How Healthy Plants Create Healthy Soil

Well, good morning, everyone.

Welcome to our webinar. The topic that we wanted to speak.

About this morning was how healthy plants create soil.

I'm going to be presenting quite briefly.

And then leave lots of time for question and answers. So for decades, the idea within biological and organic agriculture that it takes a healthy soil to grow a healthy plant.

And the focus should be on building soil health. Let's use compost, let's grow cover crops, let's add manure, let's keep our soil.

Cover all the time so that we.

Develop a really healthy soil, and then.

That healthy soil will help us to.

Produce healthy crops and to produce healthy plants. This idea isn't entirely incorrect, but it.

Has resulted in an understanding that I.

Believe is very incomplete.

And what has been missing from the conversation is the realization that compost and other things create soil health, which then creates plant health.

But actually it's healthy plants that create healthy soil. It is the process of photosynthesis, where plants are sequestering carbon dioxide from the.

Air, producing sugars, producing carbohydrates, and sending significant proportion, perhaps even the majority of the total carbohydrates they produce out through the root systems as root exudates to.

Build soil organic matter. This is really what builds soil health.

So I think what has been. What has been missing is the question about what is really the root cause, what's the root driver?

And the point that I want to.

Make is that the engine that drives.

Soil health is plants. It's not soil.

In reality, without the contribution of plants, if you wouldn't have plants photosynthesizing and.

Sending these sugars out in the soil.

System, soil would be nothing more than decomposed rock particles.

You'd have sand. And I think this is a very.

Important piece that is beginning to be better understood, but still hasn't been widely recognized enough. Why is it so important?

Because when we understand that it is healthy plants that drive the ecosystem, we.

Will begin focusing on producing exceptionally healthy.

Plants, exceptionally healthy crops, rather than focusing on soil health. Growing really healthy crops is the pathway to developing soil health. It is the engine that drives the system. And if we focus exclusively on building.

Soil health and expect the plant health.

To be a secondary outcome, we can.

Get to the same place.

But it's going to take 10 or 20 years.

It's a process of decades rather than a process of three or four years. And I think this is really what has one of the key aspects that has allowed us to be so successful in our work at advancing eco agriculture and what we've really developed a reputation.

For is helping growers see rapid responses with disease and insect resistance, achieving higher.

Yields, achieving better plant quality.

All of those happen for us in.

The systems that we put together very quickly. We expect to see results in the first year.

We want to see results now, immediately. And then not only do we want.

To see immediate economic results, but also.

We expect to see soil organic matter build very quickly.

And the idea has been historically that.

This is a process which takes decades or perhaps even generations to build soil health and to build soil organic matter. Our observation and our experience has not been that is the case, but that.

In fact we can get results in.

The first year, the second year, the third year, we can build soil very quickly.

And the difference is in that instead of focusing on building soil health, we've instead focused on increasing plant health and letting that contribute to soil health. So how does this work?

How does it function? I've put together a diagram, I've spoken.

About it before, called the biological cascade.

Where we describe what we are seeing soil and plant ecosystems, and how it.

Was really designed to function. So the first step in this process of the biological cascade is where we have plants that are at what we.

Describe as being full capacity photosynthesis. It's improbable that we will ever have plants in an outdoor agricultural environment that is at 100% photosynthetic capacity, because very.

Generally we have limitations. Either inadequate carbon dioxide, inadequate water, perhaps.

Inadequate sunlight, when we have cloud cover, et cetera. And then addition to those three factors, we can often also have inadequate nutrition.

Not enough manganese, not enough nitrogen, magnesium.

Sulfur, et cetera, to facilitate 100% photosynthetic capacity and to enable the plant to.

Perform at that level.

So what we're talking about is most.

Plants today are somewhere. What we've come to accept as being.

Common and normal is plants that are.

In the neighborhood of about 15 to 20% photosynthetic capacity.

And while we're never going to be.

At 100% or it's unlikely, it is.

Possible to go much higher than 15 to 20.

We can easily move plants up to 40, 50, 60% photosynthetic capacity, and particularly when we have supportive weather conditions. So when that happens, we get this spike in photosynthesis. And as you can imagine, when you go from 20% to 60% photosynthetic efficiency, that means you get three times the volume, three times the quantity of photosynthesis.

Of sugar production in each 24 hour photoperiod. When that happens, the sugars now move.

Down out through the root system as root exudates in larger and larger concentrations.

And result in very aggressive bacterial populations.

And bacterial digestion in the rhizosphere. There's a lot of really interesting math.

Behind this movement of sugars to the.

Root system, but just the simple headline highlights version is we know that in a plant that is at, let's say, total yield, it's unlikely, probably not. So if you don't get triple the yield, you're also unlikely to get triple the plant biomass. Where does all the additional sugar go?

All the additional sugar, you, you'll get some increase in yield, you'll get some.

Increase in plant biomass.

It'll vary depending on which species and.

Crop we're talking about and other factors. Of course, you might get a 30% or a 50% or perhaps as low as a 10 or 20% yield increase.

So all the additional sugar that isn't kept stored in the leaves moved out through the roots as root exudates.

You can move a large quantity of.

Sugar into the rhizosphere and trigger bacterial digestion. So then this bacterial digestion produces what.

Is termed a mineralization response in the soil.

So essentially, when bacteria consume these sugars.

That are coming out from the root.

System as root exudates, we know that these sugars are largely carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.

When you consider glucose, that's C6, H12O6.

And of course, there are many different carbohydrates and enzymes and other compounds being.

Transmitted into the soil as root exudates.

But what isn't present in root exudates in any appreciable quantities is minerals. There's very little bordering on non existent levels of calcium and manganese and zinc.

And copper and magnesium, etc.

And yet bacteria need these minerals to form their own bodies.

So the bacteria, as they consume the.

Carbohydrates, they extract minerals from the soil.

Mineral matrix and incorporate them into their own cells. Then these microbial cells are now incorporated.

Back into root systems and take the nutrients with them. So during this, from this mineralization process, the next step is when plants begin.

Absorbing these microbial metabolites, they now become very energy efficient.

They can now access an abundance of nutrition they have.

They're producing with photosynthesis, they're producing more energy than they need to sustain themselves. And they begin storing the surplus energy in the form of lipids, plant fats and oils. So we can see this in the field visually. When we have leaves that produce this very waxy, oily sheen on the leaf surface, they become very resistant to airborne pathogens at this point.

But what happens from a soil biology perspective is that now the plants also.

Begin transmitting lipids out through the root.

System and into the rhizosphere as well.

In addition to the carbohydrates and everything else.

So when we have lipids moving into the root system, something really interesting happens.

Because bacteria aren't able to digest lipids. So now this will trigger very strong.

Fungal digestion, and we get increasing colonization of mycorrhizal fungi and other types of.

Beneficial fungi in the soil profile that.

Begin consuming the lipids. And fungal digestion is quite different from.

Bacterial digestion in that when fungi ingest.

Something, they metabolize it and digest it and break it down over and over.

And over again until it reaches a point where it can't easily be broken down any further.

It's only at that point that they.

Release it back into the soil profile.

And this fungal digestive process is called humification, because the fungal digestion of these lipids and along with carbohydrates and other high carbon plant compounds, is what results in the formation of stable organic matter.

Whether we're referring to glomalin or any of the list of various compounds that.

Aggregates soil particles and produces stable organic.

Matter, These are generally a result of.

Fungal decomposition of healthier plants that have a higher fat content, higher lipid content. So what this means is that you.

Want to produce really healthy plants that have the highest fat content possible, the.

Highest lipid content possible. It also means that the quantity of.

Organic matter that is developed in a.

Soil from a given crop has nothing.

To do with the quantity of biomass that is present.

It has everything to do with the.

Quality of lipids that are present. So if you have a field, one field that has a cover crop that.

Contains a total of 2,000 pounds per.

Acre of dry matter, but that 2,000.

Pounds of dry matter contains 6% fat.

Content, lipid content or fat content on a dry matter basis, you will form and produce the exact same amount of.

Organic matter as a field that has 6,000 pounds of dry matter at only 2% fat content.

So this becomes really clear that if we want to build organic matter quickly.

Having a higher fat content plant is a very important part of the process to getting there. And this, of course, is at the foundation.

The interesting point when you think about this entire cascade, the very first step at the top of the cascade is photosynthesis.

When we increase the plant's photosynthesis, then all the rest of this happens on its own happens automatically.

Accelerating photosynthesis is.

I think of this as being our.

Tool to hack the system. It's how you can speed up the entire process and make everything happen very quickly.

It's becoming increasingly clear and very important.

To me to realize that when we.

Really focus on plant health, two things happen.

One, one is we get immediate economic.

Results with the crops that we're producing. And secondly, we get our biggest soil response as well. We get a much bigger soil response.

When we work with plants.