Episode 93: Growing Organic Wheat, Cotton, and Peanuts with Kelton Coleman

Hi friends, this is John. And welcome back to the Regenerative Agriculture podcast where we talk about all kinds of fun stuff, but particularly the fun things that are related to agronomy and cultural management practices and making regenerative agriculture effective out in the field. All those aspects of managing plant health and soil health and human health and livestock health that we care about. My guest for this episode is Kelton Coleman, who I've been looking forward to having a conversation with for some time. I've heard about this innovative farmer who likes to ask puzzling questions. And so Kelton, thanks for joining us here on the podcast and just for our listeners, I've actually, I've heard snippets and I've heard rumors, but I've never had a conversation with Kelton before. We haven't had an extensive introductory conversation, so I'm going to be learning right alongside you. So Kelton, tell us a little bit about your story and context. Your context. What is your farming background? What crops are you growing and what has, what are you working on today?

So I started farming in 2011. I farm alongside my dad, my granddad and brother in law, but I kind of head up the farm and they run the irrigation business. But it is a family farm. We all work together. Start out in 2011, conventional. In 2013 I started farming organically organic peanuts and wheat and then started growing cotton, organic cotton in probably 2016. We're in a major cotton production area. We had good, good crops, we had bad crops. All the bad crops that we ever had were taken out by either disease or insects. And I got to the point about two years ago. We had got wiped out by bugs last year on cotton and I began to pray and ask God for to show me what to do about it. And I did that for about two months and randomly because I am a person that listens to podcast and these were, you know, mainstream farming podcast and I had one pop up by Tanio and so I started listening there and through there. Then I got connected to your podcast.

You told us that you started farming organically several years ago. What inspired and what motivated that decision and what has that process of organic transition been like?

Honestly, whenever I started in organic, it was just because of economics. I didn't have an understanding of soil health and things that we were doing to the soil and our plants that maybe weren't the best things for them. But yeah, it was strictly economical at first and that wasn't a transition. Most of our organic ground came out of previously CRP grass. So it was immediately available for organic production. We didn't have to go through the transition period. Now I have transitioned farms since then, but a majority of my organic production came out of CRP. We're running about 50, 50 right now, organic and conventional. But then as my understanding and things grew over the years, now I have become a big proponent of organic and regenerative ag and things like soil health and things of that sort.

You've mentioned that all of your challenge, your significant crop challenges have been disease and insect pressure. How did the disease and insect pressure compare on the organic versus on the non organic acres? And actually maybe before you answer that question, tell us a little bit about your growing environment and your geography. Which part of the country are you in and what type of environment do you have that is conducive to disease and insect pressure?

So we live in a very hot and airy environment. We are in the southern panhandle, I guess would be south of Lubbock, Texas. In the panhandle of Texas we average 15 inches of rainfall a year. But I think in the last two years we've been averaging more like five or seven. So there's a lot of irrigated production and there is some, you know, a lot of dry land production here as well. But the insects, you know, we will get May rains and that will cause, you know, the pastures to green up, the bar ditches to green up, and insects will begin feeding on those. And then when we get hot in June and July, those weeds or whatever it is, grasses dry up and so they start heading for the irrigated fields because that is what's green and luscious and growing, looking for a food source.

So that's a good explanation for why you have increasing insect pressure at certain times of the year. But it's actually, it's interesting when you have such an arid environment, you'd actually expect the disease pressure to be lower in those types of environments. At least for airborne diseases. Are the challenges you've been dealing with mostly airborne diseases or soil borne diseases.

So the diseases are not in cotton. The diseases are specifically in peanuts. And you know, we're dealing with pythium and southern blight for soil born. And then we have a lot of grape production in the area and we believe that we have, you know, I think it's called foliar blight that really likes grapes. And then whenever we get a cold front in September, that foliar blight will come over onto the peanuts. And so all the diseases is normally in September when it Cools off and that's when we start having issues there.

Remind me again, you said it was in 2013 when you started farming organically.

Yes, sir.

That's been a few years. What have you observed with disease and insect pressure over the last 10 years on the organic versus the non organic acres? Has there been any significant difference or has the pressure been largely the same?

The pressure has been largely the same because the same chemistry based fertilizer program was used. Lots of nitrogen, lots of phosphorus and K via compost or chicken in the organic agriculture or, you know, synthetic chemistry on the other side. And so I did not see a big difference there. As far as insects go, far as disease goes, we do have more disease on the conventional approach ground. It has been farmed for longer and more degradated and so we do have more there for sure.

What was it that when you think back over the experiences that you've had, what are some of the memorable moments that led you to where you are today? What are some of the experiences that really stand out in your memory?

The ones that stand out are not actually my, you know, previous to this year were not my wins, they were my failures.

Well, isn't that, isn't that true for all of us? Those are the things we remember.

Yeah, those are the ones I remember, you know, having, you know, pod rod and southern blot and things like that come into peanuts and then having, you know, high worm pressure, pressure in cotton production that just wiping me out. And, you know, we would go from one year of having extremely high yields to one year having extremely high yields until September and then those yields get wiped out by one or the other, you know, crops looking real great and just being wiped out. And that's what began me to ask more questions. Why? Why is this happening? Why is it happening on this farm specifically compared to other farms? And as I started asking more questions, I started getting more answers and we started to move in a different direction.

You know, you just mentioned a very key comment that I think is so important, and that is as I learn more about what we're today calling this regenerative agriculture space and this journey that we're all on, we're constantly learning so much additional new information. And that horizon, the edge of the circle of the information that we now recognize we don't know, just keeps growing and growing and expanding and just realization that we will never know everything there is to know. And I've been very privileged here on the podcast and my life to have many amazing mentors who have had extraordinary depth and breadth of knowledge. But I've come to the realization that, in fact, it's not having incredible knowledge that is the most useful skill. The most useful skill is being persistent in asking the right questions or asking better questions. And so I think this is one of the reasons I was really looking forward to having a conversation with you is oftentimes here on the podcast, I interview people who have had decades of experience or have had extensive experience. But in some cases, it's also very valuable to have conversations with those of us who are starting out in the early stages of our journey to gain additional perspective on what are the questions that other people are asking and how can we become better at asking questions. So now I'm going to bounce that ball to you. You indicated that you start asking the questions why? What were some of the questions that you asked that gave you that resulted in finding interesting answers?

Well, one of the questions I started asking, and this was specific to peanut production, was I had a neighbor that was not getting foliar blight right across the road using the same practice as far as fertilizer practices, agronomic practices, and he was not getting it for a few years. And so I came to find out as well as I asked questions and began to understand one, I was spraying for worms to keep worms out of peanuts. And it was kind of a deterrent product, but it also had some antifungal and antibacterial, and it was organic approved, but it was an essential oil. And so what I have figured out and began to understand now is I was preventing the bugs from coming in, but then I was killing all the beneficials on the phyllosphere that were there to protect my plant, the bacteria and the fungi. So, so whenever the conditions did get right, my plant was susceptible and his wasn't because he hadn't killed all of the good bacteria and good fungi on the leaf surface.

This is an important insight because, you know, there was a period of time a decade ago where I studied the mechanism and the modes of action of different pesticides and insecticides and herbicides very, very in depth. I wanted to know precisely how they worked inside plants and the effect that they had on microbial organisms and on insects and ultimately also on people. And the things that I learned about how these pesticides influence the human body could really freak you out in a significant way. And so I felt that this was important knowledge and important information that most people were not aware of, including most people in agriculture. And so at one point in time, I spoke about this quite a bit, and I don't anymore because we already live in a world that is just consumed by fear, pornography, and it's much more powerful to be for something than it is to be against something. I'd much rather describe the solutions and speak about the solutions and the challenges. But one of the things that I learned is that many of these pesticides, when they are these synthetic pesticides, when they are applied onto a plant, will actually switch a plant's immune system off for a period of three days, five days, a week, sometimes as long as three to four weeks, and they will actually increase the plant susceptibility to disease and insect pressure in the future. And I would often get asked the question, can this same thing be accomplished by natural insecticides and fungicides? And my answer, what you described for me just now is the first time I have ever heard a situation of an essential oil actually increasing disease susceptibility. So my answer historically has been, I'm not aware of any cases or any situations where that's the case. But you're describing you put on an essential oil for insect control and it increased disease susceptibility a month later.

Yes. So we were spraying it out every two weeks. That's about how long it was effective for. And so this was every two weeks and putting out three to four applications. And that would be throughout the season. Every time we would go out there, we would put it out. But being as it was a deterrent, it also was antifungal and antibacterial. So we were in essence, killing what was good on the leaf surface and making it susceptible for when the conditions got right. And so I have quit doing that, and lo and behold, we don't have any problems.

Remind me again, what was the specific disease that you were having problems with?

Foliar blight.

Foliar blight on peanuts?

Yes. And also we had enhanced leaf spot and web blotch. That was very much a lot worse in my fields than it was in my neighbor's field.

It is interesting that we know that many essential oils have. Practically all essential oils have significant antibacterial and antifungal properties, some of them much more so than others. So we really shouldn't be surprised. There's a part of me that is hesitant to ask for the specific product because concerns about what people might think about that from a negative perspective. But there's another part of me that says, hey, we do need to be aware that this is an issue. We need awareness. Can you tell us of what the active ingredient was.

The active ingredient was garlic.

Garlic. So it was garlic oil specifically. That is surprising. That's. I don't know if surprising is the right word, but that's interesting. It's the first case I've heard of that being the case. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. So we started this particular conversation. I asked about the questions that you asked. So what other scenarios came up for you that led to you asking different types of questions and trying to understand what was going on?

I think that one thing is asking questions. We have a lot of seed rot whenever we go to planting and trying to understand why we have a lot of seed rot inorganic, without seed treatments, conventional seed treatments on them, and coming back to the understanding of, you know, if the seed was grown under a conventional NPK program and the seed did not have all the things that it needed to thrive, when we put it in the soil without seed treatments on there, it is susceptible. And so, you know, we're working on different biology in furrow nutrition, in furrow seed soaks and getting some response. We're not all the way there, but we are getting, we are moving in the right direction. And so using products from AEA nutritional products, BioKoat, Gold Rejuvenate and then Spectrum, you know, to help give us some early season protection, we're moving the right direction. We haven't got it all figured out yet, but we are moving in the right direction.

What, what progress have you made so far? Are you seeing a smaller, I guess how is. My question is, how is it manifesting? Are you seeing a smaller percentage of seeds with seed rot or better vigor overall?

What are you seeing better vigor? I mean, specifically in rooting a lot stronger roots as far as bigger roots, more robust. We're getting more there and then we are getting more bigger because as soon as we can get the peanut out of the ground and it starts photosynthesizing, then we're safe. And so the fastest, you know, we can get it up and growing, then the better. And so we're seeing faster. We were seeing, I think in tests that I pulled this year, we were seeing, you know, germination happening 24 to 36 hours before the untreated test. And so the longer it's in the ground, the more, you know, time it has to be overcome by the disease. And so getting it out of the ground faster has, has helped.

Yeah, we're going to be releasing a new product, hopefully in time for this next spring's growing season that I spent quite some time researching. It's probably four or five years ago at this point where, you know, so, so frequently we have seeds that come out of the ground slowly and when they do emerge, the leaves are pale yellow for sometimes for a period of several days. It takes some time for them to darken up and to gain chlorophyll and become darker green and start photosynthesizing. And that's because of a lack of nutritional integrity in the seed. In many cases. We developed this liquid mineral treatment. This is not biology, but specifically minerals designed to facilitate that seed germinating quickly and getting out of the ground and turning dark green and photosynthesizing right from the get go. It's been quite remarkable some of the early results that we've observed. But that's. I guess I'm talking about it and I'm officially not supposed to talk about it yet. So all of you need to just keep this under your lid until next spring. Hopefully we'll be able to release it at that point. So tell us, I've been focusing our conversation on your prior experience with your organic production and your organic transition. But then when you started listening to the podcast a couple of years ago and started making some shifts and changes there, what has changed for you in the last couple of years? What changes have you made and what have you been observing?

So last year I was still on a, you know, chemistry based program based off soil tests. I'm even in organic. We're testing and applying what we think is needed. So we did that, but then I came on top of that and we did some in season soil primer which was actually 30 days after plant and started doing some foliar feeds then and we got those results back and even putting the soil primer on June 1st, so roughly 30 to 40 days after plant, we still saw a 20% increase over the control and so and then.

20% increase in an increase in what?

In cotton production. 20% more yield. Okay with the primer. And then this year, which I've heard you not make this recommendation that it's not good to cut cold turkey, but I just jumped in head first and I said, you know, I'm going all in. I want to do more of what's good and less of what's bad. And so we planted some multi species covers, planted oats and rape. Those worked well down here because of having very oxidized soils. We, we are not a no till organic operation. We significantly decreased tillage this year. We actually knifed undercutter cover crops and then planted into them. You know we put the soil primer out last fall, but the biggest differences were where I had done the few soil primer test the previous year. One year later, that's where we were seeing multiply effect. Bigger plants, healthier plants. And so it just keeps building is what I'm seeing on itself. And improving the soil over time, there.

Definitely is a momentum that starts occurring. That's a lot of fun. What were the crops that you were observing the second year effects on cotton specifically? Was it cotton?

It's hard. It's hard to know. Yes. So it's hard to know. Peanuts, because you just got a little bit. You can dig one up and pull it up. But we will know that we harvest here in a few weeks. How that looks.

Now, I find it interesting that you used oats and rape as a cover crop and you just got done a bit ago telling us that you've had 5 to 7 inches of rainfall each year for the last couple of years. So how did the, how did the COVID crop? I guess this was on irrigated ground probably. Did you do any of these cover crops on dry ground? Dry land?

I did weed on dry land, but that specific farm did not get enough moisture to even get a crop up on. It was a dry land farm. And so that. That farm specifically has only had like 2 inches of rain in like the last 16 months. So we did not get that crop up. But on irrigated we did. And we saw a lot of really neat things going on just with how soft the soil was. I'll give this example. So on a conventional field, we've got a lake bottom that will fill up every time we get a 3 or 4 inch rain. And we sprayed it with soil primer because it runs under the pivot. And this comment was made by my dad. He's farmed that field for 30 years. We got a three inch rain. You can see all the washes going through the fields that it flowed to the south of us. It kind of flows through there. And that lake bottom always fills up. But where we put the primer the next where we normally would have a 10 or 15 acre lake, there was no water standing.

Wow.

My dad said he had never seen that in the 25 years he'd been farming that field.

That is awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. That's such a common story about primer and just increasing its ability to aggregate soil and floculate soil to some depth. You know, the piece that amazes me is it's just biology is so powerful and so robust and it's course it's more powerful in combination with plants. But how is it that you could put on a microbial inoculant, spray it onto the soil surface and you get aggregation 8 or 10 or 12 inches deep, or you get the removing of compaction that deep in a matter of a few months. That's the piece that always amazes me is how do they move that deeply that fast?

I don't know.

Do you have any idea where your compaction zones were that were preventing the water from moving down through?

I don't specifically, but it was very. Our area is sandy, but this ground actually, you know, probably had a CDC of like 15 or 17 and we call that top dirt where we're at. And so. But it was very compacted. We went in there with the petrometer or penetrometer and you know, we were, you know, going over 150 pounds at, you know, at 2 inches deep in some areas. And so we were very compacted. And obviously the soil primer definitely helped with that.

Yeah, that is so remarkable. You know, when the soil primer first came out 15 years ago, actually before soil primers, when we were just using rejuvenate alone, farmers would share stories of being able to till their soil with the tractor running one gear faster because it was that much softer and it went through that much easier. And it's just. That's some pretty interesting evidence of microbial products. Although I guess in reality rejuvenate is not a microbial product when you stop and think about it. So when you described the cumulative effects that you saw from some of the fields you treated last year, what are some of the highlights of the current year's applications and the shifts that you have been observing? What have been some of the highlights for you this year?

Well, I mean, specifically back to that field, we did get bigger plants, but that was not because of elongated node spacing. We just had more nodes per plant. And so that field looks, you know, very good and it's a very good test. Other things that we saw this year, I'll give this week, we did not see any bug pressure in cotton. When my neighbors did have bug pressure in cotton. I mean, you could smell the fermentation coming from the bowls that were being eaten. And this would have been a mile and a half away from me, so right beside me. And then the other things we were seeing is, you know, we don't have, you know, under the NPK program, we were growing, you know, six foot tall cotton plants with bolls just Kind of scattered, not tight bowl spacing. And under this program, you know, our plants are half as tall but have more fruit on them and the fruit is tighter to the stem. And the other thing that's been a big deal this year is a six lot cotton bowl. It's kind of like finding a needle in the haystack. You know, we don't find those very often. I've been finding them all over my fields. All I have to do is go in there and look for a few minutes and I will find one. And still, typically, cotton is going to be three, four and five lock bolls. Five locks are great. That's what everybody wants. We have a lot of sixes. And I think that that is just a testament to growing a different way and plant health being that good.

Yeah, that is remarkable. Is, is that occurring also on the soil that is being treated for. For the first time, the first growing season?

Yes, it is.

Yeah. That's intriguing. You know, I've, I don't know that I've shared this on the podcast, but I certainly have in presentations and in other places. When we think about how cotton is grown today versus, and this is true for other crops as well, where we, we've ended up, this, this system that I'll call contemporary agriculture is just really, really screwed up sometimes where we're putting on a dozen applications of plant growth regulators along with 200 plus units of nitrogen at the same time. It's like anyone who looks at that from a fresh perspective with a fresh set of eyeballs just goes, wait, what, what did you just say? It's. I've used the analogy that it's like driving with, with both the brake and the accelerator all the way to the floor. And the point that I would like to make is that the situation didn't come about all at once. It was gradual creep over time. It's just like someone who is ill and goes to the doctor and the doctor gives them a pill to cover up their symptoms. And a few months go by and they come back and they get a second pill to cover up the side effects of the first pill. And a few years go by and they end up with a handful of pills, when in some cases they're probably better off without any of them. The point is though, that at each point in that journey, at every step along the way, the doctor never intended harm. He always had the desire to help the patient. And you have this creep over time where these, we get additional applications and the use of one product to cover up the effects of another. That's exactly the same scenario that is happening in so much of agriculture. It's happening in cotton, it's happening in apples, it's happening in a lot of different crops. And so it is interesting when I hear stories like the one you're sharing the, you know, the piece that perhaps surprises me and maybe it shouldn't, but it surprises me at how easy it is to make significant improvements. Like a 20% yield improvement is a big jump and yet it wasn't really all that hard, was it?

No, it was easy. It was one pass. It definitely made me a believer. And you know, the other things we're seeing is a reduce in the amount. We had the hottest year on record. But I did not see my plant stress for moisture. Whenever I was not throwing a whole bunch of nitrogen out there where I could see everybody else's plant stressing and wilting down from the heat, our plant stayed strong. The other significant thing we had a, we had a lot of hail storms come in in May. And so we beside, we grow upland cotton, that is shorter staple cotton. And now we grow a some Pima cotton, which is a longer staple cotton. And I wanted to grow some Pima, but this was the, you know, the 10th of June and I decided to plant Pima then, which is about 40 days later than the insurance deadline. And it's 40 days later than anybody said was possible to make Pima. And as of two weeks ago, we had hard bowl at the top. And so we were able to grow a 150 day Pima crop in 100 days. And it looks great.

Yes. That's awesome. That's awesome. You're probably right on the threshold of harvesting that in the next couple of weeks, right?

Yes, we are. It's right.

Do you have any thoughts or estimates on the comparative yield of that crop versus one that would have been planted earlier? What are you seeing?

You know, it's really hard to say cotton yields yield, you know, to judge it, but this looks like this is the hottest year it we had. I believe in 2011 we had 48 days over 100 degrees and this year we were at 46. And so it's one of the hottest years on record and we did not have any rain besides, you know, a few days ago we finally started catching some. But the yields look as good or better than I've ever had them. And it's on one of the worst years of growing that we've seen. So we are looking at a lot of, I believe, you know, two and a half Bale to three bale cotton that the highest yield I know of in the area growing organic Pima is three bales. And I think we're knocking at that door on the worst year we've had in a long time.

Yeah, that is remarkable. But I want to go back to the comment that you shared about your plants not showing drought stress when you're not applying as much water as you might have or as might be expected. And in the I forget, there was a webinar that I spoke at a year or so ago where I spoke about drought proofing your plants, where I went into some detail about how nitrogen actually increases a plant's water use requirements. And it's a really big number. When you sit down and do the math about the volume of water that is required to enable a plant to convert nitrates plus the reduced water loss from respiration, it's something like, as best as I can guesstimate, it's in the range of 30 to 50% increase of more water required if a plant has a surplus of nitrogen, particularly in the form of nitrate. So can you tell us a little bit more detail? How much have you reduced nitrogen applications and did I understand you correctly that you also reduced water applications? And how have your fields been comparing with others in the area?

So we reduced nitrogen applications to zero across everything.

Where had you been historically?

Roughly about 50, 40 to 50 pounds of nitrogen per bale of cotton that we hope to produce most of time, hoping to produce, you know, three bales. So 150 pounds of nitrogen in that area. And we reduced it to zero this year. And on the SAP test that we took, we still did not lack in total nitrogen. We still had plenty for the plant to grow. Our water usage went down just because our aquifer is going down. And so the amount of water that we can put out is significantly less. And then you top that with having a very dry year. Then it just multiplied it. So one of my best friends did a trial comparing AEA's program under the same pivot to a NPK program. And visibly out in the field in the hot summer, the same amount of water the next rows over, the NPK program was wilting down and the AEA program was showing no signs of stress. And so we are fixing to harvest that and he's going to get that data. But there was a in the same field, same water, same soil, same rotation, same everything. Because I'm comparing my field to neighbor's fields, this is under the same field there was a drastic difference.

Well, In a world where we have increasing vagaries of the weather and where water becomes an ever more precious resource, I think all of us working together collectively to figure out how to optimize water use efficiency had better move up the priority list really fast.

Yes. So we started putting in instead of under pivot systems, eye wobblers, which is just spraying in the air. We have implemented Dragon Drip which the pivot is pulling a drip line behind so that we're cutting out that evaporation that may be 20 to 30% when it's 110 degrees outside. And because our soils are typically too sandy to have drip subsurface drip systems, we are putting them on pivots so that we can, you know, get those benefits from the saving at least what water we're pumping out. We know we are using it and getting it to the plant.

Yeah, I think those are, those are all important pieces that we're going to have to figure out and to work on. I want to, I'm still in the back of my mind, I'm still smiling internally about this new thing that I've learned that we can have a plant essential oil that can actually have a negative long term effect on disease and insect susceptibility. So what does your current application schedule look like? You described how historically you used to be putting the garlic on, garlic oil on every two weeks. What does that look like for you now? What's your current management system?

My current management system is just been this year been giving the plant what it needs according to the SAP test. And since we do not have those plants are not over nitrified. I have not had any worm pressure in peanuts or cotton. So I've had no need to spray any organic insecticides on them. The other thing that we saw after the hailstorm, we planted some corn and because it was so hot, we had higher levels of ammonia showing up in the plant because corn was stressing it's not. We thought it was going to be an El Nino year and cool off and that did not happen. And so we did have some worm pressure coming to the corn, which we always had worm pressure. But we did and we got the corn earworm actually got down in the world. So a contact which most organic insecticides are contact only. And we put out a solution from AEA to bump the plant health and bump the bricks and we killed all the worms inside the world of the plants.

Boy, isn't that so much fun when that happens?

Yes, it is. I was amazed.

Yeah, it's, you know, the Amazing part. We have such an incredible team of people at aea. And one of the things that I try to remind myself to just pause and realize how incredible it is is that our team isn't even surprised by those stories anymore. Like, it's just, it's just another day at work. It's just another, it's just become a routine expectation. And for us, it's commonplace. And for most of the world that is not familiar with how we approach plant nutrition. It's just amazing. Like, how can that even be real? And yet it happens all the time.

The other things that we saw, specifically to peanuts, where we've had peanut disease before, it happens every year, we did see. I have to only compare to my neighbor because we all broke out the land at the same time. Under the, the typical organic NPK program. He was spraying for pod rot, Fusarium pythium, about six weeks ago. That's when it showed up in his fields. And last week it did show up in a couple of mine, but that was about a month and a half later. And we're only two weeks to harvest. So it didn't, you know, we are, we're moving up the plant health pyramid, but, you know, we're not there yet. But that's okay because we're making big strides. But know, in that direction and in that way. The other very interesting thing that I saw in peanuts, typically we don't need nitrogen on peanuts because they're a legume. We inoculate them with, you know, an inoculant for them, a rhizobia inoculant. And typically about 45 days, after 45 to 60 days, after that plant comes up, we will visibly see nodules on the plants because that plant starts feeding those organisms so that they will fix nitrogen. And that is even under a program where putting nitrogen, because we can't not put nitrogen because it's just in the compost. Whenever the NPK in the chemistry tests were coming, we needed phosphorus, we need potassium, so we had to apply that. So even at that, we were still nodulating somewhere around 60 days. When we put out the soil primer, I was honestly getting nervous because I was seeing no nodulation on the plants up until about 80 to 90 days. And so that showed me that the soil primer was providing enough nitrogen that those plants, you know, waited 30ish more days longer to actually form that symbiotic relationship before they finally became in need of nitrogen. And so the, the scene like the primer was even more powerful. Far as the amount of nitrogen it could fix than 100 to 125 pounds of nitrogen.

You described such an interesting phenomena, and it's one that we know that there are all these different organisms that can fix nitrogen and provide it to plants in addition to rhizobium. And historically they haven't been given due consideration. They haven't been managed well. And I had a handful of years ago, I had a farmer tell me that his soils, this was in cotton production, that they were working with cotton soils, that they were running into the challenge of these soils having excessive, generating excessive levels of nitrogen. And based on their estimations and their testing, they were documenting a gain of 300 units of nitrogen per year. And so this was on another continent, it was not in North America. I hadn't seen it firsthand. And while I believed that it was possible and could be the case, I had no reason to doubt the data. It was still, it wasn't something that I'd experienced firsthand. But this year, or not to that degree, it's something that I haven't experienced to that degree. I mean, 300 units of nitrogen gain with no cover crops and no compost and no manure, just coming excluded exclusively from soil microbial population is pretty significant. But it seems I don't have the hard data to support actual pounds per acre. But what I can say is this. It's very clear that we now have soils that are generating more nitrogen than the crop requires, that we're getting crops that have surplus levels of nitrogen showing up consistently the entire season from germination all the way through to harvest, with none being applied and none having been applied for years. And also no cover crops and no manure. And that's kind of exciting. That changes the story on how we should think about managing biology and what it's really capable of delivering. So, Kelton, one of the things I wanted to ask you about, you're still early stages in your journey of thinking about shifting your farms management practices. You described how you went in all in this year. What are you looking forward to? What, what are you optimistic about or pessimistic about for the future?

I'm really looking forward to hoping having to have an impact on the amount of weed pressure that we have, you know, high tillage, we're putting, we're not putting excess nitrogen and potassium out there, specifically with pigweed and really looking forward and, you know, we're trying to figure out what, what are those pigweeds, what are they trying to do? What are they trying to Fix, because I don't believe that we can go to a no till here in this area, because like Rick Clark, he's, you know, growing a lot of rye to roll down to roller crimp. Well, we are not in an area where we can grow 10 tons of biomass. Even if we irrigate it all year long, all winter long, we might grow two tons of biomass. And so not having that mass to lay down. And so, you know, trying to figure out in this arid environment, how do we reduce tillage as much as possible, which we are doing, reduce that oxidizing effect there and reduce the amount of nitrogen. And because it seems like we are gaining on the disease and the insects. And so the next big thing in organic agriculture is the weeds or the unwanted plants, they are there trying to do their thing. And so we're, you know, specifically looking at different cover crops that have some of the same rooting structure as a pigweed, that have the similar plant growth as a pigweed. So that what the pigweed is trying to fix in the summer, the issues in the soil, we're trying to fix it over the winter to start gaining on that and moving in that direction.

That's an excellent way to think about that. What are some of the current questions that you have or scenarios that have perplexed you that you're hoping to develop solutions for in the future? In addition to the weeds, I guess you've partially. You've partially answered that question.

The biggest thing is trying to figure out how do we reduce the amount of tillage, you know, to get to the no till organic, and trying to figure out how do we reduce it and reduce it and reduce it so that we can continue to, you know, regenerate these soils instead of as soon as we build a little bit, we knock ourselves all the way back, you know, whenever we start going. And now I'm not saying all tillage is bad, but excess tillage is. And so trying to figure out how to find that fine line here in this arid environment of how to manage that and steward that in the best way possible so that we can, you know, regenerate ourselves. We have. So our rains have become more sporadic and really heavy whenever they do come. And so building that structure so that we actually take in the water whenever it does rain, instead of it just running off into the lake bottoms is a big thing, because we need. We need to hold on to that rainwater. And so, you know, trying to figure out how to best build soil aggregates and, you know, implementing coming in and Grazing cows and just trying to figure out what is the fastest way possible to regenerate these soils while still providing an income for my family. And so that, that is something that's on my mind constantly.

It is still early days. You're still at the point of approaching harvest on your first year, really, of going all in across the entire operation. And so in a sense, it's premature for me to ask this question, but do you have any preliminary insights or thoughts on how this transition will affect your farm's overall financial performance? The economic performance.

In comparison to my typical NPK insect program, even disease program with organic fungicides, you know, we're currently about 20 to 25% less cost doing the full AEA program. And our yields are, are looking very, very good. So I think our yields are probably up as a whole. We had good yields in the past, but it'd be this field had a good yield and this one didn't because it got attacked something. And what I'm seeing this this year is consistency, which is what we, we need. We don't need a bragging field. We need to make consistent yields, consistent crops to be able to, you know, financially support the farm. Just because I have one to brag about in the coffee shop doesn't mean the farm is doing good. So consistency in the crop across the board is one thing I see this year that I have not had in the past.

Are you telling me that you don't make decisions about what to do in your farming operation based on coffee shop and church conversations? I'm joking.

No, no, no, no. I try not to. I try not to. So it, yeah. So it's, it's been a big change. And one thing too that I have found that is beneficial is I've got a great group of people that work for me and teaching them along the way of why this matters and what those. And getting your team to understand what you're trying to do and accomplish that way they know what they're going out there to do has impact. It's not just being told what to do. They understand why we're doing what we're doing. You know, I think that's a big thing, is teaching your team around you why you're doing what you're doing so that they can come alongside you and believe in it and be more particular about it because they start to understand the impacts that it can have.

There is no question that when you have your team really invested in making a difference and understanding the why, then execution changes, everything changes. And the results and the outcomes change as well. Yeah. Well, Kelton, I want to say thank you for joining us and for sharing your experiences so far. I'm really looking forward to checking back in with you a few years down the road once you've had a few more years of experience and see what you've unlearned after a couple of years and what new questions and new challenges you'll be facing. So I look forward to that conversation. Thank you for being here and for sharing. I really appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

John the team at AEA and I are dedicated to bringing this show to you because we believe that knowledge and information is the foundation of successful regenerative systems. At aea, we believe that growing better quality food and making more money from your crops is possible. And since 2006, we've worked with leading professional growers to help them do just that. At aea, we don't guess. We test. We analyze. We provide recommendations based on scientific data, knowledge and experience. We've developed products that are uniquely positioned to help growers make more money with regenerative agriculture. If you are a professional grower who believes in testing instead of guessing, someone who believes in a better, more regenerative way to grow, visit advancingecoag.com and contact us to see if AEA is right for you. Thank you for listening and we look.

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