This YouTube episode (Episode 100 of the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast) is a recorded interview in which guest/interviewer James Johnson flips roles to interview host John Kempf. John recounts his background growing up on a family fruit-and-vegetable farm in northeast Ohio (snow-belt south of Lake Erie), the production challenges in the early 2000s (three consecutive poor years culminating in 2004), and a pivotal field comparison in 2004 where soil with prior pesticide exposure showed ~80% powdery mildew while adjacent, previously dairy-rotated soil showed none. He describes how that experience motivated study of plant immune systems, soil biology, and the founding of Advancing Eco Agriculture in 2006. The episode also notes a roughly one-year sabbatical and that the recording was made on January 18, 2024.
Questions this video answers
January 18, 2024
100
2006
1994
Approximately 80% of leaves
Chapters
Hi, friends, this is John. Welcome back to the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast. Today we're flipping the script. I have a very good friend who's been here on the podcast before, James Johnson, who's a cotton grower. And, well, I shouldn't call him a cotton grower because he grows a number of other crops in New Mexico. James shared some of his story when I had him here, and he and I have developed a close friendship over the years. And this episode is our 100th episode of the podcast. And I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to all of my listeners because even though. Because of some family stuff, I took a sabbatical from the podcast for about a year, and we've come back now and we're actually going to be increasing the frequency going forward. But in spite of, when you think about it, this is. I've been doing this now for almost three years, or maybe a bit longer than three years, and this is only episode 100. And yet, according to the statistics that we can see, we're one of the most popular Regenerative Agriculture podcast episode and one of the most popular podcasts in all of agriculture. And so that's a big thank you to all of our listeners and a big thank you to all the guests who've helped make that a reality. So for this episode, episode 100, we're flipping things around. Rather than me interviewing someone else, James has volunteered to be or is asked to be here to interview me and get my perspectives on some of the things that. Where we've come from, where we're going, and what we see for the future. So thank you, James, for, For being here and asking to lead this. I'm looking forward to this discussion.
Thanks, John. Yeah, it's hard to believe that it was 25 episodes ago. I was a guest on your podcast for episode 75. I think the idea for this, this podcast actually happened about a year, year and a half ago. I had a conversation how I had listened to every one of your podcasts, many of them multiple times, and I had actually started listening to other podcasts where they interviewed you and how much I appreciated your story. And I. I remember, I think it was over a year ago. We might have been at the Regen Nexus conference. Whenever we were talking about you, you actually brought up the possibility of. Of me interviewing you for a podcast. So I'm delighted to be here. I do count you as one of my best friends. It's incredible the things that we can talk about, and I really look forward to this. So I'm going to kick it off by asking you the question that you're always asked on other podcasts a little bit about yourself and your history.
Yeah, I think many of the listeners. Well, actually, I shouldn't assume that many of the listeners of the podcast know my story because it's a story, you know, you repeat it a thousand and one times and you start thinking that everyone knows it and you forget that. Many people may not be familiar with the history, but I grew up on a family fruit and vegetable farm here in northeast Ohio in the snow belt south of Lake Erie. The climate has changed and is continuing to change. But two decades ago when we were growing, doing intense vegetable production, it was the second cloudiest spot in the continental 48, second only to Seattle. We had, I forget now it's like 280 days of cloud cover a year, some ridiculous amounts and 40 inches of rainfall, 90 inches of snow of that coming as snowfall during the winter months. So a fairly humid, wet environment that was a petri dish for propagating diseases. And we used pesticides very intensely. My father started growing vegetables commercially in 1994, and we did that while my brothers were still doing that on the farm until just recently. And we had some major challenges the early 2000s, 2000, 2003 and 2004. We had three consecutive years in which we lost the majority of the crops that we were growing to a number of different diseases and insects that we were not successful in managing with pesticides. And I still remember the third year of that three year period in 2004, we had this cantaloupe field. Half of it was planted on soil that we had farmed for the past decade that had vegetables every year, cover crops every winter through the winter months, and intense pesticide applications all the time. Half the field we had started renting from a neighboring farm that was the first year in vegetable production previously been in a dairy farm rotation. And so it hadn't had the historical pesticide exposure that half of the field we switched the road direction 90 degrees across the former field border. And when the first cantaloupe started ripening, the soil with the previous pesticide exposure had 80% of the leaves infected with powdery mildew. And the soil without the pesticide exposure, you couldn't find a single speck of powdery mildew in that entire section of the field. And I suppose that's what you call a light bulb moment is I really wanted to know what the differences are between those two fields. And that's really the story that then led to a lot of studying and research, connecting with many exceptional mentors and learning a lot about plant immune systems and soil biology and plant pathology, and learning that the conversation had always been framed that the solution for pests is pesticides. And there was never any conversation with any significant conversation about prevention, with cultural management and with nutrition management. And so I had my eyes opened to a very different world of what the possibilities were. And that then led to the founding of Advancing eco Agriculture in 2006 as a consulting company. And oh, my goodness, has it ever been a wild ride since then?
Yeah, it has. And you know that story. I remember the first time that I heard you in person tell that story. That story resonated with me because we. We had seen on our farm here in the desert southwest of powdery mildew attack and watermelon. And the first year we grew watermelon, it was easy, and we had no powdery mildew. But the more we learned and the more we used, the worse it got. And so that really resonated with me.
