Episode 130: A New Direction in Florida Citrus with Benny McLean

Hi friends, this is John. Welcome to the Regenerative Agriculture podcast. Today I'm here with a long standing friend of mine, Benny McLean from Uncle Matt's Organic Citrus in Florida. And I wanted to have a conversation with Benny around the history of how he has seen the citrus industry evolve because he has the benefit of having been very present in a local place for a very long period of time. So Benny, thank you for being willing to be here, for being willing to share your story. And I still remember a story that you shared with me a number of years ago about the first applications of Roundup and how you saw things occurring there on your citrus crops, the citrus crops that you were helping to manage at the time. And now we live in this moment where at this moment the citrus industry in Florida is less than 10% of what it was as little as 10 or 15 years ago. I'd love to just get your perspective on where have we come from? Where are we going? How did we get here?

Well, I appreciate the opportunity, John, to chat with you, and I have no problem talking about the history of citrus in Florida. Obviously. I grew up in it and I'm the oldest of five boys and we're all in the citrus business with the exception of one brother. He, he was a coach over in Merritt island for, he just retired here last year. But having grown up with my dad, who was an expert in the citrus business, he graduated from UF in 1939 with a degree in ag. And he actually set up the citrus class at Florida Southern College in Lakeland and taught there for a couple of years in the early 50s, like 51, 52, something like that. I don't remember exactly. But anyway, so he, he was well respected in the citrus industry. And the opportunity for me to grow up riding with my dad in the citrus grove, where I had two younger sisters before the next brother. So, so I got all of the opportunity to ride my dad and obviously every day was something he would point out about the trees, the groves, irrigation, you know, fertilizer, blah, blah, blah. So I'll fast forward to when glyphosate was first introduced. And I had a caretaking company here in, in Claremont. So we did a lot of contract herbicide. And herbicide was not popular at that time that most, most of the groves up here in Lake county, which there was about 300,000 acres of Bering citrus right up here in central Florida. Once it became popular, we did contract herbicide. Anyway, my dad called me up one morning, he said, hey, didn't y' all just put out some. We didn't call it glyphosate, we called it roundup. Then y' all put out some roundup up in a couple of blocks up there in the Minneola hill. And I said yeah dad, we did. He said how long have they been out? I said oh, about 30 days. He said let's ride up there and take a look at him. So we go up there and he's riding with me and we go into the first. It was about a 20 year old grapefruit grove set 30 by 30, which is, that was normal back then, 48 trees to an acre. And we're easing along down one of the middles and he says to me, he says okay, tell me what you see. And I said dead, man, look, all the weeds are dead. This is awesome. It killed the lantana, killed the guinea grass, everything dead. He said that's what you see? I said yeah, what do you see? He said what about those 6, 7, 8 grapefruit laying on the ground? This was like in September, okay, so you know the fruits, grapefruit have got decent size. They're not ready to harvest yet. And I said oh dad, don't. That doesn't, that's nothing. He said what do you mean that's nothing? I said well, you know, we got a big boom on the tractor that goes under the tree and applies the herbicide. And I said more than likely the boom is what's knocking the fruit off because it's hanging down low on the limbs. And my dad said, you really think so? I said yeah. He said don't you have another block right up here that's young grapefruit that you treated? I said yes sir. He said let's ride up there and look at that. So we ease on down the road going there and these are about, if I remember right, John, they were about seven or eight year old trees. Anyway, we're easing along. He said what do you see there? I said man, dad, look at the weed control. Because you know, younger trees, you get a lot more sun on the ground and weeds are really rampant. And I said man, look at that, what it's killed. He said, you see any grapefruit on the ground? I said yeah, matter of fact, what do you see on your side? Well, two or three grapefruit per tree laying on the ground. He said, huh, Boom. There's no fruit hanging down for the boom to hit because this is a young tree. So how do you explain that? I said dad, I don't know. He said, I'm going to tell you, he said, we have been lied to about glyphosate. He said, this chemical is absorbed through the trunk, it's absorbed through the leaves, it's absorbed through the roots. And he said, you watch, it's going to be a major disaster. And this whole citrus industry of what it's going to create now, this was 1973, John. Wow, 1973, when it first came out and was released here and in for citrus, you know, in Florida. And what little bit of citrus is left in the state right now, we still have major fruit drop, but all of, not all, but the majority of the fruit drop is blamed on the disease, what we call greening, which that's true, it does create a fruit drop, but we have a few organic groves left in the state, and we do not have near the fruit drop, as our neighbors do, that are conventional and they use glyphosate and we don't.

So I'd like to understand more of the story of how did citrus used to be farmed before the use of herbicides? And that's not even perhaps quite the right framing, but how did citrus. How was citrus farmed in the 60s and 70s compared to today? And what were the major differences? Because I'm of the persuasion that the prevalence of greening is in part a reflection of the modern growing practices in the environment that we find ourselves in that is very different from what it was 60 or 70 years ago. And so I'd like to understand what does before the use of herbicides, how was vegetation managed and how were. How was citrus production different then compared to today?

Very good question, John. That is something that we openly discuss in meetings and stuff like that. And they look at me as an old hayseed that used to. That lived in the citrus industry back where the area, when you're talking about, you know, I was production manager for Libby's Libby McNeil and Libby prior to the 83 freeze. And they had about 10,000 acres of citrus all right up here in the Claremont area. And most of it, the majority of that acreage was, like I said, was set 30 by 30. But the trees were on rough lemon rootstock and Cleopatra mandarin and sour orange rootstock, which they grew very big trees, very tall, tight. And even though There was only 48 trees to an acre, Libby hedged every middle. Took them four years. You'd go one row north and south, then one row east and west in the off middle north and south and the off middle east and west. And that's the way you work the grove. And all we had back then was a disc and choppers. We didn't. Nobody even had a mower. Nobody knew what a mower was in a citrus grove. But they created so much shade in there, John, in those groves, that the vegetation underneath, underneath the canopy was not a big problem. Now you go out and you plant a brand new grove. And obviously we had hand crews, okay, that, that's all they did in the summertime is they would. It would be about 20 or 25 guys and they all had hoes and they would walk through the grove and they would hoe anything that was around that young tree. And obviously the way we irrigated those young trees is we built a water ring around that tree with a hand hoe, built it out of dirt, and it would hold about five gallons of water. So we would have what we call a supply truck that had like a 500 or a thousand gallon tank on the back. We'd get water out of a lake and we would drive through the grove and give each tree roughly about 5 gallons of water. Now, during the summer, you didn't have to do that because we got a lot of rain. So the dry part was usually January, February, March, April, like that. And so that's when we did a lot of watering. And that's when most of the growers around would plant resets, was in the summertime, because you had plenty of labor. Once we got into the month of September and October, most of that hand labor went into harvesting and we would start harvesting. So you didn't have the hand crews that were available like they were during the summertime.

So one of the stories that I remember walking through a grove with you probably ten years ago, and you described how you remember soil being dark in color and having a high organic matter content right over the management practices that led to building that organic matter content and then also to losing it.

Most of the growers up here in central Florida and back the time we're talking about, John, there was nothing in south Florida. There was no citrus down there. You know, it was all from the town of Sebring north. Okay, which. That was Highway 70. That went right straight east and west across the state. Everything was north of that. The time we're talking about, a lot of the growers used chicken manure. They would spread it during the summertime. Okay, and that was a big practice that was very popular up here in Lake County.

Was that spread across the entire acre? Was it concentrated underneath the trees?

No, it was spread trunk to trunk okay. And my dad and other growers would get some sludge and they would spread that also. All right? So that was. That was a common practice. And back then, it wasn't that expensive. I mean, it was expensive compared to in that time. But if you look back at today, it's like, good Lord, it only cost, what, two or three dollars an acre to do that, you know, so. And just about everybody, John, grew a cover crop in the summertime. And the one that was the most popular was hairy indigo. All right? And that was planted trunk to trunk. And. And normally most all of the harvesting was done in the month of May. And the grower would now spread the hairy indigo just like you'd spread fertilizer. And then the range would start the end of May, first of June, and then you had a good 90 day cover crop. And they'd let the hairy indigo just grow all the way up, you know, and the interesting thing about the hairy indigo was it reduced the population of the burying nematodes. That was a big problem up here on the ridge. Not only in Claremont, just followed the ridge all the way down to Sebring. And everybody that had citrus on the ridge, which is very sandy soil, had problems with nematodes. And the hairy indigo was very popular for that. Not only did it produce. I don't remember the exact figures now, but I think it was like 45 or 50 pounds of nitrogen per acre, and it produced a exit in the roots that pushed out the nematodes. So it was very popular. You saw that just about every grove you went into in the summertime up here in central Florida.

So what. What happened with the hairy India? That sounds like a great practice. Why was that practice discontinued or what happened with it?

I gotta be careful now when I start talking this way.

No, you don't have to be careful. This is your opportunity to say what needs to be said.

Well, it's funny because we even up here, we even put in nematode barriers in some of the groves. When you would see the trees starting to show a decline, they would go in there and pull a test and say, oh, yeah, you got the nematodes. And they would come in and they'd put a barrier to keep the nematodes from moving into your neighbor's grove or moving, you know, further into your own grove. And they being like the county agent stuff, they highly encourage you to plant hairy indigo to keep the nematodes from spreading along with this chemical barrier that they put in. Well, you know, it's funny, John, you go to these talks now, and they talk about COVID crops and hairy indigo is never mentioned. All right? And I have even stood up and asked questions. Why isn't hairy indigo even popular now? Because, number one, you know, we have nematodes in all of the citrus. And it's kind of like, well, you know, we don't think it produces an amato side or, you know, it's kind of like, okay, next question. They don't even want to discuss it.

So are you suggesting that the folks who are selling Nematicides don't want Harry Indigo to be popular?

That's exactly right. Exactly right.

Wouldn't be the first time that that scenario would have played out.

You think?

Fascinating. So when did people begin using less hairy indigo? And when did cover crops fall into.

Disfavor after the 83, 85 freeze?

And why was that? Can you tell us that story?

Okay. You know, we had a devastating Freeze Christmas Eve 1983. My house right here in Clermont was 17 degrees with a 25 mile an hour wind for three days. All right? Then 15 months later, January of 85, the same thing, 17 degrees at my house for three days for the 25 mile an hour wind. After those two freezes, they all the lending institutions in the state of Florida, production credit, Federal Land Bank, Farmers Home Administration, local banks, they made an announcement that if you were north of I4, Interstate 4, I4 runs from Tampa all the way to Daytona Beach. If you were located north of Interstate 4, we would no longer loan any money to replant with citrus. If you want to develop your property, we'll finance it 100%. All right, so that was after the 8385 freeze, okay, which had wiped out totally central Florida. Okay? There was probably, I don't remember exactly, but there was about 15 to 20,000 acres replanted up here in Central Florida after the 83, 85 freeze. And then Christmas Eve 1989, same thing. 17 degrees at my house for three days, 25 mile an hour wind. And now you're only dealing with a two, three and a four year old tree. Well, it kills them dead or hell. So after that there was no citrus. Now there's. I don't know exactly, but I would say right now, Today, John, from 300,000 acres of bearing citrus right up here in central Florida. There's less than 10,000 acres planted up here now. And just in Lake county, we had five juice plants, okay? With two of them being in the top five in size in the state of Florida. We had 25 fresh fruit packing houses right here in Lake County. So after those two freezes, I got with the county agent, the ex county agent here, a couple of months ago, and we did a study, and we figured there were 30,000 employees right here in Lake county that work in the juice plants, the packing houses, the fertilizer plants, the harvesting companies. You know, just go down the list. They no longer had a job. And my dad had made the comment numerous times about this is the third generation of people that grew up right up here and worked in. In the citrus industry. This is the third generation, you know, And I'm thinking, dad, how can you say the third generation? Then he said, well, what generation are you? I said, oh, yeah, that's right. I'm the third generation working up here in Lake County. He said, and it's gone. There's no more citrus, and nobody will loan you the money to even plant back. So you had to do it all on your own, you know.

So given the history, the depth of observations that you've had, what do you think has led to the decline of health in citrus orchards generally across the state of Florida over the last 30 years? 40 years.

Boy, I'm going to have to watch for the black helicopter looking for me tonight. John, That's. That's a. That's a very good question. After the 83, 85 freeze, my dad and I went to a meeting down at the research center in Lake Alford. And two of the leading scientists. I can't tell you their name. I don't remember. They now made it mandatory that all the nurseries. They had to enclose their nurseries, and they had to be a licensed citrus nursery, and they had to buy all of their budwood through the budwood registration program at Lake Alford. And one of the scientists got up and told the story that we are so excited because we have taken the budwood and we have eliminated. And they did this. We have eliminated the undesirable traits that's in that budwood. Now my dad's sitting right next to me, okay? And he started doing his fingers and, you know, twitching a little bit. And I thought, this is not a good sign. So they said, we have eliminated the undesirable traits like exocortis xylophorosis, so we'll no longer have to worry about these diseases. So you will be able to grow citrus with. With no more problems with this. My dad raises his hand and he stands up and he says, Dr. Feelgood, I don't remember what his name was. This is Great science, great technology, but I'm going to make a prediction. And he said, you have removed all these, quote, undesirable traits that God put in this budwood to protect this tree. Okay? And he said, I'm gonna make a prediction when all the growers are forced to buy through this organization. Now, when we get a problem in the citrus industry, the whole entire state is going to have the same problem. He said, I won't be here to see it. I won't live long enough. But he said, that's my prediction, and write it down. And guess where we are today. Greening. Every tree in the state of Florida is infected. And he was right.

That's interesting. So are the organisms that they were removing from the budwood, would those have been fungal organisms, viruses? What is it that they were removing exactly?

I'll have to wait till Ben walks back in here, he can answer that question, John, but in short, what your.

Father was saying is that these plants are designed to be host to some of these organisms, and when they clean them up and the process of cleaning them up, they're actually removing beneficial organisms, or they're removing organisms that are creating and enhancing immunity in some way.

Right. You know, and my dad's whole thing was, we're creating the own problems ourselves as a grower, we're creating the problem with the trees, okay? Is it something we're spraying? Is it something we're fertilizing with? Is it something we're not doing? That was his whole. To all of us boys, the son, brothers, his sons, once he left Claremont and he moved down to Lake Placid, Sebring, all of us would meet down there once a month, and we'd have a. My mom would fix a big old shopper, and we. All we talked about is citrus. And my dad's favorite saying to us, John, was, okay, turn your phone off, turn your radio off, turn your TV off, get your butt in the truck, get out there and ride and look in the grove. That's where the answer is. You've got to observe and watch that tree. Okay? So my whole. The whole thing, when you go back and. And listen to what my dad was saying, and of course, Ben and I and Matt and all the brothers, we get together still about once a month, and. And it's. It's amazing the things that we talk about, John, that we see that we did not see 30 years ago. Okay? And basically, our family blames a large percentage on what. When they cleaned up the budwood, when they took out all these Undesirable traits. Okay? And the excess use of herbicides. When I was at Libby's, we use Roundup one time a year, and that would be in the fall, like August and September is when we would put it out. So it would kill all the weeds because we'd start harvesting, you know, Thanksgiving, Christmas, like that, and the weeds wouldn't grow during that time. Now, most of the growers down in South Florida, they do four applications a year of glyphosate Roundup. Okay? I mean, it's unbelievable. Now they have spacings like I told you. It was 30 by 30 up here. The most popular one up here was 25 by 25, which was 70 trees to an acre. You go now down to South Florida and it's not uncommon at all to see seven and a half by 15, which is almost 400 trees per acre. So there's no way they can cross hedge or cross mow or cross chop. And, and nobody down there on what we call bedded groves, nobody chops or disc. It's all mowing. So it's herbicide under the, under the trees and they mow the middles, you know, like every 30 days, something like that.

You mentioned a bit ago that when you gather with your brothers and sons in the next generation, many of the things that you observe, you ascribe to this use of clean bud went into herbicides. Can you tell us a little bit about what are the things that you observe, what are the things that you're observing in the trees and in the industry in general? That is very different today from what it was in the past, John.

Right now, today it's very difficult to, to see a big difference because of greening. Okay. It's like, as I mentioned to you earlier, every tree in the state of Florida is infected. And some of the work that's coming out now from the research center is they're coming out with rootstocks that's not resistant to greening, but tolerant. Okay? So some of these in some of the budwood that they are releasing now is not resistant, but it's tolerant to greening. So most of those groves are like, you know, at old is probably seven, eight years old. So right now, today, a seven or eight year old tree compared to a 25 to 30 year old tree looks a lot different. However, we're beginning to see, just like up here, we're beginning to see a leaf drop, fruit drop discoloration. You know, even though the tree is on a tolerant rootstock, it's still getting greening and it's having an effect on it. So there's another story I'd like to tell about the herbicides. Okay. Cinbar was one of the first pre emergent herbicides that came out. Okay. Obviously like for say there's not a pre emergency, it's strictly a contact. All right. I'm production manager at Libby's. My dad calls me up, says have you put out any synbar? And at that time that was all you could use on a young tree. It was approved to do on like a three year old down. All right, you could use Cinbar. So anyway, I said, yeah dad, we got a block out here. He said okay, let's, let's go out there. So we go out there. Well, they're putting out the herbicide as we're out there. My dad says okay, let's leave this one row. Don't put any herbicide on it. And I said okay. So we did, we left that one row. Well, about 30, 45 days we go back out there and my dad says, okay, here's what I want you to do. Take a shovel and get a five gallon bucket and on the rows that we treated, I want you to dig down and get about a half of five gallon bucket of soil and put it in your pickup and roll the windows up and let it sit there overnight and then get in in the morning. Okay dad. And he said, I want you to call me in the morning when you get in there and tell me what you smell. No problem dad, I can do that. So anyway, so I go out there and I take a treated row and I dig a hole with the shovel and get about half of a five gallon bucket of soil, put it in the back of my truck. Next morning I get in there and it's like, wow, man, the smell. This is really nice. This is really unusual. So I called my dad, he said okay, what do you smell? I said man, dad, it really, I'm taking, taking away how nice it smells in my truck. And he said, I said it's really, you know, it's really got a soil smell. And he said okay, dump that out and now go to the row that we did not treat. Do the same thing. Put that bucket in, in your truck, roll your windows up, call me the next morning. Okay dad. So I did, I went out there and got it. When I got in that truck the next morning, John, I'm flabbergasted. I could not believe the sweet aroma that was in my truck from that three or four shovelfuls of soil in that five gallon bucket. I mean, it was really dominating and a very, very sweet smell. So I called my dad up. He said, okay, what'd you. What'd you hit? What'd you smell? I said, God, dad, you will not believe the difference. And he said, okay, you still got some cin bar left? And I said, yeah, I do. And he said, okay, let's get together at lunch. I want to get a little sample and I want to send it off to a lab up there in Georgia and I want to get it analyzed. Okay, dad. So we did. Well, guess what, John? When the analysis came back and my dad showed me, he said, look, the cinbar has an algaecide in it. And he said, guess what that algaecide does. It kills all the algae. And guess what? The main food is for the soil microbes that live in that soil. You've taken all of their food away. That algaecide has killed it. And he said, guess where that tree's headed now, you know, and it was like, now this was back in the 70s, you know, and it's kind of like, God almighty, that old man, he's really got me thinking now. So.

Sounds like he was well ahead of his time in some ways.

Yeah, it's amazing when you look back at that. And then the other. One of the other things was he said, okay. On that road that we had left, he said, don't. Don't put anything on it. Leave that one row so we can study it for the next six months or so. So anyway, I did, and after about six months, we rode out there. And this is a, you know, it's a young grove, and we pull up there and my dad says to me and said, okay, tell me what you see. Now. You can imagine the damn weeds was as high as my truck. I said, God, dad, look, the damn weeds have taken over. And he said, well, when you say taking over, what do you mean? And I said, well, they're getting all the water, they're getting all the fertilizer, they're getting all the sunlight. They've taken over. He said, oh, you really think so, huh? I said, yeah. He said, what if your goal was to grow these weeds, what would you say about that orange tree? He said, you'd say the same thing. Damn that tree. I got to get that tree out of there. It's getting all the sunlight, it's getting all the water, it's getting all the rainfall. He said, it's all observation. So, my brothers, we all still laugh about that every time we're riding together, we'll bring that up.

Our internal biases frame what we perceive.

Yeah.

You know, greening has become such an almost overwhelming part of the story.

That.

It'S tended to erase the memories of what came before. But I'd like to go back to a question that I asked you a little bit ago. I asked you about the historical observations. You described how you observed the health of the citrus trees and groves generally go into decline gradually over a 30 or 40 year period. @ least that was what I got out of your comments. But then of course, greening just accelerated all of that to a remarkable degree. But let's go back to the period before greening. What was the trend of health that you were seeing and what were some of the observations that you were seeing from 1970 until 1995, early 2000s, before greening really took. Took a hold and ran its own.

Race? Well, you know, I can, I can give you very good examples of the roughly 10,000 acres that Libby had right up here. All the varieties, all the rootstocks, and not all was irrigated. But, but it was not uncommon at all, John, to go into a grapefruit grove with 48 trees to an acre and pick 1500 boxes per acre. We had groves that would even pick 2,000 boxes per acre. Okay. You know, that's 20 boxes to a tree, more than that, 25. I mean, that was, that wasn't something you went around bragging about because that's the way most of it was. And it was not uncommon at all for oranges, especially Hamlin oranges, which is an early variety. We usually start picking them in December to have six or seven hundred boxes per acre with 4850 trees to an acre. That was just common. And you saw difference with irrigation during the dry time. Okay. But during harvesting time, there was a lot of debate going on about that. In fact, when I was there at Libby's, right prior to the 83 freeze, we had one of the researchers from Lake Alfred that had done a five year study on irrigation and non irrigation in a grapefruit grove that Libby owned. And they had put in overhead irrigation in five acres and five acres without. And anyway, at the end of five years, Dr. Ku was the, was the researcher. He sat down with me and he said, you know, if I had not done this research myself and watched this thing, I would be hard to believe this. He said, but the only influence that the irrigation had was only two years out of five that it showed an increase in production. And he said, then it Wasn't a dramatic increase. It was only like 75 to 85 boxes per acre more. So you go, and now you go back and you look at the rootstock. Okay, it's rough lemon rootstock. When you go back and study the rough lemon rootstock, what was it that was so great about was it had the highest hydraulic conductivity in the root system of water. Okay, you go down in South Florida now, where everything is irrigated. I don't know of any grove down there doesn't have irrigation. And look at the rootstock there. Nobody, not one, not one grove has rough lemon rootstock. They've all gone with different rootstocks that as they went down the list, it got lower and lower and lower of hydraulic conductivity. So now you hardly see any overhead irrigation, which covered 100% of the root zone. You see, you know, probably 75, 80% is what we call micro jet irrigation, where an emitter is under every tree and it only does about a six foot radius. Okay. Now it's a 360, but it's only about a six foot radius. And my dad's favorite saying all those boys was he said, I can't believe this. He said, the majority of the roots in all of these root stocks is outside of the canopy. And he said, here we are, it hadn't rained in 30 days. And we got micro jet irrigation that's only covering about 30% of the root zone and it's under the canopy. And he said, all of the roots that are outside of the canopy are the biggest moisture absorbent roots. And he said, the roots under the tree is sending a signal out, boys, I got all the water I need. We're great. Everything's going good. And he said, all the roots outside of that canopy are saying, it's an emergency, shut down, don't do anything else. We're, we're about to die out here with no water. And my dad's whole comment was he said, what do you think this does to the immune system in that tree? How does that tree run if its immune system is half on and half.

Off? Well, also, the other aspect of that that comes to mind is how does that then shape the root system development for the future when that root system outside the canopy continues to.

Decline?

Yeah. And underneath the canopy, it continues to expand and the tree becomes reliant on.

It. Right, John? It's not the nutrient absorbing roots under that tree like it is on the outside, outside of that canopy. So that was the whole gist of that conversation with my dad. Which only came up about once a month, you know, was about here we are trying to prevent this disease. This disease, this disease. And only 50% of the root system is getting water. And they are not the ones that are providing the protection. So, you know, you go down there in South Florida now and you look at just about every disease known to man. You can find it down.

There. Well, I also think about what that reduced root system volume would mean for nutrient absorption capacity and for yield capacity. You've just reduced that plant's ability to bear.

Fruit.

Right. Now, Benny, you've mentioned something that I have forgotten. If I've heard it mentioned before. I don't recall that I have. And that is the hydraulic capacity of the roots. How is that measured? How is that quantified? I'm not aware that that is. I'm guessing probably someone, I'm sure someone somewhere is doing the research. But how do we measure that on various.

Plants? That brings up a very good question, John. You can google Dr. Ku K, double O. Okay. And look at some of his research. And like I said, the majority of his research was done up there at Libby's. He was on a first name basis with a lot of people up there that, you know, were in control. And he published two or three papers on hydraulic conductivity of the root system. And, and of course, like I said, the, the rough lumen rootstock had the highest hydraulic conductivity. How he measured that, I don't know. That brings up a good question. I should know, but I don't know if B3 was in here. He probably, he could probably quote you the page that the research is on. But that like, that goes back to the rough lemon rootstock. A large majority of the citrus that was planted up here on the ridge was on rough lemon rootstock and it had the highest production per tree of any rootstock, regardless of the variety. But when we got big in the juice business, in the, in the citrus industry, the rust lemonade produce the lowest pounds of solids per box and the lowest juice color and the lowest ratio of the three main rootstocks, the rough lemon, Cleopatra and sour orange. That that was the majority that that was up here. So as the industry got away from fresh fruit now it didn't get, when I say it kind of diminished in the juice demands really started sky high. The plants would take everything that was on rough lemon, but the way I understand it is that they would store the majority of that juice and then when they got to the next variety, which was the mid season, it had better juice Color. It had better brix, you know, and they would blend, and then when they got to the Valencia orange, which was the last one, it even had a higher juice color and a higher brix. So they would blend it all together and come up. So all the juice plants had to have the same brix acid ratio. Nobody could say, oh, I'm better than.

You. Or, you know, interesting when you say nobody could say that, is that they just. They voluntarily chose to cooperate or. What was that based.

On? No, it was the law. All the juice came out of all these juice.

Plants.

Intriguing. It had to have a minimum brix, had to have a minimum acid, and had to have a minimum ratio. Got.

It.

Okay. And that's still.

Today. Yeah. So going back, and I'm kind of bypassing this topic for our listeners, I could probably dig deeper into this, but I'm guessing way back in the day, this was very, very important from a dietary health perspective as a source of vitamin C for the collective public health. And today, we don't have considerations like that being written into the law anymore. We're quite happy to serve people junk and hope that they don't do so well so that we can sell them other things that they now need that they shouldn't have.

Needed.

Right. Anyway, I want to go back to organic.

Matter.

You. You talk about growing plants, growing trees on a ridge, and I laugh. For anyone who hasn't spent time in Florida, a Florida ridge is not like a ridge anywhere else in the world, just to let you.

Know. That's true. That's true.

Yeah. I remember you describing stories of how you were growing the indigo cover crop, and you're putting on manure applications as your primary source of fertilizer and having very high organic matter soils, very high organic matter in your soils, even though your soils resemble beach sand more than they resemble topsoil, or at least they do today. But back then they were black, and today they're gray or bordering closer to the white end of the spectrum than they are to the black end of the spectrum. What are the changes that led to.

That? That's a good question, John. You know, I think what you see is, like I said, making the 60s. Let's just refer back to that, the 40s, the 50s, and the 60s, the COVID crop was a. Was a major ingredient in growing citrus. And now, like I said, you go down to South Florida, there's no cover crop. It's just grass.

Okay. And it's grass that gets sprayed with herbicide four times a.

Year. Yeah, right, right. But up here. That, that was a major issue. I mean that, like I said, just about everybody grew something in the, in the summertime and rather it was hairy indigo, whatever cover crop it was. Cow peas. You know, I'm trying to think of some of the others that was popular. Hairy indigo at that time was the most popular. They let it grow up five or six feet and then they would chop it in. So all of that decomposed, you know, you're talking about fiber and leaves and roots and everything that decomposed and in the middles and continued to increase the biodiversity that was in that.

Soil. Yeah. When you lose that, when you lose the COVID crops and you lose the manure application, you replace them with herbicide and bare soil in the tree row and a mowed grass between the tree rows and nitrogen fertilization. Everything else, you. You're going to lose your soil.

Carbon. Yeah, exactly. I was going to tell you this story last year or year before. Ben has done a lot of work for Uncle Matt's on cover crops. Okay. And John, we took a grove that was an 80 acre grove only, you know, maybe 10 miles from our office here, and men went in and it was a Valentia grove. And he pulled soil samples in, five metals. Okay. And it came up and we were trying to see what the COVID crop would do to the nutrition in the soil. The zinc, manganese, iron, boron, copper. Was there any benefit? Okay. So anyway, we planted cow peas in there and in 60 days they had all flowered, bloomed, everything. And we came in and we cut them in. All right, so Ben went back about 65, 70 days after we planted the cow peas and pull soil samples in the same areas, the same middle everything. And John, if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have, I would have questioned it. Sandy soil, it increased the manganese levels by 20%. Okay. With cow peasants. Why? You know, and now I stand up in the, in these meetings and I say, why isn't this public information? The growers need to know this. You know, like the most expensive thing I got to add to the soil is manganese if I got to go out and buy it. And that was just cow peas. We haven't done one with hairy indigo. We haven't done one with any of the other cover crop that are, you know, we talk about all the.

Time. Yeah. And imagine what happens when you perhaps begin planting some of those plants in combination with each.

Other. Yeah. And that's what we've got. We've got some Combos now and Ben's. We're fixing to cut them in here in another week or so. And Ben was going to go out there and pull soil samples in.

There. So, Ben, you've shared a number of remarkable stories, stories that I'm sure you spend a lot of time thinking about and talking about. They keep coming up again over and over. What are some of the other. What are some other memorable moments that really stand out in your.

Memory? My dad telling me he graduated from UF in 1939. Okay. The Albrecht method of soil balancing was taught at us. I have been told, I have not proven it, that all of the land grant universities in the US was taught that in 1939. My dad's sitting in the truck chewing me out, okay? And he says, after the war, the government did away with teaching that in all the land grant universities. And they came with the conventional PH method, you know, Okay. I learned the PH method at the University of Florida. I graduated in 1965. My dad graduated 1939. John. Every time. And I tried to avoid these conversations about this, but anyway, he would look at me and he'd say, you didn't learn a damn thing about soil chemistry, physics and biology. All you learned was to chase the damn pH. He said, you get the Albert method, the ph, that's the last thing you look at. He said, all these growers around here, they don't even know why they're out here spreading lime and dolomite just to have the pH. And he said, you know, you understand how antagonistic calcium is to blah, blah, blah, and manganese is the blah, blah, you know, and magnesium. He said, you know, you didn't learn any of this. So luckily, after the 83, 85, 89 freezes, you know, I got hired. As soon as Libby shut down everything, I got hired by a company that sent me to the Bahamas. And we did a 10,000 acre project over there on crown land. That's land the government owns. And now you talk about ph. You know that soil over there on those islands, Marsh Harbor, Abaco Island? That, the ph and that stuff over there, you can't make this up. It was. It was unreal, you know.

Unreal. Low as an acidic because of highly weathered.

Soils. No, no, no, no, no. Like a.

8P8. Very.

Alkaline. Yeah, very, very alkaline. Okay, Very. Anyway, I hired my dad to go over there and help us because, you know, we. I was getting nowhere with dealing with that chemistry and that soil over there. Well, lo and behold, I had hired brother Scott And Brother John, because they ran the nurseries over there and they were growing the trees for me that we were planning. Anyway, Scott comes home one weekend on the company plane. He's in the airport there at Miami. And for some reason, thunderstorm, whatever, the flight was delayed. He's sitting there and Scott's telling the story. This guy wearing a pair of Levi's and comes up, sits down by me, says, hi, what's Your name? Scott McLean. No, he said, what's your name? Neil Kinsey. Scott says, neil Kinsey. Boy, that. That name sounds familiar. Neil says, yeah, I teach the Albrecht Method. And Scott was like, oh, my God, you teach the Auburn. Oh, my God. Wait till I tell my dad this. Well, anyway, you know, when he gets home, he calls my dad. He says, dad, you won't believe who I met there at the airport. A guy named Neil Kinsey. And it said he. In two weeks, he's having a big class up there in Missouri. Anyway, my dad paid for all of us to go to it. Mark, Jeff, Scott, John, Ben and Matt and me to fly up there and go to that thing. And once we took that class, you know, now it was like, oh, my God, I can't believe what I didn't know, you know? And now, so I go back to the Bahamas, and, man, we turn that thing around and, ooh, those trees started growing. And it was all grapefruit, all dark red grapefruit. I mean, it was unbelievable how that changed the whole way, I thought. And of course, now today, you know, in the organic arena, that's. That's all we.

Use.

Yep. Now, did it cure greening? No, it didn't cure green. But we don't have near the leaf drop and we don't have near the fruit drop that our neighbors do that are.

Conventional. Well, mineral balance is a major part of the equation of tree or plant resistance and immunity. Another part of it is microbiome balance and microbiome integrity. And going back to where you started this whole conversation about when you have budwood that has compromised microbiome integrity because of the treatments that it's been exposed to, that's perfect mineral nutrition. The most perfect mineral nutrition in the world can't overcome some of those.

Imbalances. Exactly, exactly. And that was my dad's whole complaint about the thing. John, I don't have. Well, I have the pictures on my phone. When we get done with this conversation, I'll send you these pictures. A couple of them. 1952. My dad, my mom lived in Alachu Way, which is about 10 miles north of Gainesville in Florida. She was born and raised there. And we would go up maybe once a month for a big family dinner. My mom was the oldest of six girls and. And they had one boy. So we would go up there and have a get together with a family. Well, my granddad was a. Was a farmer up there, but he had a. He loved grapefruit. And every time we would go, my dad would take. Would go out and pick a bunch of grapefruit and take it up there for him. Well, he takes me now where I'm 10 years old, and I don't know why I remember this, but we go to a grove and he says, I'm gonna take Grandpa Carl. Carl dope with his name. I'm gonna take Grandpa Carl a bag of these red grapefruit and see if he likes them. So anyway, he takes them up there. Well, it was a red, seedy grapefruit. Like a Duncan is a seedy grapefruit. You know, a marsh. Seedless is white and it's seedless. But anyway, he takes it up there and he had like 15 or 20 in there. And we're fixing to eat lunch and everything. And my grandmom is in there, she's cutting the grapefruit and sectionizing them, making the big fruits out. And she hollers to my dad, ben, what am I supposed to do with all these seeds? I got a bucket full of seeds. And my dad says, well, just go out in the backyard and just throw that can of seeds out there and maybe one day one of these seeds will germinate and you'll have your own grapefruit tree here in your backyard. Okay. Ten years ago now, ever once a year, we all rally up for the family. Of course, my grandmama did and granddad are passed away, but we rally up there. Well, one of my cousins is living in the old, what we call the Docville house. And he says to me, he said, have you ever seen that grapefruit tree that's in the backyard here? And I said, what grapefruit tree? No, I never. He said, yeah, you need to come by the house here when we get done with our Easter egg hunt. Come on, I want you to look at this house, this. This tree. So anyway, I go out there, John, and here's this damn tree. 30 foot tall.

Okay?

Wow. That's growing straight up about 15 yards away from the house. And it was surrounded by oak trees, so you never saw it, you know. And I look at that thing and I'm like, I cannot Believe that damn tree. And I go and cut the fruit, and it's the Thompson Pink seedy. That's what it was. Ben, of course, all the brothers know about it, and Ben and Matt, they've all been up there. And I go up there about once a month and pick some grapefruit and bring them home. John, it is a perfect looking grapefruit tree. It has the biggest, darkest green leaves you've ever seen. It's never been fertilized, it's never been herbicided, it's never been topped, it's never been hedged, it's never been irrigated. It grew up there all by itself. And it's absolutely gorgeous grapefruit tree. And I even took some of the fruit to the research center and I cut it open. I said, y' all, tell me what this is. Oh, God, I don't know what it is. I've never seen a pink cd. I never. I don't know what it is. Well, anyway, I called up the Texas A and M, and this was about three or four years ago, and there was a researcher that was as old as me that would just happen to be there. And they put him on the phone and I told him, I said, I have a pink seedy grapefruit. I said, I was born and raised in the citrus industry in Florida. And I said, I have never seen a pink seedy grapefruit. And he said, oh, yeah. He said, we got one growing out here at the. The research units. Said it's about 100 years old now. But anyway, he said, yeah, he said Florida sent those and wanted them made seedless. So he said, we did all the gene splicing and everything and sent back, and. And so all you have in Florida now is the pink seedless grapefruit. And he said, you. You have one tree that's a pink city. I said, I do. And he said, well, that may be the only one besides the one I got here in. In our research center. A and M. I'll send you a picture of it. Wow.

Unbelievable.

Wow. And Ben has tested it. Ben has taken leaf samples back to the lab, and it tests positive for greening. Okay, but everything is working in that.

Tree. Well, it's still got its complete.

Microbiome. Yeah. None of the budwood was new. None of the seeds were treated with a fungicide or anything. It grew up wild. And the immune system is working at 100% like God designed it to.

Work. So it tests positive for the presence of.

Hlb? Yes. Can you believe.

That? I can Absolutely believe that. It's an incredible story. Thank you for sharing that.

Story. Yeah. I'll send you some pictures of.

It. Yeah. And for all of our listeners, we'll share the pictures. If Ben gives us permission, we'll share the pictures on social media so you'll be able to see.

Those. The only problem with that, John, is everybody want to go see it. And just between me and you, I don't want the researchers to even know where it.

Is. Oh, all right. Well, we can take care of.

That. Yeah, it's.

Amazing. That's an incredible.

Story. And that tree, like I said, that was in 1952 that my dad took all those seeds up. And my mom obviously has passed away, but a couple of her sisters told me the date. They said, oh, yeah, no, we were remembering that and said, you know, we were growing up here and we were watching that tree and wondering what, you know, we didn't like grapefruit, so nobody ate the fruit. Said, my. My dad, my granddad is the only one that ate him. Hard to.

Believe. You know, it's really intriguing to me how many stories like this grapefruit tree story are out there. There are many old farmers and people, not just farmers, but people in academia and research who've paid attention and who've observed and who noticed things for a very long.

Time.

Right. That's one of the things that I've come to really appreciate is that there is an incredible wealth and depth of knowledge that many people have that the rest of the world deserves to know about, but that most people don't know. And there's just like these trees, there are gems that are hidden. I'm constantly discovering new plants and new, or I say new plants, but really old plants that have been forgotten about, and in some cases, old plants that have been completely.

Lost. No, I agree with you totally. I agree with you. And of course, you know, citrus grew up in Alachua Way county and for many, many years. But after the 83, 85, 89 freeze, you know, it. It decimated. I mean, it killed.

Everything. But it didn't kill this tree. You're telling me it was planted up there in 1952. That means it survived the.

Freezes. That's right. That is. That is unbelievable, John. And you know, I don't like to use the word expert, but I guarantee you I can tell you if a grapefruit tree been pruned or not. And it was never pruned. There was not any deadwood in.

It.

Wow. You won't believe when I seen you the picture, that.

Tree. So it was never pruned and had no.

Deadwood. Yeah. If it was 17 degrees here, and this is 10 miles north of Gainesville, it had to be below 10 up there in Gainesville. You know, that's cold there compared to here. Yeah. Yeah, that's.

Awesome. All right, well, Ben, I want to say thank you. Thank you for being willing to be here and for sharing, Sharing your stories, for sharing your wisdom and experiences. There is. I think there is so much value that people will get out of this conversation. And I look forward to having more conversations with you in the future.

John. I love the opportunity. And as you can see, I don't have no problem talking. Let me end up with just one quick story, please. Okay. And this is all about nutrient density. When we first got into business, and I say we. Uncle Matt, and we were, you know, Publix, which is a big supermarket here in Florida, was one of our first customers taking our juice. Anyway, they. They called us up and said, hey, we'd love for you guys to grow us some organic watermelons. Do y'. All. Can y' all do that for us? And so, yeah, no problem. Said, okay. So, you know, this is what we want. This is the variety and this is how many we need. So anyway, we had a 20 acre piece just out of Claremont here. And so we got ready to start planting it, getting it all cleaned up and everything. And I checked with a watermelon grower that was up in North Florida because we'd never grown any watermelons. And he told me, said, man, the. The main thing you gotta. To really have a good melon is you've got to make sure you got all the zinc, manganese, iron, boron, copper. That really plays a big fact on these. On melons. Okay. So anyway, I went out there and I pulled four or five soil samples, sent them to Perry Ag Labs. Got the recommendation. I don't remember exactly, but I spent close to about $300 an acre bringing the zinc, manganese, iron, boron, you know, up to the levels that Aubrey recommends. Okay. So we're planting the melons. Got a beautiful melon crop. We get done harvesting. Every fifth row was a big seedy melon for pollination. The other four rows were seedless. Okay. Well, obviously they picked all the seedless melons. Anyway, I'd hired a guy to go out there, John, and mow everything up. So he's out there mowing, and he's got a 15 foot batwing mower, you know, and anyway, I go out There, check on him. And he stops and I pull up there and he's got about 10 melons of the big melons on the back of his mower. He jumps off, comes up and hey, Mr. McLean, I'll be glad to pay for these melons. And I said, no, hell, you don't have to pay me. Take them. I said, what are you going to do with him? He said, oh, he said, you know, I'm a hog farmer. And he said, I've. I've got about 20 acres over there in Grogan, which is just 10 miles from here. And he said, I go around all the grocery stores about once a week and get all their thrown away veggies and melons and whatever. And he said, I throw them over the fence and that's what I feed the hogs. Okay, well, so the next day I go out there to check on him and he sees me coming. Now he stops and he stands up on the tractor and he's waving at me like this, you know, I thought, oh, God, something happened. So I go up there to him, yeah, Jerry, what's up? He said, man, he said, what? I need to know what variety melon that is. I said, why? And he said, man, he said, I'm gonna grow those melons. He said, I have never. He said, I've been a hog farm for 20 years. He said, I've never witnessed anything like this. He said, I put those melons in the back of my truck. And he said, after I left here and I. He said, I go out there and I'm driving along the fence and he said, I look in the mirror and he said, there's about six or seven hogs running right along the fence by my truck. He said, I've been feeding these hogs for 20 years. I've never even. I've never even seen them notice me. And he said, I pulled around to the corner and he said, I back up there and he said, I've got a concrete slab that what I do is hit a drop a cantaloupe or drop a melon wherever, and it busts open, the hogs can eat it. He said, people don't know this, Mr. McLean, but hogs are just like dogs. They'll fight over food. And he said, those 25, 30 hogs, when I busted that first one, they come running up there and he said, they had the biggest damn hog fight I've ever seen in my life, fighting over that one melon. And he said, I ended up busting all those melons. He said, they ate every piece of that melon. He said, there's not one seed. And these were seedy melons. He said, there's not one seed left on that concrete slab. And he said they even ate the white part of the peel. He said, normally a hog, they only eat the color part of the melon. He said, they. There's nothing left on that concrete slab. He said, I've never seen anything like it. And he said, I've been feeding them melons for 20 years. He said, I need to know the variety. So guess what? They could smell that those seeds had the optimum levels of zinc, manganese, iron, boron, copper, and they were attracted right to.

It. That is a remarkable story of, like, how is it that animals know? How is it that animals know they can somehow tell the difference? This is the first time I've heard a story like this to this degree about hogs. But I've actually experienced cows on sweet corn being able to tell a difference. And my wife's family are very passionate deer hunters. And they can tell you that the deer definitely know which fields have been planted into GM versus non GM.

Corn.

Right? And if I've heard one story, I must have heard 50 stories about chicken and mice selecting one batch of grain over another. How do they know the difference? Like, we can ask the question how they know, but there is no question that they do know. They do know the.

Difference. Yeah, we've been, you know, talked about the energy levels that this, like the seeds they have, once they get the right nutrition and everything, everything at a level, they produce a energy that these animals tune into. I'll tell you one other quick story this happened. I've got three cousins that's in the cattle business. Okay. Anyway, during the wintertime, of course, you know, they feed the cows hay and everything. They take about 20 bales of hay and put it in the back of the pickup and they go out. And this was a head of yearlings, about 20 or 25 yearlings, you know. Anyway, they took one bale of hay that had come from the Midwest, okay, that was supposed to, you know, they said I had to pay like $10 for a bale, and theirs was only like a dollar. Anyway, they put that bale in the very front of the pickup in the. In the back and covered it with the other bales. And they said they go out there and they beat the horn and all the little urlans all come running up there and you know, the one cousins in the back and he'll bust the bale of hay and throw it out. And he said they did those 20 bales right in a row, and you could see the big hump as he dumped them out. And he said all of those yearlings would sniff the hay. Okay. But they wouldn't take a bite. And he said they just kept following the truck, sniffing the hay. And he said they got to the last bale okay. And they busted that open and said all 20 came to that one bale.

Yep. There are aspects of nutritional quality that we will continue to spend a lot of time trying to figure out to understand as well. Yeah, as the animals understand. You know, Albrecht talked about this. He talked about the cow testing the fence to get what's on their side of the.

Fence. Yeah, that picture. He showed the head out. Yeah, yeah, I've seen that, too. I've actually seen.

That. Lots of interesting.

Stories. John, I greatly appreciate you inviting me on and talking. And as you see, I had no problem.

Talking. Well, thank you. Thank you for being willing to share. This has been lots of fun. Let's do it.

Again. All right. Looking forward to.

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Look forward to working with you because, you know, we. I was getting nowhere with dealing with that chemistry and that soil over there. Well, lo and behold, I had hired brother Scott and brother John because they ran the nurseries over there and they were growing the trees for me that we were planning. Anyway, Scott comes home one weekend on the company plane. He's in the airport there at Miami, and for some reason, thunderstorm, whatever, the flight was delayed. He's sitting there and Scott's telling the story. This guy wearing a pair of Levi's and comes up, sits down by me, says, hi, what's Your name? Scott McLean. Oh, he said, what's your name? Neil Kinsey. Scott says, Neil Kinsey. Boy, that. That name sounds familiar. Neil says, yeah, I teach the Albrecht Method. And Scott was like, oh, my God, you teach the Auburn. Oh, my God. Wait till I tell my dad this. Well, anyway, you know, when he gets home, he calls my dad, he says, dad, you won't believe who I met there at the airport. A guy named Neil Kinsey. And he said he. In two weeks, he's having a big class up there in Missouri. Anyway, my dad paid for all of us to go to it. Mark, Jeff, Scott, John, Ben and Matt and me to fly up there and go to that thing. And once we took that class, you know, now it was like, oh, my God, I can't believe what I didn't know, you know. And now so I go back to. Through the Bahamas and man, we turned that thing around and those trees started growing and it was all grapefruit, all dark red grapefruit. I mean, it was unbelievable how that changed the whole way I thought. And of course, now today, you know, in the organic arena, that's. That's all we.

Use.

Yep. Now, did it cure greening? No, it didn't cure green. But we don't have near the leaf drop and we don't have near the fruit drop that our neighbors do that are.

Conventional. Well, mineral balance is a major part of the equation of tree or plant resistance and immunity. Another part of it is microbiome balance and microbiome integrity. And going back to where you started this whole conversation about when you have budwood that has compromised microbiome integrity because of the treatments that it's been exposed.

To.

Right. That's perfect mineral nutrition. The most perfect mineral nutrition in the world. Can't overcome some of those.

Imbalances. Exactly, exactly. And that was my dad's whole complaint about the thing. John, I don't have. Well, I have the pictures on my phone. When we get done with this conversation, I'll send you these pictures. A couple of them. 1952, my dad, my. My mom lived in Alachu Way, which is about 10 miles north of Gainesville in Florida. She was born and raised there. And we would go up maybe once a month, you know, for a big family dinner. My mom was the oldest of six girls, and they had one boy. So we would go up there and have a get together with a family. Well, my granddad was a. Was a farmer up there, but he had a. He loved grapefruit. And every time we would go, my dad would take. Would go out and Pick a bunch of grapefruit and take it up there for him. Well, he takes me. Now, we're. I'm 10 years old, and I don't know why I remember this, but we go to a grove and he says, I'm gonna take Grandpa Carl. Carl dope with his name. I'm gonna take Grandpa Carl a bag of these red grapefruit and see if he likes them. So anyway, he takes them up there. Well, it was a red seedy grapefruit. Like a Duncan is a seedy grapefruit. You know, a marsh. Seedless is white and it's seedless. But anyway, he takes it up there and he had like 15 or 20 in there. And we're fixing to eat lunch and everything. And my grandma is in there, she's cutting the grapefruit and sectionizing them, making the big fruits out. And she hollers to my dad, ben, what am I supposed to do with all these seeds? I got a bucket full of seeds. And my dad says, well, just go out in the backyard and just throw that can of seeds out there. And maybe one day one of these seeds will germinate and you'll have your own grapefruit tree here in your backyard. Okay? Ten years ago now, ever once a year, we all rally up for the family. Of course, my grandma and dad and granddad are passed away, but we rally up there. Well, one of my cousins is.