Episode 105: Moving From Organic to Regenerative Management with Steven Cardoza

Hi friends, this is John and this is the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast. Welcome back. Here's the fun spot where we talk about all types of agronomic science and cultural management practices that can regenerate plant health and soil health and that can produce really quality food so that we can have a conversation about growing food as medicine. I've really been looking forward to this conversation. My guest for today is Stephen Cardoza, who we've had the privilege of working with the last couple of years in our work at advancing eco agriculture. And I got to meet on one of my recent trips out to California. Steven, thanks for being here. I've really been looking forward to having you share some of the things that you have experienced and that you've been working on. Tell us a little bit about your history and your journey, your pathway and what it is that you're doing today.

Hey John, thanks for having me. I just want to start by saying that your work, your company aea have been, and your. This podcast has been massively influential on myself, my family, my business, and has nearly reconstructed what we do here on a daily basis and has certainly influenced the, the company's viability going forward. So yeah, I just want to thank you for that. I'm a second generation grower. We farm organic raisin grapes just south of Fresno, California. I grow for a company you may have heard of called Newman Zone. So all of our raisins go in a Newman's Own organic box. Well, not all, but we, we provide those and we also grow for Sun Maid and one other packer. My dad transitioned to Organic in 1998. He did so solely because the pesticides that he was using was, were physically making him ill and he would be, he, he's never sick. Like my entire life, I've seen my dad sick maybe a handful of times and when there were certain products that he would apply and would be sick for weeks afterwards. So he decided before organic was cool to make the transition. He did so up until I took over the business in 2017 and that his transition to organic gave me a massive jump start on our path towards regenerative agriculture. And that's where we're at now. And with the work of AEA and the implementation of SAP analysis, we've completely changed our approach to nutrition management and soil health management and it's had a profound impact on, on our business and the health of our, of our farm.

I'm really curious about what changed for you. That's, that's quite a, that's an interesting history you know, when you think about fruit and vegetable growers being organic for long periods, like the organic space has been around for what is it now, 30 years, 40 years almost, I suppose. But when you think about large scale production of organic fruits and vegetables, it really was not that significantly that significant in scale historically. And so for you to describe that you made that transition back in 1998, that was, you were the pioneers in that space, I'm sure, for, for raising grape production. But you know, there is, within the organic certification process domain, there is this expectation that we are going to work on improving soil health and leaving our soil better for the next generation, however that might be defined. So I'm really curious how, what did that process of improving soil health look for you? And, and then what changed in the last couple of years? What are you doing differently now than you were a decade ago?

I would say the first thing that comes to mind that seemingly has the greatest degree of influence is tillage reduction. So organic producers in general tend to rely on tillage, especially for weed management. So that model is accelerated in raisins because for those that are not familiar, raisins are picked as fresh grapes and put directly onto the soil surface to dry in the sun for anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. Or in the case of 2023, I had trays out for a month in some places just because the weather was not cooperating. So because at the end of the growing season, our, our make or break like financial result with our, our year is going to be on drying the raisins. That's a huge influence. So because that's the case, growers of all type, even conventional growers that are utilizing conventional, very effective weed control methods, they still engage in very intensive tillage just to keep the, what's going to be the drying surface of the grapes into raisins immaculate. And the soil conditions out here are very sandy. So they create this barren, sterile, flat drying surface that is, it is required and for the most effective drying process. So our first significant shift in our management systems was we were already cover cropping. We switched from doing every other row to every single row. And we switched from disking and heavy tillage starting in the spring, through the entire summer and up to harvest to mowing. So now we're reducing, we're actually reducing the amount of passes, believe it or not, we're mowing less frequently than we were disking. So that's helpful. But also the inherent, you know, detriment to the soil that you experience when over tillage and in our area, the over, over tillage can exasperate other stressors in the vineyard too, in particular, spider mites. And I mean, there's just a cascading effect where if you're over tilling, it's going to have a detrimental influence on the whole of your operation. So that was our first big change. That's been the catalyst to all the other things that we've implemented since then.

And I think this is kind of the fundamental key question. There's all of the. We can talk about all the soil health improvements and things that you might have observed with those cover crops, but you described the operational imperative of getting the drying process to be very effective. And so how has this use of COVID crops influenced your ability to dry the raisins?

There's been zero influence. It's exactly the same. So we. Yeah.

Wait, what?

It's. It's exactly the same? Yeah, that's. It was. It was a very difficult, especially for my father to, to give me the, the power to, to make that decision, to not disc. The. The middles of the row so frequently. The nature of our soils and the fact that most of our stuff is on drip irrigation. So it's dry, hot, dusty centers to leave that with a cover or after the COVID crops die. Once it starts getting hot, we start having native plant species grow and they tend to have some robust root systems. And if you don't prepare the soil adequately before you put the paper trays down, those like the plant material, the roots, the little sticks poking up can puncture the trays. And then if you, when you go to pick them up, you're losing crop. If you get rained on, hopefully it doesn't happen. But if it does and your, your trays are not perfectly flat, then there's going to be more damage from the rain. So like I said, it's a make or break time frame for any raisin grower. So you tend to prioritize that throughout the year. It's on your top of your mind all year round. So to make that transition to mowing, mowing, mowing, and then tilling the soil right before harvest and being able to get it to be the perfect like subsurface for, for drying, it was a scary thing. But it's been absolutely seamless, which has been very gratifying and we've stretched it out so our whole operation is done that way. And you might want to know how we got to that point in the first place is the, the over tillage was leading us to have Significant pressure from spider mites. So I have some, some images, some drone photos of where I'm sitting now. I'm sitting on 150 acre block that we, that we farm, that my family's owned for Stephen.

Stephen, just for context, what, what is the scale of your overall operation?

So we're farming just under 400 acres now. We've expanded recently. We started our, our regenerative journey very small, 10 acres and then it expanded to 30 acres. And now like I said, it's full boat. We're doing everything the same way now. And yeah, I can get back to the spider mite thing if you'd like me to continue with how that went.

Yes, please.

That it was our biggest challenge. We had a year 2018 that this 150 acre block, 130 of the acres had near 80% canopy loss, like defoliation, dried up leaves in July because the infestation was so severe. We had growers ask us, oh what'd you guys spray on the vines to take your canopy down like that? You're pulling those vineyards out or are you doing it to aid in the drying process? What's going on? And the answer was no. We got pummeled by spider mites. And the most striking imagery of, of the, the benefits to the, the regenerative model was this 150 acre block had a 20 acre rectangle that was perfectly green still. And that was the first when I said we went from 10 acres to 30 acres. That 20 acre block was the first no till regeneratively managed block that we've done on this particular property. And that's where my dad threw his hands up and was like okay, you're, this is your, your go now. Yeah, everywhere. I'm not doing this ever again. This is your responsibility for now going on. And I'll take care of the banking stuff. That, that would be a very powerful.

Image to, to see that in the middle of a block. Do you have any, a theory of how the COVID crop inclusion led to a reduction in spider mite pressure?

I think it's just a reduced tillage. I think the COVID crops are helping with like regulating soil temperature and whatnot. And obviously, I mean most of the listeners are going to know having growing plants on as much of the soil surface for as long as you possibly can is going to have its inherent benefits with root exodus and whatnot and driving soil organic matter. But I think a lot of the spider mite pressure you see in my area is self inflicted by what I was mentioning Prior growers, emphasis on. Okay, I gotta make sure my drying surface is going to be perfect come harvest. So I'm going to keep disc and keep disc and keep discing. Every, every time you pass with a disc, when it's 110 degrees outside and you dust out that vine, you're increasing the abiotic pressures to it. So you're making the vine more susceptible to, to the, to the spider mites.

And of course, that, that dust covering in the heat is. Yeah. I mean, what is it that spider mites love? They love heat, they love dust, and they love plants that have high ammonium levels. So seems like a perfect environment. So I want to make sure that, that I'm understanding the, the drying process. Well, the changes that you made. And just to reiterate if I understood correctly, what you're doing today is that you are growing cover crops until they get dormant, and then you have native species that grow and then you are still making a tillage pass just before drying so that you still have that good soil surface. Is that right?

Correct. Yeah. We're doing tillage just prior to harvest, and we do tillage like we're recording this in January. We do tillage like late December in order to plant our cover crops and to incorporate all of our, our prunings that we've shredded up in the off season. And so once we put cover crops, seed in the ground does not get disturbed until we're doing harvest prep, which is generally mid to late August. So eight months or so about tillage.

Awesome. Yep. So with, with these changes of reduced tillage that you described, the changes in, in spider mite pressure, but particularly with the inclusion of COVID crops, what, what have you observed regarding improvements to soil health and plant health? How, how has your operation continued to evolve in other ways that.

That year 2018, where we had the spider mite outbreak, we were doing that. That was our beginning of our work with SAP analysis at scale. And I learned through this process that there's a very direct correlation between ammonium levels, like you said, and mite pressure. So the biggest influence with regard to these, these changes is we can see, like, we can measure that there's a dramatic reduction in the presence of ammonium in the places where we're using correct nutritional applications. Of course. But I think that there is some relationship between how we're managing soil health and how the results of our SAP tests.

Yeah. So let's talk about nutrition management a little bit. And this is another aspect. I'm really fascinated by this conversation Stephen because I don't often get the chance to have conversations with growers who've been organically certified for that long who then shifted and started making very intensive nutrition, started using very intensive nutrition management. Usually those steps happen in the opposite sequence. There's nutrition management first and then organic certification second. And so one, to ask the question like how, how did your nutrition management change from when you were organically certified to when you started using plant SAP analysis in 2018? What has that evolution been like?

Something that I took note of when I, when I started working, when I quit my job and came out here full time working at the farm, was that the way we were approaching nutrition was like trying to shoot in the dark or throw something against the wall and hope it sticks. And there's not a real strong understanding of what you're applying and why. And that's kind of the approach that we had with our PCAs and the way that, you know, my father was educated. I just saw there was some significant opportunity to try to refine the process. And I, I see it still to this day with the stores that have conversations with, a lot of times they just, they read an article or they have a PCA or cca, tell them, hey, it looks like you might be deficient in xyz. Or they do their traditional like pounds on, pounds off of NPKs. And that's how they're writing their, their recommendations for the entire growing season. In January. It just seemed very, didn't make a lot of sense to me. So that's when I started trying to research maybe there's alternative ways, maybe there's more effective, efficient ways of, of handling plant nutrition. And that's where I came across SAP analysis and your company and started listening to the podcast and then following all the, you know, the main voices in the regenerative agriculture movement. And we started measuring with SAP very frequently and get a better understanding of what our plants are needing, when and, and why, and how we can serve them better. And that, that's been the steady road from what we're doing before to what we're doing now.

What, what you haven't described, what I find interesting is how have did your applications shift at all? Like, I think there is this, this preconceived idea or this concept that in many cases organic growers, particularly historically in 98 and, and for a decade or two thereafter, are primarily applying compost to the soil and they're applying liquid fish and humic acids and seaweed. And that is about the extent of it. At Least I know that's how a few of my mentors used to razz me that organic, organic farming was fish, etc. And so how, what were your historical practices with soil amendments and how has that shifted?

We were using compost prior just what was cheap, you know, there wasn't like a lot of thought into what we were choosing, what type of compost and the metrics behind that compost. We also were not applying micronutrients at all. Like occasionally my dad would get a read an article, hey maybe we should put a little boron on or something like that. I read this article. So that's where the decision making was coming from. It wasn't where how it is now where we're, we're testing, testing, testing, making a very, getting a very clear picture of what the plant's doing, what the plant needs. And it's shifted our applications to a consortium of strange things that we would have never thought or we didn't even know existed prior or.

I get a bang out of that. I get a bang out of that phrase. A consortium of strange things.

Yeah, it's what it is. I mean especially when we have field days and I have growers that come and hang out from time to time and, and ask questions or see what, what we're doing and they see some of the jugs that we have in the barn and some of them are what the heck is Molly Bedinan? Like I don't even know what molybdenum is. You know, like there's, I find very little attention paid to some of the most critical points of influence in the nutritional aspect of the plant that now we're paying extremely close attention to and that it's completely shifted the way things work. So like spider mite pressure, I've not seen at all zero since 2018. Since we had absolutely devastating catastrophic result from spider mite pressure to now all the way through 2023. I've maybe seen one spot that had an irrigation issue have a flare up. It's really a non issue at all. It doesn't even enter my mind anymore. And I, I attribute that to the, our nutrition management.

So what has the nutrition management shift? But you've described your process of using SAP analysis and applying these specially nutritional products. But in terms of practical application, have there been significantly greater labor costs? How frequently and are you putting on these nutrients in the season as foliar applications in the irrigation system? How frequently? What does the overall system look like for you?

So definitely not increase our labor cost as crazy as that might sound as a whole, because we've shifted so many things. Like I was saying prior, the tillage has changed. So hours that we would have spent in diesel and whatnot doing that, we're now opened ourselves up to have a greater potential to allocate those dollars towards nutrition and maybe an extra foliar spray or 2. We are applying all of our nutrition foliarly. There's a couple reasons why I personally feel that it is a very effective, efficient way of applying and it's, it's more conducive with how we're using SAP and trying to be making timely applications because we're organic. You have less tools in your toolbox, let's say. So fertigating some of the materials that you would that are organic certified can be challenging. And I don't have great means to try and clear lines, for instance, after we're doing a fertigation application. So I try to just keep water through the drip and make foliar applications through the growing season. It's been very successful. So I think we're going to keep running, running with that system approach. But no, no increased labor costs at all for the nutrition.

And do you think that's largely just a result of, of displacing driving tractors with tillage or are there other places that that has been coming from as well? Are there other efficiencies that you've gained in other areas?

Well, we are not using any like traditional pesticides anymore. So we've of things that we were budgeting for like we're gonna have to spray some stylet oil or some type of insecticide that's gone. It's now zero. So we can shift those dollars to nutrition management, which is going to give us a greater degree of resistance against those pest pressures. So we're moving in the direction of we're eliminating budget line items entirely. So we end up having usually a dollar for dollar savings with the approach that we're taking now versus having to spend, you know, a few hundred dollars an acre on a pesticide approach that's doing nothing beneficial for the planet. Just out there trying to kill bugs. Yep.

Let's talk a little bit about your cover crops. You know, I'm. As I learn more about COVID crops and what they can contribute to our soils, I'm just, I'm becoming increasingly intrigued and impressed by the possibilities of having perennial cover crops in an ecosystem. And I'm of the persuasion that in some ways they. Well, let me say it this way. Many perennial species are able to contribute things that most annual species of COVID crops are not able to contribute. But also obviously we have to work within the confines and the context of the farming operations capabilities. So I'm curious, what are the COVID crop species that you have been using and how do you envision that evolving in the future?

Okay, so my cover crop seed blend shifts year to year depending on what my objectives are. And it's block to block too, depending on the context. Right. So some another like co benefit in my context with COVID crops that gets overlooked, I feel generally is habitat for beneficial insects. So I try to grow things that are going to be a great habitat for beneficials that they, you know, do all of my pesticide work for me as well. In some blocks I, I'm doing more nitrogen fixers and others I'm doing things that are creating a greater biomass because I utilize a piece of equipment that actually I heard on your podcast many, many years ago from grower Mike Omega mow and blow Mower. So I've adopted that practice in my systems, particularly in young, young vineyards that I just planted. I'll, I'll plant something that's going to have a greater biomass and it's going to have a greater crop residue. So when I do the mow and blow that the residues last longer than say like a heavy nitrogen fixer blend that's gonna, you know, break down a lot faster. So it's just, it's context specific. Some places where I might have a little bit of compaction, I'm putting daikon radish. So I try to just like the approach with SAP, tailor your recipe for your, your needs and your goals. I try to do the same as best I can with the COVID crop species. So the blends range from grasses to brassicas to nitrogen fixers. The whole slew of things really.

As you've been working with these cover crops, how I mean, you've commented on the improvements in plant health and the spider mite resistance, but what improvements have you observed in soil health? How has that changed?

We've had very slight increases in soil organic matter. I think that the context is key here in that in my area, like traditional ground will have less than half a percent of soil organic matter is very regular. Whenever I rent a new block or buy a new block and we do a soil analysis, it's almost always below half a percent. So we've gotten some places as high as 2%, which is fantastic for me. I know a lot of listeners are like, what the heck? That's so Low still. But California soils, that can be challenging to try to drive soil organic matter. So we've seen that I use soil moisture probes when I irrigate. And I can measure that when the plant is not in very high demand for water, that moisture will stay higher in the soil profile longer than it did when I first installed the probes, like 2017, 2018. So we've seen the, the top 4 to 8 inches have a greater degree of water holding capacity. Those are the, those are the, probably the most things that I can back up with.

I don't, I don't think it's a surprise at all that your organic matter is at 2%. In fact, I'm impressed that you took it from a half a percent to 2% in such a short period of time, because for people who are missing contacts, not only are there very sandy soils, but they're also exposed to California sun all year long. And so carbon cycles very rapidly through these soils. The reality is we shouldn't be thinking about, and I've made this point in many presentations, but the healthiest, the most productive soils and the healthiest soils are not soils that sequester the large amounts of carbon. They are soils that cycle the largest amounts of carbon. And so it's not just purely about carbon storage, it's also about carbon cycling. And in the environment that you're in, carbon is going to cycle very rapidly. It's going to flow through that soil system very rapidly. And the key is just to have plants there that can capture it when it's raining, released back as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So I try to keep growing plants covering as much of the soil surface for as long as possible when I can. And I've even where I have flood irrigation, I've even custom built a couple pieces of equipment that allow me to create a furrow so I can flood and not disturb the COVID crop in the middle, so I can irrigate my vines and my cover crop simultaneously and try to drive that carbon cycling system the best way I possibly can.

Yeah. I think of all the pieces that you've described, your improvement, and again, this is context specific knowledge, but when you say that you have these moisture probes and all of a sudden your, your soils at 4 to 8 inches are holding water longer, and that if I understood, if I'm interpreting correctly what you described, that you are also moving water from deeper into the soil profile back up into that surface layer more effectively. Is that, is that a correct interpretation.

Of what you're describing, I presume that that's the case. It's hard to measure that, unfortunately. It seems like it would be easy with the. The sensitivity of the probes, but it's hard to know that that is happening with certainty. But I suspect that that's occurring as well.

Well, still, you're not adding more from irrigation, I'm assuming, so you're able to see that that water is showing up from somewhere. And so, Stephen, that is of all the things that occasionally when I'm interviewing people, they say these amazing things that they just really grab your attention. And what you just said is one of those things. And I want to make sure that people really grasp it in the regenerative agriculture space, the ecological agriculture space. And speaking about soil health, there's been all of this conversation for a decade, deservedly about water infiltration rates and that soils that have really good aggregation and good aggregate stability at depth can infiltrate large quantities of water very quickly. Well, in Stevens soil, with sandy soil, water infiltration is bordering on a none issue. It's going to go down further fast. But there's this other word that we've largely lost sight of, and that's called water percolation. So percolation is the ability of a soil to move water both downwards and upwards. That soil has the ability then move water back up into the soil profile. And this is also a function of soil aggregation, but it is something that isn't measured and isn't given enough consideration, in my opinion, because often we have soils that can infiltrate water really well, but they actually don't percolate water very well because of compaction issues or other types of issues that are going on the soil profile. And what makes this even more amazing, Stephen, is that you're demonstrating the ability to percolate water in sandy soil. Like that's a big deal. That's a really big deal.

Yeah. I think that our soils have greater potential to achieve that if they're managed in a way that's, you know, true to the soil health principles and that it's. It's difficult to do with the type of crops you grow out here and in the context that we have, and traditional management practices that are just widespread, that are just. Those are the norm that everybody does. And I think some of that contributes to the fallacy that our. Our soils are incapable of that out here.

Yeah, a fallacy for sure. As. As you've just demonstrated, We've not really talked about your crop performance other than the fact that you're not applying any organic pesticides anymore. And you're just observing general improved plant health, particularly in regards to spider mites. But what has your crop performance been like, what has the historical trend been like from a yield and overall plant health perspective?

Prior to implementing regenerative practices and utilizing the SAP analysis and doing the foliar sprays and using the AEA products that we're using, we'd have alternate bearing. Like we'd have a very good year and then a very, very bad year. And it was consistent then back to a good year. It was for a decade we were experiencing that. So we've seen that, that those ups and downs plateau and now they're in a steady upward trajectory. So over the last few years, last year, 2023, this past growing season, we had our, our biggest crop. And 2022, we had what would be considered slightly below what would be a good yield on our up years prior to this. And then 2021 was our previous record for biggest crop. So the up and down has shrunk significantly. We're seeing a lot more stable yields. And the other interesting piece of that is that we've seen quality go up at the same time, which traditionally in raisins especially is mutually exclusive. As your yields go up, your quality always goes down. So we've seen yields go up, quality go up, which is shocking. And our packers love it.

What defines quality in a raising grade?

So they grade several different things. Moisture is first one, which, that's just the drying process. And then they have A, it's called maturity or in the industry we call it like BNB or B and better grade. And that is the meatiness of the raisin. So a poor quality raisin is going to be like a grape skin that's flat, it's going to be devoid of sugar. It's not going to have like that meaty texture that you're looking for when you bite into a raisin, you can also see the color. So a good grower, or any experienced grower, as you're driving around looking at your fields or even your neighbors fields, you can see the color as they're drying. If it's more of like a reddish color, it's going to be a lower quality raisin. If it's purple or even starts looking kind of blue, that's going to be a spectacular quality raisin. So we're seeing that. And then obviously every load that we send in gets graded. And for like substandard, which is very small raisins, we have almost none of that. And then our, our B grades, which you get the, the top, you get no deductions once you hit 50 in a traditional year. 2023, however, was such a devastating year across the entire industry for raisins that they voted to actually lower the standard for deductions. So we went from having a 50B grade was the minimum to not have a deduction to now it's 35B grade. Our stuff.

Wow.

I mean, it ranges from, from 50 to close to 90. So, yeah, it's really shocking. Yeah, that, that's, that's been very interesting. Speaking of things that are, that are shocking, the, the most shocking thing I think that I didn't touch on, that I should have earlier was there's a, you know, vine mealybug, right? John, you've heard of vine mealybug. It's like the kiss of death in all vineyard systems. So wine grapes, table grapes, raising grapes, doesn't matter once you get a severe infestation of via mealy bug. Traditionally the. There is some harsh chemistries people will use to try and eradicate it, but often it's pull the vine out, find the vines that are harboring the, the pest and rip them out. We, as we've been trying to expand the business and get more acreage, we've taken on a few vineyards that were managed like a bare bones minimum approach. One one of which had citrus in the middle of the vineyard, which is a host for, for vine mealybug. And I have drone images of some of these fields before we pull the citrus out that there's like a ring around the citrus of black vines. And that is a telltale sign that you have a very significant vine mealybug problem. There were, there were sections of some of these vineyards that were so bad that we couldn't even pick them. We picked them the first year and every tray, like I said, they're sitting out in the sun. Usually it's bright green or yellow. Clean grapes. That's all you see. These infested vines with vine mealybug were black and they had this sticky, nasty honeydew over them. They were, it was garbage. We couldn't do anything with it. So we even skipped sections of those vineyard in year two. Now we're in year six and those same rows, you'll never know that there was vine mealy bug. And I did nothing consciously to try and eradicate it. It was just a side effect of doing SAP analysis and managing nutrition properly and irrigating adequately the COVID crops and whatnot. I don't Know, I can't attribute it to one thing or another. I think it's just the combination of all these practices have given the line the ability to eradicate the vitamin E blood themselves. And it's just the most shocking thing that I never anticipated. I. I wish people would study and try to understand it better than I do, because I. I just want to know what happened because it's. It's a shocking occurrence, to say the least.

Wow.

Yeah, that.

That is an incredible story, Stephen. It's so. It's such a common story, though. It's an incredible story. This is the first time that I've heard this about vine mealybug. This is the first time I've heard your story, but yet it's a common story for other plant species and other diseases. Like, you probably remember Mike Omeg's story on bacterial canker and cherries. And you know what I find intriguing is that there are. It seems that for almost every crop, most crops, particularly the perennial crops, like the trees and the vines and so forth, almost every crop has one of these incurable diseases, the diseases for which there are no effective pesticide treatments. And I have heard the phrase, if you can solve X problem, you'll be a millionaire. Like, if I've heard that once, I must have heard it at least 50 times. And I'm not exaggerating. And we have a perfect track record of being successful on every one of those 50 plus, quote unquote incurable diseases. But there is no silver bullet. Just like it's your experience 50 times over, as it was with Mike omega and bacterial canker and Pierce's disease and crown gall and greening. The list goes on and on. It's like when you manage nutrition, right? They disappear. What did we do? Like, we can't point to X product. We can't say it was molybdenum or it was cobalt. It was everything. We improved the nutrition for everything, and it just. They ceased to be a problem. It's so much fun when that happens.

Yeah. No, it reminds me, the first time I ever heard you speak and met you was many years ago. I got a phone call from person that I deeply respect and is a big mentor of mine, Vernon Peterson. He calls me, I'm on a tractor. He could hear that I'm on a tractor. When I picked up, he said, hey, Steve, I hear you're on a tractor. I said, yeah, what's going on, Vernon? He said, whatever you're doing today is not nearly as important as what you're going to be doing this afternoon, which is have lunch at my house. I said, okay. He said, drop what you're doing. Come over here right now. I said, sure. I had no idea what I was walking into, but I parked the tractor, I got in my truck, I drove down to Mr. Peterson's place, and there was Mr. John Kemp talking to everybody. And the reason that Vernon invited us all is because he experienced something very similar with one of his orchards. I think, I believe it was peaches that had. I don't know if it's bacterial canker or had some disease to where he was planning on pushing the whole orchard out. And he gave aea, hey, if you can fix this, then I'll do all you have, all my business, essentially. And that's essentially what happened. Now, that's one of his highest performing block of, like I said, peaches. I believe that's what started me down this rabbit hole and. And gotten me to the point where I'm at now. And I'm very grateful for Vernon for that phone call that day.

Wow, that's a good. That's the first time I heard that story. Steve, thank you for sharing that.

Yeah, yeah.

Vernon is one of these amazing mentors. What was it that I called him when I interviewed him on the podcast? This encourager or inspirational? He's very good at drawing the best out of people. Yeah. So let's come back to the story that you were telling us about quality and yield. So you described that you've had these quality improvements, and by the way, 50 to 90% meeting the B threshold in a year when others were struggling to meet 30 plus or 35 plus, whatever the number was. That's a pretty remarkable story.

So.

And you experienced this in 23, which was also your record yield. And as you pointed out, getting yield, high yields and quality is usually considered to be mutually exclusive. So can you give us some context for what the yield improvements have been like over the course of the last half a dozen years or since? As you've been smoothing out the alternate year bearing, are your peak years similar to what they were five years ago? Are they 50% higher, 70% higher? Like what? Give us some context for what that looks like in parallel with your quality improvements.

I would say the peak years are probably 10 to 30% increase, and the. But the bad years are double what we were getting in a bad year. So it's really, like, smoothed out our variable income. I do. I'm very active in pursuing grant applications, so I'm very familiar with my. My tax forms. I'm sending them to people all the time. So when I look back at what our gross income was then to now and year over year, it's a pretty significant shift. And our down years are nowhere near as low as they were before and our good years are even better. So it's promising.

So when you think about, you started describing your experience with the Vine Mealybug, you describe that as a, as a shocking experience. What, what other memorable moments really stand.

Out for you with regenerative practices?

Just your overall transition.

Yeah.

What, what really caught your attention?

It's hard to, to single out anyone besides the, the mealybug. That was the, the most shocking thing that I've. That I've seen. Because it's not supposed to happen. Right. Every expert will tell you that, that once you have an infestation to the degree that we did that, you just need to pull the vines out. That's probably the most shocking thing that I've seen. I'd say my dad would probably answer that question with the quality. He's been growing raisins since before I, I'm 35, before I was alive. So he has tons of experience and he's a leader in the, the industry and he's an old school dad. You know, you don't get a lot of wow, that's really impressive. But the quality that seems to be point of peaked his interest. It's striking to see the, the shift in what we're at to where we're at now in such a short period of time with the same exact binds that are in the ground. That's probably one of the more startling things. But also just the, the transition through changing these practices has been pretty smooth. I think that would, I would say that that is shocking. Right. I think the more I listen to like guests of yours or people that have, you know, gone through circumstances in their operation where they felt the need or had the desire to do these sweeping changes. They usually met with tremendous challenges. And I think I'm super lucky to have people like yourself to guide me, to keep me from stepping in, you know, the, the holes and causing the issues. But I think one of the shocking things is how smooth the transition has been from what we're doing before to what we're doing now and not experiencing anything of, you know, like any catastrophic outcomes or some negative side effect, we see positive side effects. Like the mealybug thing. I had never in, I never crossed my mind that that was ever going to even be a potential. It's just Circumstantial. It just happened. We just, you know, fell. Fell into it. So I say that was probably the, the most surprising thing.

What are the factors that you feel contributed to that smooth transition? What. What allowed that, what allowed you to experience that? What. What advice would you have for listeners on how they might enable a smooth transition as well?

Guidance from others. I think one of the advantages to, from, from my perspective, I see as an advantage is that I don't. I came into this so ignorant, essentially. I didn't know and I was comfortable not knowing. And so I didn't have like, like my ego stopping me from. From doing something or from trying to be stubborn about my approach. Just seeking the input from others. Successes and failures, driving around and seeing what people are doing, that was helpful. But I think there's so much information available if you take the time to listen. And I, I feel like it's a, a common position to take. Maybe it's just in my area, maybe it's everywhere where people tend to dismiss advice and input from growers in different areas or different crop types, and they're like, oh, that works for them. It's not going to work here. It's kind of like a thought process. And I firmly believe that you can learn so much from people on totally in totally different contexts, different crop types, different soil types, different parts of the world, that there's always something that you can kind of glean off of their experiences. And I think that being mindful of that and my approach and considering what people have failed and succeeded with has helped, you know, guide me down a path that's allowed the transition to be pretty smooth.

When you think about your memorable moments, you described that you also have people stopping by to look at what you're doing. I know you've had field days on your operation. What are the pieces that other people have been intrigued by? What has really caught their attention?

How many weeds are in my field? And my. My tray count is still spectacular. My yields are obviously good. That's one thing that's interesting about, about raisins is there's no BSing at the coffee shop kind of thing. You know, you put your crop on the ground for all to see so everyone can drive by and look at what we call it a trailer. Like how, how heavy is the tray? How many trays are there per row? And you can eyeball what their rough yields are per acre. A good grower can absolutely tell you, oh, that guy got a ton and a half. Like, I got two tons. Think I got Three tons, you could see it. So that tends to, to get people asking questions from time to time.

Let me ask you this. Do, do you actually, you mentioned that you have native species coming up. So are you being generous and calling the plants native species that other people would call weeds or.

Correct. Calling them, give them a nicer name? Yeah, because I. Obviously you can. There can be detrimental impacts from weeds. Like in a young vineyard, I have to keep it clean. Like I'm spending a, a lot of money hand weeding in some cases because it's required on a young vineyard. But once the vine is established, the, the weeds have a very insignificant role in, in your crop health and your vine health. And I actually believe in some cases they can be beneficial if you, if you manage them in a way that it's not going to give you any logistical challenges. I don't think that they have anywhere near the negative impact that farmers attribute to them.

Well, particularly in your environment, you're growing a crop that has a deep root system and that has the ability to access water down deep. And I think so many cases people are concerned about water competition and nutrient competition. And yeah, I completely agree with you that it can be an issue, but it's not nearly an issue to the degree that people expect in many cases. And we're missing out on a lot of the potential synergies that might occur with some of those plant species as well. That's a whole other conversation as we were describing, as you were describing the transition that you went through and your use of foliar sprays. Now it is interesting because I find that many of the growers that we work with at AEA are actually opting the higher value crops are opting for irrigation applications rather than for foliar applications from a labor management perspective. So I'd love to chat a bit more about the foliar applications. What are the types of products that you're applying and what is your application frequency and why do you prefer foliars over irrigation?

I would say though, there's really only three products that are in every single tank. So that would be either it's axle or like we use the, the C stem and the sea shield. And then iron is always required in my operation, always. And manganese. Those are, those are really the only products that are in every tank mix. Beyond that, I do testing like on a block by block with a block by block like methodology. So I'm usually doing six or so at a time. Six SAP analysis. I'll do it every two weeks and Then we'll tailor it based off of what your, your people at AEA are recommending. Plus you know, my own little, my own little tweak, my own little opinion sometimes or we'll split it recommendation sometimes into, into two applications. Even though it is a little bit more labor intensive just so I can measure. I, I'm all about, I bought in whole hog with your approach of test. Don't guess so. Testing, testing, testing. I've lost all reservations about having some astronomical SAP analysis built into the year. It's not a problem to me anymore. I'm good with it. Some people, you know, especially when the beginning of their journey, they're like what you're paying this much for testing? Like, yeah, absolutely. Because I saw how ineffective the, the other approach is. Like when growers just, you know this, this neighbor is using this stuff and they said it's good. So I'm gonna apply and spend, you know, a five digit sum of money on that. I don't, that doesn't translate to my operation and it's more in line with my own approach. Just, it's not exclusive to agriculture in general. My general life approach is test like measure twice, cut once, you know, and, and that's where I'm going with, with AEA products and has shifted, you know, my perspective, especially on the testing piece.

What have you learned with the SAP analysis about product performance from the foliar applications? You mentioned that you're sometimes doing split applications, which is interesting because usually we get growers requesting to go in the opposite direction and doing fewer applications rather than more. So what's been the rationale behind that?

Well, it depends on the type of year or the time of year. Excuse me, Depends on time of year of what's going to be the important, the priority. But because of our experiences in the past, the might pressure, even though we've not had it for so long, that's still in the forefront of my mind. It's kind of like a point of pride that I have especially with my, my employees and my, and my family that I want to make it so we never have that again. So I'm focusing on getting ammonium to cycle out of the, the SAP analysis. So that's, that's a big metric that we can use to see if the, the, the rec that was written in the application that we made is advancing us down that path and being able to, to accomplish that within the plant. Just, just the uptake. You can see the uptake, right? You can see the new leaf and the old leaf. So after you do an application, you take a SAP analysis, you know, a week later you can see, okay, that got into the plant is very telling. And you know, I use other companies products too, so I can measure how their stuff is performing as well and, and reinforce my, my preferential treatment of AEA products. So.

Hey, say that, say that again.

For the people in the back.

That's exactly what I want to hear.

Yeah, you might like that one. So, yeah, we can compare, you know, and then, I mean, at the end of the day, just like any grow, we're trying to cut costs, right? So if I can split an application and see, okay, I'm accomplishing what I need to accomplish based on this time of year. Because you're trying to balance so many different, different things and occasionally the thing you're trying to balance is your budget, right? So can I pay a little bit more labor but save on material cost? Or maybe I could push a spray back a week or two by splitting an application. There's a few different thought processes that go into it, but I also kind of want to test my limits, like.