From Dirt To Soil with Gabe Brown

Hi friends, this is John. I'm passionate about developing regenerative agriculture systems that improve soil health, produce crops that are completely resistant to diseases and insects, and produce food of such an exceptional quality that we can have a legitimate conversation about growing food as medicine. I've been fortunate to meet many people with incredible knowledge and information about soil and plant systems. However, much of this knowledge and information is scattered all over the place. There are many incredible stories and a lot of knowledge that have not been widely shared. I founded Advancing eco Agriculture in 2006 to bring this knowledge together in a more coherent fashion and incorporate it into products and growing systems that growers can easily put into practice. It's my personal mission to have these regenerative agriculture systems become the mainstream globally, the status quo against which all other growing systems are compared to. To achieve this goal, I want to share the knowledge that we have learned in the last decade and make it available to everyone. These concepts and principles about regenerative systems can be applied anywhere, and when they're properly applied, they will increase farm profitability and resilience to climate stress. If you have any questions, suggestions, comments or topics of ideas that you would like for me to discuss, please connect on social media or email me. JohnGenerativeAgriculturePodcast.com Be sure to sign up for our email list@regenerativeagriculturepodcast.com Hope you enjoy and thank you for listening. Hi friends, I'm back with Gabe Brown. Gabe, you've done a lot of work since we spoke last time, or maybe I should say a lot has come to fruition. Your book has been published and lots of people are talking about it. How are you feeling about the reception the book has had?

Thank you, John, A pleasure to be with you. I'm a bit overwhelmed. I was approached a number of years ago by Chelsea Green Publishing and they asked if I'd be interested in writing a book and I didn't think I'd have time to do so, but they're a bit persistent and I made the time and we got it done. And I'm a little surprised, I guess flattered by the reception that I've had from it so far. A lot of people are very interested. We've had really good reviews. I know that it's number one in Amazon and three different categories right now it's first week out, but things are looking pretty good.

That is exciting, and I personally find it really exciting as well that the news and the desire, the hunger for information about regenerative agriculture has grown so rapidly in the last few years. Even five years ago, there wasn't nearly the attention. How have you seen the interest in regenerative agriculture evolving and shaping?

Well, I certainly agree with you, John. You know, I've been 15 plus years out on the speaking circuit, traveling around, speaking at conferences. And like you say, it's really only the last, especially three years, where, you know, it used to be, you pick up a magazine, it was rare to find an article on soil health or regenerative ag. Now you can't hardly pick up a farm publication without seeing one or more articles on soil health and regenerative agriculture. And it really is overwhelming, which is good to see. But I think it also goes to show that producers are truly searching for something else. Let's face it, the current industrialized, commoditized farm production model that we're seeing so prevalent today just is not working. And we see that with the low returns in production agriculture. And I think the only way and the best way I should say that producers are going to mitigate this is by taking things into their own hands, so to speak, and focusing on their resource and really working with nature instead of against her.

Gabe, I know this is something you've spoken a lot about, but I think worth thinking about. When you say farmers use the resources that they have and working with nature, what is the resource, the number one resource that growers have that they're not taking advantage of? What are they mostly missing?

I really believe, John, that as producers, we really don't understand how soil functions. Whenever you buy something, whether it be a tractor, a combine, a baler, you get an owner's manual. But nobody gives farmers or ranchers an owner's manual for the soil. So we are taught just through formal education and through what we read and see on newspapers, tv, publications from extension universities that farming and ranching, it's like a chemistry set. We have to add these inputs in order to get X in return. But really, when we look at the regenerative model, it's about capturing sunlight through photosynthesis. And I don't care if you're in grain production or if you're in livestock production, it all goes back to harvesting the natural solar energy through photosynthesis of plants, pumping that carbon into the soil and feeding the life in the soil, the biology in the soil. Now, I don't want people to think that I'm saying zero inputs. That's not what I'm saying at all. Because we can use inputs to tweak things where they're needed. But we really have to focus on the natural process of photosynthesis cycling that carbon feeding soil biology, then that biology is what drives the system.

Gabe, I think there's a lot of room for misunderstanding when we talk about soil, soil carbon, developing soil carbon. We had an experience recently where we were working with farms where with the application of some paramagnetic rock powder that had essentially no carbon present, it triggered carbon sequestration and a carbon buildup in the soil such that soluble carbon levels as measured on a soil analysis, almost doubled in a matter of about a six month period, to such a degree that it essentially ended up creating a nitrogen deficiency in the crops that were growing in these various fields. We tried this experiment on about 20 different operations and that really has led to a lot of interesting conversations. I think nitrogen is one of the pieces that is very often mismanaged or poorly understood that has a really negative impact on carbon. So speaking to your comment about the owner's manual and understanding soil function, how do you think about soil carbon and nitrogen and managing the exchange between those two?

Well, we have to remember that everything has a carbon to nitrogen ratio. It's a balance. And you can't separate the two. They work together in harmony. We also have to remember that soil typically is a low nitrogen system. You know, we have to look at it and realize that in the current production model, we're trying to outproduce our environment time and time again and we're adding these copious amounts of nitrogen. When we do that, what happens? The soil is going to try and balance that carbon nitrogen ratio. Where is it going to go for the carbon? It's going to go for the carbon in the soil and it's going to go for the carbon in those soil aggregates. And as that biology can then consumes the carbon in those soil aggregates to balance the carbon nitrogen ratio, we're actually having a detrimental and negative impact on soil function. A negative impact on water infiltration, a negative impact on water holding capacity. One of the things we focus on on our operation here is that we do not add excess nitrogen. And what we're seeing then is this balance is in play and we have the proper carbon to nitrogen ratio. Now, we may not get as high a yields as say for instance, some of the farms, ranches in the surrounding area, but our profitability is much, much higher. And I tell people I will take profit over yield any day, you know, because in order to be sustainable as an operation, we have to be profitable. So I think we gotta get out of this mindset of the yield and pound mentality and get into one where we're talking about profitability per acre. And that all has to do with working with carbon nitrogen ratios. And carbon is a cycle. So often we forget that. We hear all this about climate change and we have too much carbon in the atmosphere. And that's true, we do. And people want to sequester it into the soils, But I try and educate them. No, we need to cycle it in the soils, because carbon is a cycle and it cycles through. You know, a soil aggregate only lasts approximately four weeks. So we got to take this carbon out of the atmosphere, put it back into the soil so it can be cycled via biology to feed the plants that are growing in that ecosystem.

I think that's a very key point. It also relates to some of the things that I've learned over the last several years about soils needing to be aerobic versus anaerobic. I learned that a healthy soil needs to be an aerobic soil with good oxygen levels. And what I've learned more recently is, in fact, that's not necessarily true. But what soils really need is they need good gas exchange. It's not so much about the oxygen level as it is about good gas exchange. I think you're describing essentially the same thing.

Yep. We need to realize that that soils are subaquatic ecosystem biology lives in and on thin films of water in the soils. Well, we need those pore spaces then to provide the home for that biology. And we have to have, like you say, that exchange of oxygen, other gases, it respirates. The soil's alive and it respirates and we need that porosity in order for it to do so. Now, interestingly enough, John, I'm part of a long term research project that's going on at my place. Dr. John Norman and Abe Collins with Landstream are quantifying what we've been able to do on our operation by using these regenerative practices. And over the past six months, they've pulled over 194 foot soil probes off of 523 acres of my operation. And what Dr. Norman found is that much of my soils now, he says are approaching 70% pore spaces. Think of that.

That's incredible.

Yeah, it's incredible. And besides that, we now have on average on those 523 acres, 96 tons of carbon per acre in the cycle, which is just a phenomenal amount. I tell people I can walk onto any operation and tell the potential profitability of that operation by the amount of carbon they have cycling in their system. And remember, carbon and nitrogen go hand in hand. But we look at the amount of carbon you have cycling that can tell the potential profitability of an operation. So I think this data that Dr. Norman and Abe Collins are collecting is going to be instrumental to proving to society that regenerative agriculture can play a major role in many of the ills we're seeing in society today, Whether it be problems with too much nitrogen, phosphorus going down our watersheds, with too much CO2 in the atmosphere. And I think it's going to relate to nutrient density of foods also. And we are going to be testing that in the near term. So regenerative agriculture can play a major role in mitigating a lot of these quote, unquote ills we're seeing today.

Gabe, you've mentioned a couple of pieces I want to follow up on, but first, I want to go back 96 tons of carbon per acre. There are a couple thoughts that come to mind when you mentioned that. Figure 1 is, do you have any idea where you started originally or what the surrounding environment is at the moment?

Yeah, unfortunately, John, I tell people, you know, when I started down this path 25 plus years ago, I didn't know that the good Lord had those four years of disasters. He was going to put me through three years of hail and a year of drought. I was just trying to stay alive. So we do not have an original benchmark on this. Now we can look at surrounding farms, and we're just starting to do that. Dr. Norman says most of the farms in the area are going to be about 10 to 20 tons of carbon per acre. So. Wow.

The second thought that comes to mind, thinking about that quantity and volume of carbon held in the soil profile. We just spoke a few moments ago about the carbon to nitrogen ratio. How much nitrogen per acre does that represent? And that's where you can gauge the yield and productive potential of a farm. Because it's not just carbon that also reflects nutrient release capacity as well.

That's right. And I don't have those figures in front of me. I'm waiting for Dr. Norman to release them. So I don't want to speak out of turn, but it's a significant, significant amount. You know, what we were seeing is that a lot of my soils, it's not uncommon to have well over 200 pounds of nitrogen per acre being available to the plant. So there's a significant amount that's available. Now realize some of that's in the organic form, some's in the inorganic form. But with the biology that we have, and this gets into a whole nother topic that I think needs to be brought up and said, you know, there's a real problem with the soil testing that's being done today for the fact that the vast majority of soil tests only look at the inorganic fraction of NP and K that's in the soil. They don't look at the organic fraction and then the biology that's in the soil and how much of that organic fraction the biology will be able to convert to usable forms. And now just recently, of course, there's new research that come out that shows that plants are actually able to take up some organic forms of these nutrients. So that's a big problem in production agriculture. We're not giving credit to all we have available in healthy, functioning soil. And so because of that, the result of that is we're over applying many of these nutrients.

I'd love to explore that a bit more. Gabe, can you elaborate a bit on how can plants absorb crop compounds that are not simple ions from a soil solution?

I'm not the person to ask that, John. I do not hold a PhD in this. I would recommend you have someone like Ray Archulet on who could explain that more in depth. And further, the research paper that I read shows that plants themselves have the ability to absorb some of those complex nutrients. They used to think that wasn't possible, but new research has shown that it actually is occurring.

That's been a contention that I've had for a long time, that plants must have the capacity to absorb microbial metabolites and amino acids and similar compounds from the soil profile. And one of my arguments has been that plants have the capacity to absorb complete compounds in the form of insecticides. We know that we can use insecticide seed treatments and have them absorbed by the plant and be distributed throughout the entire plant profile. Neonicotinoids being a perfect example. And what makes us think that they wouldn't be able to do the exact same thing with naturally occurring compounds?

You're exactly right. You're exactly right. I think it goes, John, to show how little we really know about healthy soil ecosystems. You know, you talk to soil microbiologists such as Dr. Chris Nichols, and she'll tell you she doesn't know 1% of what's happening in the soil, you know, and she spent her life studying it. So this is very, very complex. And you know, just look at the amount of biomass that was generated in healthy native prairie ecosystems. Okay, now there Was nobody out there adding all these inorganic compounds, you know, npk, et cetera. So how do we get that type of production if plants weren't able to absorb some of these organic compounds?

Gabe, when you look at evaluating soil nutritional availability, you spoke a moment ago about the challenges of current modern soil analysis, which I completely agree with. In fact, a couple of months ago, we posted a podcast episode which is titled the Fallacy of Soil Analysis. What. What tools do you use to evaluate what is happening with the soil's potential nutrient release?

So when I say we, I'm talking about my partners in soil health consultants and I. What we are primarily looking at is the Haney soil test. In our opinion, it's the best test out there today to give farmers a good indication of how biologically active their soils are and the amount of that organic fraction that's going to be converted to inorganic. So it looks at both inorganic and organic fractions. That's the quickest, simplest, most inexpensive test out there today to get producers moving in the right direction. And then you can use another host of tests such as leaf tissue analysis, etc. To further understand what's happening, you know, in your particular field.

In our work, we've used plant SAP analysis and tissue analysis. Similar role. I think from my perspective, it's important for us to measure crops using some type of metric, if for no other reason than that plants are the final report card. The crop that we're growing is the final report card of what is actually truly happening in that ecosystem. Which speaks to a comment you made a few moments ago about nutrient density. How much nutrient density have we lost in our foods? And how can these types of management practices help shift it?

That's a great question, and one that I wish we honestly knew. Fact of the matter is there are very, very few studies being done on the nutrient density of our foods. And when you think of it, John, who's going to do that and fund those studies? In whose best interest is it? You're not going to see funding by the fertilizer industry for sure. You're not going to see funding by healthcare professionals. I hate to say it, but let's be honest. They make their living more or less, not in preventative medicine, but in treatment. And so the data, really good, concrete data, is not out there now. There's a lot of work being done. Currently, I've been working with Dr. David Montgomery, you know, who wrote the book Dirt and Growing a Revolution and several others. He is in the process of doing some nutrient analysis on foods to find this out. And so we're actually going to be doing some testing on our operation for that project. And part of the Landstream project with Gabe Collins and Dr. Norman, we're doing nutrient testing on what's being produced on our ranch. So we can see now there's some study done a number of years ago that say anywhere from 25 to 75% of the nutrients have been lost over the last 40 to 50 years. But realize this varies tremendously on where that food product is being produced. I read a study here, it's been a year and a half ago now where they tested oranges for vitamin C and they actually found some of the oranges had zero vitamin C in them. Now, why in the world would you eat an orange if it wasn't for the vitamin C? Right. You know, but that's the kind of the path we're on. And because there's nobody that really has skin in the game for finding this out, there's very little data out there, unfortunately. The other thing we're not talking about is all these plant secondary metabolites. Dr. Fred Provenza, in his new book that's just going to be released here next month, talks a lot about that. Now, one of the things we're really missing, you know, as producers, we add NP and K and a few micronutrients, But a plant needs, you know, 19 to 20 different elements to grow and thrive. But it also needs to produce all these plant secondary metabolites. And that's where really we're getting a lot of the health aspects from by eating these foods. It's not just about the protein we get and the major nutrients. It's about all these micronutrients and plant secondary metabolites.

I know that in the fruit and vegetable space, what is it that people really care about? They care about sweetness and flavor and aroma. There's a lot of conversation happening in different parts of the industry about beginning to quantify some of these plant secondary metabolites and develop quality parameters for what really defines a high quality fruit. And it's a very challenging conversation because these plant secondary metabolites can be very different between different species of fruit. It's a broad field to look at, but I think it's something that's important for us to look at. For many years, there's been conversations about food biofortification, and essentially we're using different terminology, but that's essentially what we are describing is we're talking about natural biofortification as it was meant to be.

Exactly. And we see this in, you know, I'm blessed. Here we have about 2,000 acres of what we consider true, quote, unquote native range, which to our knowledge, it's never been tilled. And when you look at the animals that we have, whether it be cattle or sheep or chickens or our hogs out on those native pastures, they're eating a wide variety of different plants. We have well over 100 different species of grasses, forbs and legumes on there. When you understand that plants have the ability to send out rhode exudates, to attract biology, to bring them and cycle different nutrients, think of what that brings to that plant. It brings a tremendous amount of diverse nutrients, and then the animal eating that plant will in turn be able to have access to all those different secondary metabolites. And then us consuming that animal, or if it's a vegetable, that plant, we satisfy our nutritional needs by the diverse biology in the soil bringing that diverse amount of nutrients to those plants. Well, in today's production model, we've eliminated that. We've eliminated the ability of that plant to get the diversity of nutrients it needs. And in turn, that then has a negative impact on human health. I had the good fortune just a month ago to spend a week with Dr. Zach Bush, one of the premier cancer treatment researchers in the United States. And he became totally convinced that the diseases and illnesses we're seeing in society today are due to the fact that we no longer have healthy soils. Because of that, we're not getting these nutrients in our plants. And so Dr. Bush now has committed the rest of his life to, to regenerative agriculture and getting people to understand that in order to truly find human health, we have to have healthy soils. Look for some good things coming out from Dr. Zach Bush.

I will look forward to that. I'll look forward to sharing that. That actually speaks to a question that I was hoping to ask you, Gabe, is you've done some exceptional work in the last 25 years. You've had a lot of intriguing experiences. What are you working on right now that you're really excited about? Or perhaps a different way of asking that question is what do you hope to contribute in the future? What substantial changes do you still hope that you'll be able to create?

What I really am trying to do with the rest of my life, John, now, is to educate consumers that their buying dollar matters. And if they truly want to be healthy, they need to source the food that they're eating from farms and ranches who are using regenerative practices. So I want to educate farmers and ranchers on how to regenerate our farms and ranches. But then also, let's face it, John, we're not going to change Washington. We're not going to change the farm program. You know, you can tweak little bits. The only way we're going to drive wholesale change in the way crops and livestock are being produced today is by educating consumers and then them voting with their buying dollars. So we need to quantify what's happening on these regenerative farms and ranches that we are truly able to produce food that's higher in nutrient density and that that food then can be available to the general public. And that's what I'm focused on right now.

Gabe. I think that's very admirable, and I think I have an additional viewpoint on the possibilities of driving change. I think there is another way of driving wholesale substantial change, which you are already doing, and that is you achieve what you incentivize. You are demonstrating a system where growers can be more profitable and more successful than with what they're currently doing, which you spoke to at the beginning of our conversation. And to me, that is so important and so fundamental because it is much more powerful to be for something than. Than it is to be against something. And it's not useful for us to have conversations about, let's say, anti GMO or anti Roundup or anti tillage. Those are not productive conversations. In the long term, I think we need to simply elevate to a higher level of thinking and develop farming models and farming systems that can bring farms to a much higher plateau of performance, that they completely displace the status quo. And I think doing that, which is something that I perceive you already doing very well, is actually going to be a very big driver of change, perhaps even greater than changing consumer demand.

Yeah, and you're exactly right. And that's why I talked about profitability up front. Now, in saying that I am excited here. I've been working with, doing a number of projects with General Mills and. And General Mills, especially in their organic division, has already gone down the path of incentivizing regenerative practices for their producers. And we're just starting to enter into a phase with General Mills where we're going to do it for oat production also, and they're going to incentivize their producers to move down the regenerative path so that too will lead to increased profitability for producers. I think you're exactly right on that.

John, and I don't disagree with the need for consumer education and driving consumer demand. Just looking at the history, it seems to me that educating consumers is something that takes a lot of time, costs a lot of money and happens very slowly, unless there is a major epidemic or some food safety crisis or something like that. Because if we look at the history of the organic industry as an example, it is something that certainly has made an impact and is having a growing impact in the last couple of years, but it's still just a fraction of a percent of our total food supply chain.

You're right. That's correct. I do think, though, that that crisis is occurring and we have a human health crisis in this country.

Country.

You know, the United States spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world. Yet last I heard, we're about the 42nd healthiest country in the world. We're first in cancer, ADD, ADHD, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, many of these other diseases. If that isn't a crisis, I don't know what is. Now, certainly it is going to be a long process to make consumers aware and educate them that it's directly related to the food they're eating and how the food's being produced in this country.

So, continuing with that thought, Gabe, what what needs to happen? Let's assume that the consumer demand is there and I'm just making up a hypothetical number, let's say by 2025, what needs to happen to be able to produce that healthy food for everyone in the country, or in the world for that matter, which is a separate conversation. What needs to happen to produce healthy food for everyone in the country by 2025?

Well, first of all, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility whatsoever. What's going to happen is, and we talked about this earlier, John, how you said in the last three years especially, we're seeing an overwhelming interest in demand for knowledge of regenerative agricultural practices. All it's going to take is we have to change producers one heart, one mind at a time. Producers are coming to the realization this is not working the current production model. So to go down a regenerative path, one in which they can actually lower input costs while they benefiting the environment, it'll benefit their pocketbook tremendously. And in turn, of course, they'll be producing food of higher nutrient density. And I think it's just a matter of people such as yourself and producers listening to your podcast, getting the information out there. And my partners and Iowa Soil Health consultants are overwhelmed daily by the amount of requests we're getting people wanting to move down this path. So I think this can occur quickly. I think it's taken a long time for the snowball to start rolling, but it's coming.

I see it coming quickly as well. Gabe, if you could reach out and touch one thing on every farming operation across the country, what would you change?

The thing I would change the most. And it's, it's kind of ironic. You know, we get 2 to 2500 visitors on our ranch every summer from all over the world, and they come here expecting to see this utopia and expecting to get a magic recipe card. And I said, just look, I grow things. We have to have living plants in the soil as long as possible throughout the year. Too many producers, they grow just that cash crop, and then the land sits idle. If we could just cover the land with growing plants, that's going to make the biggest impact on farms and ranches.

That's intriguing and it's such a powerful point. And it goes to what you mentioned earlier as well. I believe we don't give enough credit to, to the tremendous capacity that plants have to regenerate soil ecosystems to sequester carbon. And we, we don't stop to think about how the dozens of feet of topsoil in the Midwest were originally created. They weren't created with tillage and synthetic fertilizers.

Now, on that point, let me give you some more interesting data that Dr. Norman found out doing all these soil samples on our place. Now, again, when I started and bought this place in 1991, unfortunately, we did not archive the soils. So the closest thing I can get to it is neighboring soils, you know, under the same type of management scenario. Now, even my neighbors have moved into no till. No till is, is predominant in south central North Dakota here. But in saying that the a horizon on my Neighbor's soil is 4 to 5 inches. Okay, Dr. Norman, now on our crop landfields, the horizon is 28 to 29 inches. Okay, explain that one. Explain that difference. And just in a matter of 100 yards. The difference is. Yeah, the difference is regenerative agriculture. And, you know, there's much more to it than simply growing a plant. We need the biodiversity of plant species, insects, animal, you know, you need the whole program. But in saying that if we could just get people to grow things and through photosynthesis cycle, that energy that's free to us. The other thing I'm just always. We talked about carbon nitrogen ratios. You know, above every acre, there's approximately 32,000 tons of atmospheric nitrogen. Why Any farmer would write a check for synthetic nitrogen is just beyond me. I just can't understand that because it's free. All these things are free. Obviously you have to grow something, so the COVID crops going to cost you some money. But you know what I'm saying, we don't have to write the checks for it. It's all there. If we take advantage of these principles of nature.

Wow, that's tremendous. The nitrogen is there. And also I think there are tremendous untapped rock mineral reserves of nutrients in the soil profile that do not show up on a typical soil analysis. That once we have biology and plants and ecosystems working for us, we begin releasing minerals that are locked up in the soil reserves.

You're exactly right. One of the things I did, and I could get in trouble for this, but I was part of a project two years ago where we looked at four different management and I call it stewardship scenarios. You know, one was a heavy tillage operation, one was a minimum till, one was a no till, and then there was mine. And the amount of nutrients that are available in my soils was five to eight times higher than any of the other operations we looked at. And without getting in trouble, I'm just going to say they were. They were similar soils, close proximity. Okay, well, people for years told me, gabe, your system's going to crash. Yes, you can cycle nitrogen by growing legumes, but you're going to run out of phosphorus and potassium and all these other nutrients. And my answer was always, when I can mine that all the way to China, if I can get a root down there. Because if I can get a root down there, I'm going to get biology down there. We're going to be able to cycle, you know, those nutrients from that parent material, just like you said from the rocks. It's absolute fallacy to think that we can't cycle enough nutrients to sustain profitable crop and livestock production. You know, we can do this, but we have to have living plants feeding biology. And, you know, plants take in sunlight through photosynthesis, they produce all these compounds which they excrete. Well, part of those compounds, some of them combine with water and form a mild carbonic acid, and that helps break down all this parent material, making those nutrients available to biology.

Something that we've observed on crops in these situations, I'm sure you've observed as well, is we can have an abundant supply of phosphorus and potassium and other macronutrients without constantly adding them, even in the form of manure and compost in some geological profiles. And I think this is a very important conversation for us to have, particularly in the context of phosphorus. I mean, we have a very finite, very limited known global supply of phosphorus that is currently on track to be depleted in about 25 years from now. So we're going to have to figure out how to grow crops without constantly applying phosphorus, and we're going to have to figure it out relatively soon.

Well, we have not applied any synthetic nutrients on our own land since 2007 and yet tests show I have plenty of phosphorus. I honestly believe that the majority of producers out there in the United States, if they've applied phosphorus once in the last 20 years, they've got enough phosphorus to last them probably their farming lifetime. If they have the biology that can cycle that phosphorus.

That's a key if. And you're correct, because when you do the math of what the actual phosphorus requirement are in terms of grams or pounds of phosphorus per acre per crop, it's very, very low. There's only a small amount of phosphorus removed.

That's exactly right. And then you look at potassium. You know, to my knowledge, I have never ever seen a research project paper that has shown a positive yield response for adding potassium. Yet many producers do it year after year after year. I just don't understand it.

Gabe, I'd like to circle this conversation back around to the beginning where we started. We spoke a little bit about the book that has been published. What didn't make it into the book? What would you have loved to include? Or what has happened since it was published that you would have loved to have included? That didn't make it.

Well, what didn't make it in there was this data that Dr. Norman is as collected and is analyzing on my soils and how much porosity in the soil, how much water infiltration, the tons of carbon we have per acre, that's all new since realize books are about a two year project in the making. So that's all new and didn't get in there. Although maybe there'll be a sequel down the road. Signing up for another project.

Yeah, speaking. Going back to. We moved away from it. But when you spoke earlier of his research achieving 70%, did I understand you correctly saying 70% airspace in the soil?

That's correct. In, in some of the samples. He said we're approaching 70% pore spaces or air spaces in there. They had a real hard time. They were trying to collect four foot samples and in some cases they were getting less than 2ft of soil because it had compressed so much. Just pulling the sample out. And he was just amazed by that. In his career, he had never, ever seen that.

Dave, you don't understand that you can't do that because you're going to have to rewrite all the textbooks that say so. 50% solid and 25% air and 25% water.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. You know, it was all new to me. But realize Dr. John Norman, I don't know how familiar your listeners are with him, but he is the guy who invented most of the instrumentation that NASA uses to collect data from their satellites. So when they're looking at biodiversity and biomass production on the earth, Dr. Norman invented all this instrumentation. So this guy is extremely, extremely intelligent. And for him to say that, and I had the good fortune he spent a couple of weeks on our ranch with us and just tremendous opportunity to visit with him and to listen to him talk about what he was seeing on our operation, well, that is certainly.

Exciting and gives all of us a vision and a goal to strive for in our operations. So you've certainly been a leader in that. Gabe, thanks for developing that vision.

My pleasure.

Thank you for being here. I enjoy this conversation. I look forward to speaking with you again sometime soon.

Thank you, John. Always a pleasure. This podcast was brought to you by a great company that I work for, AEA Advancing Eco Agriculture, the leader in regenerative agriculture since 2006. At AEA, we believe in challenging the status quo to find more profitable and regenerative ways to grow crops. We also believe that healthy plants are resistant to pest and disease, and that to grow healthy crops, we must first think different. About agriculture, about empowering life instead of suppressing life, about regeneration versus degeneration. To achieve this, we formulate and sell products that help growers produce higher quality yield with less risk of crop failure. In short, we help growers make more money with less risk. Thanks for listening.