Eliminate the Need For Synthetic Fertilizers with Dr. Kris Nichols

Hi friends, I'm John Kemp, 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 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 how to increase farm profitability. In this episode I had a very enjoyable discussion with Dr. Chris Nichols where we spoke about the value of developing soil fungal populations, developing climate resilient crops, and one piece that I found particularly intriguing was the negative impact of synthetic fertilizer applications, particularly phosphorus and nitrogen applications, on soil biology, particularly on soil fungi, and the implications that has for developing truly regenerative agriculture ecosystems. Chris, you've done a lot of work looking at soil biology and the impact of soil biology on plant performance and growing really climate resilient crops. What are some of the highlights of the pieces that you have worked on over the years that are very memorable for you?

Well, some of the most memorable highlights, kind of starting a little bit, maybe chronologically, was when I started at the University of Minnesota as an undergrad and was able to do some research working in a laboratory, where I discovered arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. These are organisms that have relationships with over 90% of the plants. And most of crop plants are associated with mycorrhizal fungi. And these fungi help the plants to get nutrients and water from the soil in exchange for photosynthetically derived carbon. And this is a very old, very important relationship that plants and fungi have had. And it was fascinating to me to see how interconnected these two organisms could be and how much life depended on having these organisms work together. And so that led me to want to continue to study these fungi and plant relationships into my graduate work. I grew up on a farm and was involved in agriculture in various ways, in farming. This was in the 80s, not totally to date myself, but in the 80s. And during that time, farming and agriculture was very difficult. And I think like many young people, I didn't want to do what my parents were doing and wanted to run away from the farm. And although I was fascinated by these fungi, I didn't want to get into farming. But life becomes very funny. And I ended up falling back into agriculture. And when I was able to get a position working for USDA Agriculture Research Service in North Dakota and being able to work with the farmers like Gabe Brown in North Dakota, who were doing really fascinating, innovative things that were taking some of the science that I had been learning about and researching in the laboratory and actually applying this in the real world. And I was seeing that the things that I had been discovering and thinking about in the laboratory actually had connections in the real world. And the things that I was questioning and couldn't fully understand how things were working, those questions I could start to see play out in what these farmers were taking a look at.

When I interviewed Gabe, he made a comment, and I'm quoting from memory, so it might not be perfect, but in essence, he said that today he's not losing any synthetic fertilizers on his farm, and that that is due to a comment that you made when you visited his farm at one moment where you said that as long as he continues to use synthetic fertilizers, he can never expect to regenerate soil and plants to their full potential. I'm really fascinated by that, by that comment. Could you describe for us a little bit of why you believe that to be true?

Well, that really goes back with the research that I was doing in the laboratory where we would see this very strong connection with the mycorrhizal fungi and the organisms that were in the soil and the potential that these organisms have for being able to resolve the nutrient issues that plants have. What we could find was that in a laboratory, we could see that they could resolve those issues. But when we were trying to see if farmers were willing to apply those in the field, the system was still very much dependent upon utilizing a lot of synthetic fertilizers. And I couldn't fully understand why we thought that we needed to still be dependent upon these synthetic fertilizers, when what I was seeing in the laboratory was that we didn't really need to do that. And so when I looked at Gabe's system and the way that he was applying things and the way that he was stimulating the biological activity, I started to think that really he was putting in the tools in place that were important for biological activity, reducing the amount of tillage that he was doing. In fact, he had gone to a no till system, so eliminating soil disturbance, improving the crop rotation, utilizing cover crops, making sure that he had plants growing as much as possible. So he was putting the tools into place that was stimulating the biological activity, but he still wasn't optimizing fully the efficiencies of the organisms that are in the soil, especially the mycorrhizal fungi. And that was really because he was outsourcing the job of the mycorrhizal fungi. The fact that they will provide the nutrients to the plants, if the plants are required to give that photosynthetically derived carbon to the mycorrhizal fungi and the consortium of organisms that work with the mycorrhizal fungi to get those nutrients. And if you don't start that early enough in the process, you're not going to be able to optimize that functionality. And so that was the missing link for Gabe, that he needed to really optimize that functionality in order to be able to maximize those efficiencies.

One of the pieces that we have observed working with many vegetable farmers is they it's been standard practice, and as I'm sure it is as well, on many broadacre crops, to apply a soluble phosphorus fertilizer at planting. And with the vegetable crops, we know that when we apply soluble phosphorus fertilizers, we don't see the mycorrhizal colonization happening. So I think what you're describing, if I'm understanding it correctly, is that when you apply the soluble phosphorous fertilizers, then you essentially remove the need for the plant to have a symbiotic relationship with mycorrhizae because they can already obtain a generous supply of phosphorus.

Exactly. Again, it becomes very critically important to work a lot with the timing. If we are going to be adding amendments that the amendments that we add, we time them appropriately with the physiological needs of the plant so that we make sure that the plant is getting its needs realized when the plant has those needs. So initially for the plant, the plant will essentially, when it's very young, it sets what its maximum can be, but then it has a period of time in which it doesn't need to. It can't. You fully utilize the amount of fertilizer that in many of our systems we have applied because the seedling is very small, later on when it goes into the reproductive phase, it has a very large nutrient demand in order to fulfill that maximum potential of what the grain fill potential might be or what its maximum yield potential might be. So what we want to do is we want to figure out how to work with that timing of the physiological needs of the plant and making sure that we've timed it in such a way so that we are not outsourcing the job of things like the mycorrhizal fungi too early in the growing season, so that we keep the mycorrhizal fungi and the consortium of the organisms available to colonize the roots. We want to make sure the plant has enough nutrients starting off so that the seed can germinate and grow in our fields and that that young seedling can realize that optimum potential and then it won't be so over fertilized that it says I don't need. If you don't need to have mycorrhizal fungi or other microbes feed you because you have all your nutrients already supplied to you, why would you give them? Why would you pay for something you don't need? Everything is a supply and demand. Nothing is free. We're taking a systems approach and nothing is free in this system. What ends up happening is we want to create a system in which the plant relies on having those organisms so that it allows those organisms, the mycorrhizal fungi, to colonize the roots early on and pay them a little bit of photosynthetic carbon so that they'll Colonize those roots and start supplying the nutrients. And also in addition to supplying nutrients and water, supplying phosphorus, as well as a number of other nutrients, including many micronutrients. The mycorrhizal fungi can help with disease prevention, especially root borne pathogen prevention, if they colonize the roots early enough in the growing season. So that can be really important in our crop production systems. But then you have them growing and they're able to optimize their efficiencies because they've been growing with the plant and building the consortium activity throughout the growing season. And so they'll be working with the plant throughout the growing season, helping to cycle nutrients in the rhizosphere environment, providing the right nutrients at the right times when the plant has those demands, and then when the plant has the greatest demand later on during the reproductive phase. Oftentimes that's the most stressful time for the plant. It's also some of the hardest times for nutrient flow in the soil environment, because frequently where we are growing our plants, it's also the time in which our soils are the driest. And much of our nutrient movement, as well as a lot of biological activity is dependent on soil moisture and water. And so you need to make sure that you've got a moist soil environment. But we don't have a lot of precipitation events at this point in time. So this is mid summer. And so what we want is we want to have this activity where you have these organisms in the rhizosphere and you don't have to have a lot of distance that you have to have nutrients or organisms moving around in large aqueous environments because it's happening right around the roots. You don't have to have a lot of water in that environment. And so now you've got a great level of efficiency.

I'd like to come back to speak a bit more about the water piece, but before we go there, you spoke a bit of the negative impact that phosphorus can have on a mycorrhizal colonization and possibly I would expect also in other microbes. A question that I know many growers have asked me is what are what other fertilizers might have a potentially damaging effect? Is it all soluble fertilizers, which are those that we should be particularly certain to avoid?

Well, for the mycorrhizal fungi, phosphorus has been a very big key soluble fertilizer. Soluble fertilizer is going to do the most damage to outsourcing those jobs that the microbial community has. So as much as possible, if you can avoid those soluble inorganic types of fertilizers. The organic fertilizers are not going to have that same level of issue, because for the organic fertilizers to work, they're being broken down by the microbial communities, and those nutrients are being released by the microbial communities and then processed and cycled through and becoming available. And in addition to that, we are finding that some of the proteins and the amino acids are possibly being taken up. So in a nitrogen that is in a protein or an amino acid form can be taken up in some smaller quantities, either directly by the roots. We're not quite sure if that happens, but we have seen very good evidence that the fungi can act as a mediator to help to take up those proteins and amino acids, translocate those inside to the, to the plant roots themselves.

The piece that you just mentioned, plant absorption, root absorption of amino acids and the proteins, that's a really big deal in many cases where we have farms that have a generous supply of organic matter, we have farmers that we've worked with that have grown greater than 300 bushels per acre of corn without a single pound of added nitrogen. Now, that is not to say, obviously, we have the nitrification cycle working in the soil profile. And I'm certain that even on those soils there was ammonium and nitrate present, even though none have been applied. But in the testing that we have done, it also appears that plants are absorbing amino acids and peptides, and those seem to contribute a great deal of energy to plant growth, much more so proportionally than nitrate or ammonium. And so I think that's an opportunity to really grow higher yielding crops that we have not understood very well.

And I would agree with that. I mean, I think that again, there were many things that we were discussing as scientists that we don't always think about taking out into the field or thinking about making that connection to what's happening in the field and how some of these more complex activities may be occurring. We just sort of accept what we think as principles or as dogma or as this is just the way that it is, this is how things function. And we don't go out there and ask new questions and challenge ourselves often enough in order to be able to see these other things that are happening. And, you know, whether it's, again, whether it's the plant roots themselves, which may very well have ways of being able to absorb some of these more complex molecules, because we always thought that they absorbed very simple inorganic ions if they're able to absorb some of these more complex molecules, or if that's mediated by microbes, especially by mycorrhizal fungi, we have to recognize that this is something that we're starting to see that's actually happening and start discussing this as something, because it starts to get us. I think for me, what becomes critically important about this is it also gets us away from the continuous argument for the use of synthetic fertilizers has always been you have to use synthetic fertilizers, you have to add in. If you take something off, you have to put new things in, and they have to be in this inorganic form because that's the only way plants can take them up. And you have to do this. Otherwise you're going to mine your soils. And, you know, you look at farmers like you're talking about. Or when I was having these discussions with Gabe, you know, I said this to Gabe as far as not adding synthetic fertilizers. And there was never really a question in my mind or in Gabe's mind as to if he was going to mine his soils.

There is so much evidence when you look at the geological profile of many of our agricultural soils, most of our agricultural soils, we have a virtually inexhaustible supply of most of the micronutrients, particularly phosphorus and potassium. And I think for all of the farmers, and Gabe is a great example, as he has worked, as he has built on biology in his soil profile, the level of available nutrients in his soil has continued to increase to the point where it's today four times higher than it is on surrounding farms and multiple times higher than it was when he started.

Exactly. And so those are the things that, you know, we have to be saying to ourselves that we're not going to be doing that. But because we've always focused on that inorganic component of things, when you do something like what Gabe's doing, if you're not adding inorganic fertilizers, people say, you're going to mine your.

You're.

You're going to mine your soil, your yields are going to decline, and you're going to lose something. And that's where, you know, I guess for many. For many of these things, I don't want to. I don't like arguing with people. I like to just sort of change the direction and the thought pattern into this is what's going on. And if I can show you this other evidence of what's going on, there isn't even really an argument to be had. We're not going to. We're not going to argue about this. You know, I'll talk to people about organic matter and you know, there's been a long discussion if we can't change organic matter percentages in our lifetime. And you talk to many soil scientists, and many soil scientists that I have a tremendous amount of respect for, still believe that that's the case. And you know, I'll have discussions with them and I'll be like, I understand why you have that point of view. You know, this paradigm that you have, your point of view based on is this idea that the old humic material that we've always focused on, that is the majority of organic matter, can take hundreds of years to form. That's a highly decomposed product and that's the majority of the organic matter. If that's what most of the organic matter is, most of that, if it's a highly decomposed product that can't have the binding capacity the chemistry. We know that there's a similar connection that mycorrhizal fungi make when they co colonize. We'll have roots of a legume and a non legume plant that will be colonized by the same fungus. So a strand of hyphae can colonize a legume plant and non legume plant and can transfer nitrogen from the legume plant to the non legume plant. And again, there's no water loss because all of that, that nitrogen fixation is happening in the roots of the legume plant. It's all flowing through the water that's in the cells of the fungus and the plant roots. And then you don't have to waste water. So for, you know, Gabe, who was growing things in a semi arid environment, if he truly to make his system the most efficient as possible, he needed to quit providing synthetic nutrients and optimize what the organisms in the soil and the consortia and relationships that they could provide, as well as mixed cultures of plants could provide. We know that plants like flax and buckwheat are also important in being able to help to move nutrients between other plants in the whole entire system. So flax is another one that's really important. It's not a legume, but we've seen with labeling studies some micronutrients move between flax plants and other plants through mycorrhizal fungi. As there have been demands, it's intriguing.

That we have plant to plant transfer of nutrients and energy sources. All the various projects and research that you've done, what has been something that really surprised you?

The thing that really surprised me was sort of A little bit indirectly. I knew it, but it didn't hit me as strongly until a few years back. And it was actually something that happened on a personal level. I ended up, and I apologize, I'm going to go off on a little bit of a tangent. I ended up having thyroid cancer. And your thyroid controls your metabolism, your body's ability to process carbon. And I had to get my thyroid removed. And then they needed to wait for a while and not allow my body to have the synthetic hormone that normally they'll give you so that your body knows how to metabolize carbon. They wanted to essentially try and get if there were any remaining cancer cells in my body after they removed my thyroid, they wanted those cancer cells to replicate so when they did the radiation treatment, they could kill them all. And what happened was my body started not being able to function very well. I couldn't think very well. And it made me think about how the whole entire agro ecosystem functions. Again, going back to this whole thing with carbon and carbon flow through all of these organisms, this whole pay as you go type of a system, this carbon exchange was so essential because without carbon, nothing works. And if you can't get carbon flowing from one organism to another organism, it doesn't function. And so again, kind of going back to the work that I had been doing with farmers like Gabe, what was missing? He was doing the no till, he was doing the crop rotation, he was doing the COVID crops and those types of things. But he was missing the fact that he was cutting off the payment of carbon to the soil organism. And so everything from then on for me became about discussions I would have with farmers on what is it that you're missing that's stopping the payment flowing to the right organisms in the system? Are you not growing cover crops? Is your rotation not complex enough? Are you doing tillage so that the system has to be in a constant rebuilding process as opposed to an enhancement process? How is the carbon flowing and being metabolized?

What do you believe to be true about modern agriculture that many other people don't believe to be true, or that is perhaps not mainstream?

I believe that we have the capacity to feed at least 14 billion people, which is way beyond our current population, nutrient dense food, and at the same time to have a high quality of life and to maintain and enhance our ecosystem services?

Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I would say, in fact we already produce enough food to probably feed 12 to 14 billion people, but that we have a distribution problem, not a production problem. But there is in continuing with with the, the essence of what you described, there is so much untapped potential. Every crop that we are growing has untapped genetic potential. That there is, there still exists, with the genetics that we already have today on many crops, for us to increase yields anywhere from 30% to upwards of 100%, I believe, on most crops. So I completely agree that we have, we have the capacity to do so much more. We already have the knowledge, we have the information. There is still, there's still a lot that we don't know. There's still a lot that we need to learn, but we already know enough to make a really substantial difference.

I totally agree with you. You know, as far as how much we produce, I think the biggest thing that we're missing now is the nutritive quality of what we're producing because we're losing that connection of the nutritional value. Many of our important amino acids, antioxidants, what we always refer to as sort of polyphenolics and phytonutrients, are actually more tied to the soil biology and soil microbiology, and that's what we need to be tapping back into.

I'd love to unwrap that just a little bit more because this is something that we've observed and that I realized as well, and I haven't seen it being explored very well in the literature. We have observed that when we have really aggressive biology in the rhizosphere profile, that there is a much greater production of all these, what are generally referred to as plant secondary metabolites, all the terpenoids, the phytoaloxins and all these bioflavonoids, etc. And all the aromatic compounds that plants produce and so forth. So based on the work that you have done, what is the impact of biology on producing higher levels of these compounds and plants?

Well, there are two things that are going on. One is there are many compounds that are actually coming directly from soil microbes, especially many fungi that produce many of these compounds. And then those compounds are finding their way into the food chain through plants. So the plants are taking in many of these compounds that are actually originally produced by microorganisms.

That would be fascinating because that's another example of plants absorbing complete compounds rather than ions.

Right. And, you know, we're not, again, quite sure how this happens. Some of this we do know is mediated by fungi, especially root colonizing fungi, either the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi or the ectomycorrhizal fungi. So there's a compound that we started working with when I was still at the Rodale Institute, called ergothioneine. That has been found not just in plants, but also in animal tissue and so in chicken livers, in parts of animals that find its way into, again, what we're eating. And it's because of the fact that those animals are eating plants that have high concentrations of these fungi growing in the soil. And so, you know, being able to take a look at how we could enhance those relationships or what management techniques impact those relationships, and one of the things that we're starting to find when we look at those management impact, you know, you're talking about these secondary compounds that are formed. And again, going back to this whole idea of carbon and where carbon flows and how carbon moves in the system, what ends up happening, especially on a microbial level and especially for fungi, when your job is to your first primary job, the first way in which you get paid from the plant is to satisfy the nutrient needs of the plant. The first thing you're going to do is make sure that you can provide the maximum amount of nutrients that the plant needs. And I think that's always why things like the mycorrhizal fungi were tied to something like phosphorus, because phosphorus was so unavailable in the soil. And it was, it's a. It's a nutrient that's readily unavailable and a nutrient that was something that the plant needed in abundance. So it was something that we could see a pretty direct relationship to when it came to some of the micronutrients and to water and some of the other things that mycorrhizal fungi also provide to the plant. That took a little bit more time and a little bit more research to take a look at. That didn't mean that that's not as important as phosphorus. It just meant that what we first started looking at was phosphorus. Because again, overall, our focus when it came to plant nutrition, so much focus has always been on, you know, sort of the big three npk, nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus.

Yeah, exactly.

Phosphorus was, was always a tough one in the soil because it's immobile. So, you know, that became a big key. So again, you know, kind of going back to that, we just always did these studies where it was, you know, you manipulate the concentration of phosphorus and you see how that affects colonization and you see how that affects plant growth and those types of things that are, that are going on. But we're starting to see now that other things are actually happening as well. And again, when the fungus is reliant upon satisfying Nutrient needs. The first thing the fungus is going to put energy into is creating a better hyphal network, Extending that network as far as it needs to, to make sure that it gets the nutrient demands satisfied so that it can then get as much carbon as it can. And then if it has the network established, well, then it starts to do some of the secondary activity. You can do things like enhancing that network a little bit more, making sure that part of that network has some rigidity to it. So some of the hyphae, you'll invest a little bit more into making sure that some of the hyphae has some secondary compounds as part of the hypho wall structure, so it doesn't fall apart as easy. Most of the hyphae, when you first create it, is very ephemeral. It doesn't last very long. You don't put a lot of energy into it. And then if it's going to stick around a little bit longer, you don't get as much disturbance with tillage or things like that. Then you build up a more resilient network. You start making soil aggregates with that more resilient network. You start investing and releasing more carbohydrates, more sugars to attract phosphate. Solubilizing bacteria and consortia of other organisms, creating what is referred to as sort of a microrhizosphere organisms around the fungal hyphae that starts develop more of the soil aggregate structure. All of those things start happening. Part of creating that more rigid hyphal network is creating some of these secondary compounds. So the formation on the part of the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Some of the initial work that I had done my PhD and master's on was looking at glomalin. And glomalin is a glycoprotein produced by arboruscular mycorrhizal fungi. And what we found was that glomalin wasn't always immediately produced. That the more that you had a system that was a no till system, or an undisturbed system that had perennial crops in it, or that had cover crops in it, the more glomalin you saw produced. So it was one of those secondary compounds. It was kind of like you needed more carbon in order to be able to get it to be produced. So, again, that makes sense. It's a large, complex biomolecule. If the first thing you need to do is make sure that you do your primary job, which is getting nutrients, you make a good network to get the nutrient. If you make a good network, then you now have the energy reserves. You make secondary compounds. And glomalin, from the perspective of the fungus, helped with some of the hypho wall rigidity. It allows, potentially allows the high feet to penetrate air, water, interface zones, those types of things. So that was important to the hyphal structure. And that is also something that we find those secondary compounds, what they do for hypho wall structure is also what helps to classify them as antioxidants and polyphenolics and some of the phytochemicals that are important for human cell wall integrity and some of our, our own health benefits. So this is what we're seeing.

Yeah, Chris, we, you've, we've spoken of a number of different topics. Mycorrhizal fungi, the soil microbiome, many different pieces that have tied together. And I'm certain that growers will want to explore some of these topics more deeply. Are there any resources that you recommend frequently to growers?

So I have, you know, I have some different things and I, I guess I encourage growers to go out there and really kind of explore a number of different types of resources that are out there, you know, if you're interested in, in some of these things. I mean, I do a lot of reading through scientific literature, so you can plug your way through scientific literature. But there have been a few authors that have done, I think, a good job of summarizing some things, and they have some good references that will point you to some scientific literature. And David Montgomery is a very good author who does a good job of, like I said, having some good reference lists. And Judith Schwartz, who wrote a book called Cows Save the Planet, who also has done a book called Water in Plain Sight, which is a really interesting book about some of these water relationships and some of these other issues that we touched on there, again, you know, providing some reference materials. And Kristin Olson, who did the Soil Will Save Us, has also done some work with that, again providing some reference lists. One of the books that, and this is a, can be a little bit of a difficult book to slug your way through, but it opens up some interesting topics to things. One of the books that sort of was one of the topic areas or books that changed my life was a biogeochemistry book by William Schlesinger. And what I like is these topics that interface not just biology, but biology and chemistry and geology and physics. I was just stating to a colleague of mine the other day that I consider myself to be a physical biogeochemist, because just being a soil scientist. That's kind of what you have to do is look at all of these interfaces and so that's what I would encourage growers to do. I've always thought of farmers, ranchers, and growers to be Renaissance people that function at the interfaces of so many different occupations, and so it's hard to point to one particular topic, but explore a number of different things and a number of different resources and how they all interface and work together.

Wonderful, Chris. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and knowledge and the things that you've learned. I really enjoyed this discussion and wish you success in the work that you're doing. We look forward to having you back on the podcast soon.

Thank you so much.

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