would suggest avoiding tank mixing pinyin with materials that have that are very oxidizing because one of its foundational mechanisms or modes of action is that it has a very strong reducing effect. And so when you have urea has a very high salt index and it's also quite a potent oxidizer not as strong as say potassium nitrate or something like that, but still a fairly strong oxidizer. So I definitely would exercise some caution about putting pinion in a tank mix with concentrated urea if you're putting on with a drone 3 gallons breaker, it's probably not the right place for pinion if you're putting it on more dilute form. 15 gallons breaker solution maybe. So that's something that I think is worth experimenting with, but in a concentrated form probably not.

Okay, great. I think we've come to the end of our questions here. We're going to be doing a couple more of these with John throughout the year. Planning to. So that would be. Please be on the lookout for that. Thanks you John and thanks for all the participants again. You know, take a look@acresusa.com if you're on. If you signed up for this, we will be sending out an email in a couple days with the recording and you can view that. Any other last thoughts John?

Thank you all for being here. Thank you for the good questions. I enjoy the interaction. It makes everything better. So thanks for all the work that you're doing and if you have any follow up questions that we missed or would like specific recommendations, please reach out to us at our team. We're happy to help.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Thanks sir.