How is Regenerative Agriculture Better?

Welcome, friends. Welcome everyone. I'm happy to have all of you here on the webinar. The topic for the webinar this afternoon is why is regenerative agriculture better? And in addition to that, what exactly do we mean when we speak about regenerative agriculture? What is it that we're talking about? So there's a. I want to speak about why regenerative agriculture, what regenerative agriculture actually is, and also describe the pathway to achieving regenerative agriculture very rapidly and a much faster timeline than I think has become the common idea or mainstream. There's this idea that it takes decades or longer to regenerate soil health. And we now know that we can accelerate that and speed that up and have it happen in a much shorter time period. So there are, there's a couple of pieces that we should discuss. The first is ask the question of what really is regenerative agriculture? What do we mean? What are we talking about? There's a lot of discussions today around what regenerative agriculture is, what that should define. But I think it really comes down to very simply, number one, we need to have agriculture ecosystems which are constantly improving soil health. We know that when we think about a degenerative agriculture, it's becoming widely recognized that we have challenges with soil health and our farming systems today. And the degradation that is being described is a loss of soil organic matter, a loss of soil fertility, a loss of soil carbon, a loss of the actual topsoil itself, where the soil is being eroded off, either by wind erosion or water erosion, also a loss of a soil's water holding capacity. And when you bring all of those pieces together, what we're describing really is, from a long term perspective, a loss of the soil's true productive capacity. A regenerative agriculture ecosystem needs to reverse all of those things. We need to have soil systems and cropping systems which sequester carbon, build organic matter, regenerate soil health, regenerate plant health, produce functional food as medicine, and regenerate human health. And from an ecosystems perspective, it is necessary to have these regenerative agricultural systems also be capable of reducing or in some cases perhaps even eliminating the need of synthesized inputs, particularly fertilizers and pesticides. I think there is a very important aspect of regenerative agriculture ecosystems which isn't commonly considered or discussed, and that is that we need an agriculture ecosystem which regenerates growers and farmers bank accounts. And the reality is that in order for a regenerative agriculture ecosystem to become mainstream, to become the status quo around the world, it needs to be an ecosystem which improves and increases a grower's profitability and performance first and foremost. Without that, we can't expect to get widespread adoption. So I think that's a very important piece that absolutely must be maintained and improved upon, is that regenerative agriculture needs to be profitable, needs to be exceptionally profitable, more profitable than the present mainstream. And that is something that regenerative agriculture models can deliver and do deliver. So I want to talk about how agriculture can be regenerative, how we can shift from the models that are the mainstream today to a much more regenerative approach. So, first of all, when we think about developing regenerative agriculture ecosystems, I think there needs to be the foundational realization of what regenerative agriculture can truly deliver. Without going into the detailed science to describe carbon sequestration and how we can rapidly build soil organic matter, let's just say that we have actual field experience on many farms that we have worked on at advancing eco agriculture, but also on other farms, such as some of the classical examples are Gabe Brown and Dave Brandt and Joel Salatin. And there's other iconic farmers who are widely recognized within the community who have all described how their soils can build organic matter at rates of a half a percentage point per year or more, sometimes as much as 1 1/2 to 2 percentage points per year. And we've observed this same to be true as well on farms that we've worked with. It is very reasonable and not unrealistic to expect really well managed soils and farms to be able to regenerate soil organic matter at a rate of at least a half a percentage point per year. This is something that many farms can achieve, even farms growing commodity crops on dry land in the American Midwest and in the rain shadow of the Rockies. So if you can achieve that in that type of environment, you can achieve it in almost any environment. However, the examples that I provided want to speak about Gabe Brown and Joel Southman and many of the growers that you recognize. For the most part, there are some exceptions. But many of these growers, which are widely known, describe systems that they have developed on their farms which incorporate livestock. They incorporate different crop rotations, and they incorporate, in some cases, no till farming and no till soil management as well, all of which are very valuable and critical tools for developing regenerative farming systems. However, they don't particularly fit the needs of some growers. Particularly, they don't fit the needs of perennial tree crop and fruit and vegetable growers. So if we have growers who are on the west coast who are growing fruit and vegetable crops or tree nuts, etc. Then we need to also develop regenerative agriculture ecosystems for these types of environments. Environments where it may not be feasible to grow cover crops constantly, or it may not be feasible to have a crop rotation, perhaps for growing strawberries or carrots, which the current production systems necessitate constant tillage. How can we develop a regenerative farming ecosystem in these types of environments which rapidly regenerate soil health, builds soil organic matter, does all the things that we need to do in the absence of livestock, in the absence of no till, soil management, and some cases in the absence of COVID cropping. How can we accomplish all of these objectives? It's really this question which led us to seek to develop these regenerative farming systems for fruit and vegetable growers. And what we have learned in these ecosystems, in these environments, is that we can regenerate soil health. We can accomplish building soil organic matter, regenerating soil health, regenerating plant health, and regenerating the farmer's bank account. Accomplishing all of these goals much faster than the 20 to 30 to 40 year timeframe that is usually considered to be what it is going to take. It's possible to speed up that process and to achieve the same results in about 25 to 30% of the time. So instead of taking 20 years to build 5% organic matter in your soil profile, and you may be able to achieve the same in as little as five to seven years. And of course, local situations are different for every farm. The key point is that you can dramatically speed up the process and speed up the cycle on any farm that you're working on. So how do you do that? How do you speed up soil regeneration in very challenged environments? And I'm really passionate, excited about the answer to this question. And I think it's a dynamic that has not been well understood and has not been well discussed at all. The answer is really simple. You forget about trying to improve soil health and instead you focus on improving plant health. There is this idea within biological and organic agriculture that it takes healthy soil to grow healthy plants. That is not incorrect, but it isn't. The healthy soil is not the engine that drives the system. It's healthy plants which create healthy soil. So think about it this way. If you did not have plants, if you did not have plants in an ecosystem, there would be no such thing as organic matter, because it's plants which are responsible for carbon sequestration and for supporting microbial communities which actually develop organic matter. If you didn't have plants, you would just have rock material of sand, silt, clay particles, et cetera, because there would be no plants with which to build humid substances. It's really plants which are responsible for sequestering carbon, building soil organic matter, and regenerating the soil health, all these things that we're talking about. So why is everyone talking about soil health? Why are we not focusing on plant health? Here's the foundational idea behind why plant health is so important. What we have come to accept as being common and as being normal is plants which are photosynthesizing only about 15 to 20% of their inherent photosynthetic capacity. So this means what is common? Normal, depending on how you define normal, is 15 to 20% photosynthetic capacity. Where does that number come from when you think about 15 to 20% photosynthetic capacity? This number was first calculated by Charles Tsai at the University of Iowa. Charles is unfortunately no longer living, but he calculated. He was the first to calculate what the biochemical genetic yield potential of corn was in the late 1970s, 78, 79 time period. He calculated that the biochemical the photosynthetic capacity of a corn plant means that the corn plant should be able to produce 1100 bottles per acre. And that doesn't happen because the photosynthesis engine doesn't work within most corn crops at optimal capacity. The same idea that I just described for corn is true of many of the other crops that we work with as well. But we have come to accept as common and as normal is plants which are only a fraction of their inherent photosynthetic potential. So think about what this might mean if you're growing tomatoes or you're growing tree nuts, or you're growing wheat or alfalfa. What. Whatever the case might be, what would happen? How would your crop behave differently and grow differently if you increased photosynthetic volume from 20% to 80%? That means you increase the sugar production every day in every 24 hour photoperiod by a factor of 4x. So you have four times more sugar production every day. Does that mean that you're going to get four times the yield? Probably not. You're likely to. You should expect to see a substantial yield increase in yield response. How much will depend on the crop. For example, if you're growing alfalfa, you should expect to see a lot more than if you're growing soybeans, because one is a vegetative crop versus being a reproductive crop. So you should expect to see A very strong yield response, but the yield response will not be proportional to the increase in photosynthesis. You might get four times higher sugar production every 24 hour photoperiod, but you might only get a 30% or a 50% yield response. You're also not going to get a four times larger plant. The plant may be larger, have larger biomass, but you're not going to get a four times larger plant because of epigenetic expression and other things that are happening within that plant as well. So if you have four times the sugar production, but you don't get four times the yield, and you don't get four times the plant biomass, where does all the rest of the sugar go? All the remainder of the carbohydrates and photosynthes that are produced during photosynthesis that are not contributed to plant frame, they're not contributed to fruit into seed, instead move down into the root system and they are used to both build plant biomass and they're also sent out through the roots as root exudates to feed. Soil biology. This is how you build organic matter while you are growing a crop. You can build a half a percentage point of organic matter per year while you're growing strawberries on sandy soils, or while you're growing corn, or while you're growing tomatoes. The fastest way to develop a truly regenerative agriculture ecosystem is to focus on increasing plant health. Growing really healthy plants that are photosynthesizing really well and they're sequestering a lot of sugars. That's how you can accelerate. Instead of having a regenerative farming system and looking at long term results 20, 30 years down the road, or even a decade in the future, we can speed up this process very rapidly and get results three to four times faster by focusing on developing plant health. How can we do that? What tools do we have to improve plants performance? There's really three tools that are very important. The first tool is the use of foliar applications, specifically foliar applications of nutrients that can spike the plants photosynthetic capacity. And in a number of presentations and webinars in the past, I've spoken about what these nutrients are specifically. But I want to describe for a moment how we should think about the use of foliar applications. Think of it this way. When we think about a plant's photosynthetic capacity, one of the questions that frequently comes up is how can we measure it? How can we measure where the plants are in their photosynthetic capacity? Well, it's possible to Measure it in a laboratory. It's expensive, requires expensive equipment, and it's difficult and challenging. But there are two cruder analogs that we have for it in the field. The one analog is just simply looking at yield. A plant's total yield over the course of its entire lifetime is a direct reflection of its photosynthetic capacity over the course of its entire life. There's another metric which is a brix reading using a refractometer to measure the sugar content and the total dissolved solids contained within plant SAP. It's also possible in a laboratory to measure the reducing as well as the non reducing sugars within the plant SAP and also use that as an analog indicator for what the plant's photosynthetic capacity or what proportion of the plant's photosynthetic capacity it's actually achieving. So the way to evaluate the way to think about foliar applications is to consider how a foliar application, a foliar application has its primary objective. The primary purpose of putting on a foliar application should always be to increase a plant's photosynthetic rate, its photosynthetic capacity. Because if the foliar application of nutrients does not address that need, then the results are going to be much less than what they could be. If you get a test result back from a crop and it shows that the crop has low levels of boron and low levels of, of, let's say, phosphorus, if you put on a foliar application that only addresses boron and phosphorus, you will get a much smaller crop response than if you put on a foliar application which contains the boron on phosphorus, but also contains any other minerals that that plant might not have a generous supply of that are needed specifically for photosynthesis. So when I think of a foliar application, I think of foliar applications as being a tool where, when we have, let's say we have a crop that has a brix reading of three, we're going to say four, brix reading of four. And we want to put on a foliar application at this brix reading level. And we should expect to see this foliar application. When we see, when we put on a foliar application, we want the brix reading to spike from 4 up to, let's say, a 12. So now we have a substantial spike in brix, which is an analog metric for the plant's overall photosynthetic capacity. And then over a period of time, that brix reading will drop down to, let's Say a brix reading of five. We put on a second foliar application here. And now the brix reading spikes back up to a 14 and then over a period of time it drops back down to a six. And gradually, I'm just making up a hypothetical example gradually. What happens is that over an extended period of time, over a period of repeat foliar applications, what happens is our objective is to gradually increase the baseline from four to a five to a six. And the interesting part is that the higher you get on the baseline, the faster it jumps. It's a whole lot easier to go from 8 to 12 than it is to go from 4 to 8 or from 3 to 5. So the faster up you get, the healthier the plants become, the more strongly they respond to foliar applications of nutrients. So I've described it elsewhere, but just to recap briefly, the nutrients that are needed for plants to produce a strong foliar response, a strong photosynthesis response, are specifically nitrogen, magnesium, iron and manganese, possibly also phosphorus, to metabolize all the additional photosynthes that are produced. That's the short list of nutrients. Again, those are nitrogen, magnesium, iron and manganese. I'm not suggesting that you need to apply each of those four elements. You simply need to make certain that plants have enough of each of those four elements. Because when one of them, if any one of those four elements is in limited supply, that element will become the limiting factor that will limit a plant's photosynthetic rate and photosynthetic capacity. There's other pieces to speak about. When we speak about photosynthesis as well, we need to also consider carbon dioxide as a nutrient. Because the reality is that when you have an abundance of chlorophyll and the photosynthetic machinery within the plant is working as effectively as it can, then usually by the middle of the day, or sometimes as early as mid morning, depending on the fields that the crop is surrounded by, the plants can consume all the carbon dioxide in the air. And for the remainder of the day, the biggest limiting factor, or photosynthesis is, is not water, not sunlight, not nutrients, but it can actually be photosynthesis. So that's something important to consider as well. Foliar applications are one of the tools that can really accelerate the development of a regenerative farming system. Even in very challenged environments, challenged soils, challenged cropping, crop rotations, etc. There's a second tool which can achieve and deliver similar results. And the second tool is the use of biological inoculants. I'M speaking about biological inoculants in general because I believe that we need to use a diversity of inoculants to produce the greatest possible outcome. So there are some inoculants which are purely bacterial inoculants, some which are purely fungi, some which are solely algae or other organisms. The reality is that we need to have a synergistic population of all of these organisms in the soil profile. Our biggest effect, the products that we've developed and use at AEA are combination products that are synergistic stacks where we incorporate bacterial populations plus fungal populations plus other supporting organisms all together into the same container. And consistently, one of the things that we pay a lot of attention to at AEA is how do we regenerate the farm's bank account? How do we improve profitability? How do we develop and demonstrate regenerative farming systems that are more profitable and make more money than what growers are doing currently? And consistently, the use of biological inoculants is one of the lowest cost and greatest ROI applications that growers can make. They're relatively inexpensive to apply and they consistently produce a very strong crop response. Those would be a second tool that I think are imperative to use to accelerate regenerative farming systems and produce results measured in a few years instead of measured in decades. And to also provide an immediate profitability response. Then the third tool which needs to be used, you need to measure how your crops and how your plants are responding. You need to measure plant health, and you need to measure a plant's nutritional integrity. There is this entire, and particularly in the area of biological agriculture, regenerative agriculture, organic agriculture, the focus and the entire conversation has for long been on measuring what's going on in the soil, how are we measuring soil biology, how are we measuring soil organic matter, how are we measuring the soil's nutritional profile? And all of those are important, but based on what I just described, more important than what, than measuring what is happening in soil is measuring what's happening in plants. The reality is that plants are the final report card. They show us what is truly happening and what's truly going on in the soil. And, and the plant's capacity to absorb nutrients from the soil profile indicates how good of a job, how well the overall ecosystem is actually performing. So since it is so important to focus on plant health, and if plants and the photosynthetic engine is really the engine that drives regeneration, if healthy plants and photosynthesis are really the engine that drive and bring new energy into the system and sequester carbon and build organic matter and do all these things that we want to happen in our farming system, we need to measure plants with an equal scrutiny or even greater scrutiny than what we measure soil. And I believe this has been one of the foundational factors of our success at advancing eco agriculture, is using plant SAP analysis to identify exactly what's going on in the plants and also to determine whether products are actually delivering results or not. There are many products which you can put on as a foliar application and get minimal or no crop response. And if you don't test it, and I mean crop response in terms of measured nutrient absorption, nutrient increase, if you don't test it, if you don't measure that, how are you ever going to know? It's not enough just to increase the mineral content of the soil profile. We need to actually know what the nutritional integrity is of the plant itself. So I think this is one very important piece. You can't guess. You can't guess about the nutritional profile of the plants themselves. You actually have to measure it. You have to know what your plant's nutritional integrity is and be able to manage that in order to produce these types of responses. If you want to improve a plant's photosynthetic efficiency from 20% to 80%, it's unlikely that you're going to achieve that consistently and reliably without actually measuring what's actually happening, what's going on in the plant profile. We need to know what the plant's actual nutritional integrity is. One additional characteristic of the plant SAP analysis is that it allows you to target nutrient applications and to put on the least amount of nutrients for the greatest economic response. One of the big factors that we learned when starting using SAP analysis is there's this idea within agriculture. Justice Polebig originally identified and articulated the law of the minimum, which the idea that we look at a SAP analysis, we look at a soil analysis, whatever the case might be, and we make recommendations to add whatever is missing, whatever there is not present in adequate supply, which completely fails to consider the law of the maximum, the law of antagonistic nutrient relationships, which is simply that. The law of the maximum is simply that is the nutrient which is in excess, which can create a deficiency of other elements that it has an antagonistic relationship with. So what we've observed with the use of SAP analysis is that, in fact, in many cases, what needs to be done to produce the greatest crop response and the greatest increase in photosynthesis is not to add more nutrients, but perhaps to stop adding nutrients and to discontinue the nutrients that growers are already applying. This has been particularly true of potassium and nitrogen. We find that many of the plant health, plant quality and photosynthesis responses that farmers are failing to realize are because of the excesses of nutrients that they are applying. So again, with a SAP analysis, you don't have to guess about whether you need more potassium or nitrogen. You can measure exactly what you need, exactly what your plants are absorbing, and adjust your applications accordingly. In some cases, discontinue them or drop them by 30 to 50% or more is not uncommon for many of the farms that we begin working with that actually begin using SAP analysis. The reality is, when you look at developing the regenerative agriculture ecosystems on your farm, the only difference between a farm ecosystem, where soil health and plant health are constantly degrading and we're losing soil organic matter, where we have carbon dioxide loss into the atmosphere, plants are unhealthy, they're susceptible to diseases and insects. The only difference between such an ecosystem and a regenerative ecosystem, where plant health is constantly improving, they're becoming resistant to diseases and insects, they're building soil organic matter, soil health is improving, we're producing healthy food for people, and the bank account is regenerating. The only difference between those two ecosystems is the farm manager. It's the farm manager and the management decisions. You can be growing the exact same crop or same group of crops, but simply manage nutrition differently and manage crop rotations and crop cultural management differently and produce completely different outcomes. So we can produce regenerative agriculture ecosystems very easily. Regenerative agriculture ecosystems can be and are today. When growers adopt these ecosystems, they become rapidly become the most profitable producers. It's very common, perhaps not initially, but certainly over an extended time period, a few year time period. It's very common for input costs to go down as systems truly begin to regenerate. And most important of all, as farm profitability increases, Farming becomes a lot of fun again. Farming can be a lot of fun when there is true profitability and strong economic performance on a farm. And invariably, what we have observed in speaking with many different growers is that as they adopt regenerative agriculture principles, they become the low cost producers. The cost of production for each unit of crop they're selling goes down. And that is the simple and the most and the strongest argument, in my opinion, to adopt regenerative agriculture ecosystems and why they will become the mainstream and the status quo around the world over the course of the next several decades. Because there will be economic Competition that will drive the adoption of regenerative agriculture ecosystems because the regenerative agriculture producers become and remain the low cost producers. With that, I'm going to switch to answering questions. First question that we have coming up is if a plant has a phosphate deficiency, either naturally or induced by increased plant photosynthetic efficiency, can a foliar spray rescue it? And the answer is yes, you can put on a foliar application of phosphorus. Plants absorb phosphorus relatively easily as a foliar spray and they will respond to it very strongly. There's another question from Bryson Siegmuller. Hi Bryson, glad to see you here. Wondering if you have done any research or experimented with adding vitamins in a foliar spray to increase plant health. You asked the most intriguing questions. The answer is yes, we have. And I was having a conversation recently when we were speaking about plant hormones and phytohormones. So there's. You can have conversations about cytokinins and auxins and gibberellins and abscisic acid and ethylene, all these various plant hormones, brassenosteroids, these various steroidal compounds, flavonoids, phytoalexins, triacontinol for example. There's many of these compounds. There's literally there's thousands of them. And we're just beginning to learn about all the effects that they have on plants. It's vast field which we still know entirely too little about. So the answer is that we can apply some of these either extracted or synthesized hormones and vitamins to plants and we can produce a plant response. That's one possible pathway. But there is another pathway as well, which is that we simply give the plants, provide the plants with the key enzyme cofactors that they need, which might be lanthanides and silver and tin and chromium and arsenic and all these long lists of elements which is now recognized as being beneficial for plant growth. They're not required for plant growth, but they are beneficial. These are key enzyme cofactors that allow plants to synthesize higher levels of these secondary metabolites. So we can apply these various hormones to plants to produce a response, or we can supply the nutrients that the plants require and allow them to synthesize the hormones that they desire and that they need to produce the greatest plant response. That is really the foundational pathway which we can take the approach that we can take and the humble approach that we can take, if you will, which says that, you know what, we don't have it all figured out yet. We don't know exactly what these plants can require. But what we can do is we can apply the enzyme cofactors that the plant needs to fully express their greatest epigenetic potential, and then we can get out of the way and allow the plants to really do what they're really capable of. The reality is, I believe, that we don't really know, for the most part, what healthy plants actually look like anymore. We seldom get to observe and interact with plants which are at the peak of performance, the peak of overall health. I see questions are flowing in quite rapidly, so thank you for that. I'm going to need to make my answers a little bit shorter. Greg Pennyroyal hi Greg, glad to see you. Is a refractometer and a plant SAP press a reliable tool for looking for the immediate spike in plant SAP bricks rather than waiting for a plant SAP lab analysis? The answer is that it is as reliable as the inherent unreliability of a refractometer. And I say that only when you when you consider the daily photosynthetic cycle and sugars moving around in the plants, photosynthesis slowing down because of a cloudy day, or plants simply being dehydrated from a lack of water, there's lots of things that can skew the refractometer reading pretty quickly. If we take those factors into consideration, and we collect refractometer reading often enough, consistently enough at the same time of day to have a good baseline, then yes, a refractometer and a plant sac press are a reliable tool, as reliable as they can be with their inherent unreliability. So that's the situation with the refractometer question Can a biological inoculant offset the negative effect of fungicidal coated vegetable seeds? That's a good question. Of course, the obvious best answer is to discontinue coating the vegetable seeds, or any seed for that matter, with a fungicide. That's the ideal solution. If you're not able to do that, then then you should apply a biological inoculant. And in addition to applying inoculant at planting, particularly for mycorrhizal fungi, for example, you may also want to re inoculate two, three, four, five, six weeks later, perhaps when you're transplanting, to possibly add mycorrhizal fungi or other fungi that were killed by the fungicide that was on the seed treatment. So you may want to inoculate more than once. Another question from Greg is a rate of a half a percentage point increase in soil organic matter achievable in Desert reproductive perennial systems in Southern California vineyards, with some years having only 3 to 4 inches of rain for only 3 months per year. Can vines alone achieve this without annual cover crops? So, Greg, this is a good question, and I would anticipate that in that type of environment, it'll be challenging for vines alone to sequester that level of organic matter and maintain it, partially because, as you know, you have very oxidized soil, you have sandier soils and very dry soils. So there's going to be very rapid organic matter loss, very rapid oxidation from the soil profile. So the goal in those environments, I would suggest, is not to build and maintain a high total level of organic matter, but instead to build and maintain a very high level of microbially active carbon. So it's actually possible to have low organic matter levels, let's say in the neighborhood of 1 1/2 to 2%, and have the majority of that organic matter be what is termed microbially active carbon, where it is actually an active part of the microbial process. So I think that would be a more appropriate objective in those types of environments. It's a very good question. Thomas Daniel asked the question. I've recently applied spectrum and rejuvenate using clean water. If our irrigation water is high in bicarbonate, will that significantly compromise our efforts if we are foil feeding minerals with clean water based on SAP analysis? Also, do you recommend biochar? If so, would you recommend we inoculate the biochar with spectrum and rejuvenate? Okay, I'm going to answer the last question first because it has the shortest answer. We've done fairly extensive testing with biochar where we actually looked at how biochar applications affected the soil's microbial community as well as affected the plant absorption of nutrients. This was specifically in annual vegetable production systems, particularly tomatoes was where we've done most of the research. We have found substantial increases in soil fungal populations and substantial increases in a soil's disease suppressive. When biochar was applied, combined with spectrum and rejuvenate at small application rates, I was actually very surprised. We found that biochar produced all the responses that we were measuring and seeing at application rates of 25 pounds per acre. And there was no increasing benefit that we were able to measure at application rates above 25 pounds per acre. So today the growers that we're working with that are that are using biochar, typically incorporating it with compost, and also including and incorporating spectrum and rejuvenate. So those would be very valuable to include with the biochar. It's a very good question. And then to your first question. If you're using irrigation water that is high in bicarbonates, it's obviously less than ideal. It's not an easy problem to resolve or to work with. Obviously we can look at acid injections, sulfuric acid injections, etc. Or n feric and similar products, stabilized products. The high bicarbonate irrigation water does have a negative effect on the soil biology, without question, and you may need to consider applying more biostimulants to help counteract some of that. So it does have a negative effect. But also fortunately, if you are able to use clean water for your foliar sprays, the foliar sprays as well can help to counterbalance some of that. So it's a very good question. Thomas Darren Greenfield asked the question, would you recommend with a crop of tomatoes not to put an application of nitrogen and potassium and wait until a SAP analysis is done? At what stage should the SAP analysis be taken and how often? So Darren, these are great questions and the answer is that I would apply very limited amounts of nitrogen and potassium, depending on what was going on with the soil, soil history, crop history, and what you know about the local ecosystem. I would put on very limited amounts of nitrogen potassium and wait until I got a SAP analysis result to put on an application because it's not uncommon. Once we started using SAP analysis tomato, you asked about tomatoes and tomato growers in particular. It's not uncommon for us to reduce potassium applications by as much as 70 to 80%, because while the tomato plant has very high requirements for potassium, it is also exceptionally efficient at absorbing potassium as long as the root system hasn't been compromised, which often happens when you apply a lot of phosphorus at transplanting. So that's a whole other conversation about how seedlings are managed and fertilizing and transplanting. But the reality is that for most crops, when they're managed correctly, I would not recommend a potassium application until we measure and know that we actually need it. There's another question. M lidifogel hi Leidy, Kindly repeat the nutrients critical to photosynthesis. I think I mentioned these in several other webinars as well. But there are four key nutrients. Those four are nitrogen, which is needed for chlorophyll magnesium, which is also needed for chlorophyll iron, which is not a part of the chlorophyll molecule but is responsible for assembling it and putting it together. The fourth element is manganese Manganese is not associated with chlorophyll, but it is essential for water hydrolysis, splitting the water molecule into H and oh, without which photosynthesis can't happen. So those four elements are the foundational four that when we apply, when we make sure that a plant has adequate levels of those four, we reliably, consistently and repeatedly see a very strong photosynthesis response. Michael Grove asked the question, can you describe what you mean by the law of the maximum? The law of the maximum is simply that when a nutrient is in excess, the nutrient which is in excess will create deficiencies of other nutrients that it has an antagonistic relationship to. So in many cases what we have observed with SAP analysis is that law of the minimum thinking has become pervasive in agronomy. We constantly the only question that we ask is what's missing? What should we add? We don't often ask the question I'm using the collectively of the greater agronomic community. We don't often ask the question of what should we apply less of or what should we not apply at this time. So when we use SAP analysis it's actually the nutrients that are in excess which usually cause the greatest plant health and yield and quality problems. And that's what I was referring to when I mentioned the law of the maximum. Ed asked the question you speak about measuring brix in leaf SAP to assess the level of photosynthesis. I've done this occasionally but find the reading very difficult due to the vague band caused by calcium in the leaf SAP. Do you share this experience or else have a way to overcome this problem? Yes. So this is fairly commonly known challenge. It can be considered a challenge of having a nebulous shift in the zones being caused by it's attributed to calcium, but can actually be caused by other things as well, including chloride. So the best recommendation that I would have to managing that is just to simply look for the middle of the range. And the reality is, should be pretty easy still to tell a brix reading the difference in a Brix reading between 3 and an 8 or a 3 and a 12. If you only see a foliar application response moving from a three to a five, then you haven't really tapped into the response that that plan is really capable of. So we're looking for substantial movement and substantial spikes which are still possible to observe even when we have that nebulous line. Andrew Smith asked a question, do you consider soil remediation as part of the system by adding nutrients to soil? If so, when and how much Ah, Anthony, this is a big question for which I struggle to find a short answer. Let me just say that when our objective is to provide the greatest economic crop response and the greatest plant health response and the greatest yield response, soil applications of amendments, mineral amendments to provide calcium, phosphorus, etc. Are about fifth or sixth on the priority list. It's not that they're unimportant, it's that they don't produce the rapid crop response and soil response that we sometimes need. And I'm obviously speaking in generalities. If you want to get a more detailed information detail, answer this question. I actually hosted a webinar, I think, perhaps back in December or January, where we spoke about how to make management decisions, priorities and how to prioritize different nutrient applications. Where I speak about soil amendments and how we consider them within the overall system. Okay. Anthony Granatelli. Hi. Anthony asked the question, how useful is plant SAP ph data? Anthony Historically it hasn't been as useful, but with some of the new things that we're learning about plant biophysics and measuring redox within the plant, measuring plant SAP ph and eh, excuse me, EC electrical conductivity, that information is about to become a lot more valuable, a lot more interesting. I'm in the process of assembling and putting together some information where we can actually define the bioelectronics of a plant and use that to quite accurately predict disease and insect susceptibility. At least that's the hope. So I expect plant SAP ph data to become much more valuable and useful and practical that we can actually make management decisions from. It's a very good question. Ed Mormon Would a digital brix meter help? The answer is yes, it will help. Also to the earlier question of looking at the considering the fuzzy line, the nebulous line with calcium, the digital Brix reader will overcome that challenge. Question from Leonard in areas where you don't have access with a tractor, but with animals, do you think it is possible to supplement grazing animals with the right minerals so their manure is richer in those minerals to enhance plant health? Leonard, the answer is yes, you can do that. I think the only minerals for which that would be appropriate or should be considered a viable strategy would be ultra trace elements such as molybdenum and selenium and nickel and so forth. However, the fastest plant response, the fastest crop response is still going to be with foliar applications. The technology is rapidly going to emerge. Where we're going to be able to do foliar applications with the drones is already being done and I expect that to be scaled up so quite soon. Physical geographical limitations. Being able to access a field with a tractor no longer become a concern. That's a very good question. Peter asked the question, do we use redox measurements and can they be useful? The answer is yes, they can be useful, but they haven't been well understood historically. We don't use them on a wide scale yet, but I anticipate that we might in the future once we better understand how to read them. Darren asked the question, our phosphorus levels are excessively high. Is there any way to mitigate that biologically? It would be helpful to know what you define as excessive, but the answer typically is when phosphorus levels are really high, then it can be challenging to get mycorrhizal fungi colonization because they don't thrive as well, apparently in soils which have high phosphorus levels. And you can address the excess of phosphorus with the use of humic substances and humates, which actually have a very strong anion exchange capacity and will bind in complex phosphorus quite nicely. Liny Fogel asked the question, does Fotamag remain a recommended maintenance foliar? I see the list. The analysis doesn't list nitrogen or iron. I also note that Micropak doesn't include nitrogen or iron. I'm guessing that there are reasons. Yes, sliding the very astute observation. And they don't contain iron because of regulatory reasons, which is it's a whole interesting other story, but leaving that as an aside, Fotamag is still a very useful maintenance foliar and you can simply add iron to that list and manganese as well. Fotomag also doesn't contain manganese, so we seldom see that we need to add nitrogen. But you can use Fotomag with the addition of iron and manganese to that as well. Comment from Judy I've heard that potash doesn't move in the soil, it stays where it is put. If a plant needs potassium in the root zone, putting on the top of the soil doesn't work. Is a foliar application the only option? I would suggest that if potassium does not move through the soil profile, it's because you have dead soil. Without question, potassium does tend to in soils with poor biological activity, potassium will tend to move towards the surface and accumulate on the surface of the soil profile. But in areas where you have good biology, good earthworm activity with good soil movement and aggregation going on, the story about potassium not moving is very much not true. George Wright asked the question, I find the number of products you offer to be intimidating. How do I hire you to make recommendations for me? George it's very simple. Send an email to the team or contact us at our 800 number. And we have a team of people on standby that would be happy to help. Anthony asked a question about SAP analysis strategy. If you have a large field and you're having problems in three areas in the field, do you do one SAP analysis across the field uniformly, or do you do a control in all three areas? Anthony I would say that depending on the size of the areas and the economic impact, of course, we have to look at, there's really two questions. One is, can you manage those areas separately? Can you do a separate foliar application? Can you irrigate them separately? If you're not going to manage them separately, then there is no point in doing a separate SAP analysis. But if you can manage them separately and the area is large enough that it'll have a strong economic value. In our threshold, we identified that if a crop has a farm gate value of $5,000, we can produce, and generally in the vast majority of situations, we can produce a big enough economic crop response with the SAP analysis that it's worth conducting a SAP analysis with a crop value greater than $5,000. So if you can manage it differently and if you have a large enough crop area to have economic value, then I would suggest testing them separately. Or if you simply want to learn about what's happening and what's going on, and for personal education, then it can be valuable to you do that as well. Michael Grove asked the question, what can we do when the plant runs into CO2 as a limiting factor during the day? Is the plant's job done for the day? Also, are growers actively measuring CO2 remotely in the field to know when this happens? Michael all very good questions and all questions that aren't asked often enough and aren't managed well enough. The real answer, the real world, real life answer to supplying adequate CO2 is simply developing soils which have a high level of microbially active carbon, active organic matter supported by a strong and active microbial community. So when you have an active microbial community and adequate carbon in the soil profile, that microbial respiration is going to release carbon dioxide with a dramatic peak in the morning, but then sustained release throughout the entire day. So it is the function of soil biology combined with active organic matter in the soil that is going to release carbon dioxide. That's the real answer in regenerative farming systems. Gilles asked the question, is there a concern that soil biology is negatively impacted by gypsum applications. Gilles, I would say that in the case of mined gypsum, I have never found that to be the case with application rates up to 3 to 4,000 kg per hectare or pounds per acre. However, with industry byproduct gypsum, smokestack gypsum from coal plants, where they use it, where it comes from the scrubber stacks, I can't specifically say that we've seen negative impacts on biology. We're not exposed to a lot of use of smilk sac gypsum because we actively discourage its use. So I haven't directly and personally observed a lot of negative responses. But what we have not observed is any positive response. We don't see byproduct gypsum produce a strong crop response at all. And then you ask the second question is can we assume that improved yields and improved soil tilth results in produce that has greater nutritional density? It depends on how you define nutritional density. I would say that if you define nutritional density in terms of mineral density, calcium, potassium, magnesium, zinc, copper, etc. Then that it's possible it may be the case that they may be higher, but it's not necessarily true. In fact, plants, which are the healthiest, when you have minerals which are in the optimal balance and the optimal ratio to each other, then the overall levels within the plant can actually drop a little bit. Now, if you measure nutritional density in terms of secondary metabolites, phytoaloxins, terpenoids, flavonoids, etc. Then I would expect that produce that is grown on healthy soil will have a higher concentration of these various compounds, these secondary metabolites. A question Is there a difference of nutrients and fruits of regenerative and conventional agriculture? I think that's actually. This is similar to the first question or the question that I just answered. I don't think there is a correlation between. Let me put it this way, there is no correlation between the mineral levels in soil and the mineral levels in plants because biology really determines what is happening and what is going on there. In that context, I think I'm getting ahead of the questions and then you guys send a whole bunch through more. I really enjoy the interaction. I know we're up against the hour, but I'm going to try to move through the rest of these questions pretty quickly. Del Christiansen asked the question. Hi Del, haven't seen you for a while. Could you address the use of amino acid nutrition? I would say that very briefly, amino acids are plants. Plant roots can absorb molecules with a molecular Weight of up to about a thousand, which includes all the amino acids and most peptides, all peptides I think that I'm aware of. And so that means amino acids are the most efficient form of nitrogen for plants to absorb. And one pound of amino acids produces a plant growth response and a plant yield response, the equivalent of about four to five pounds of nitrate, as nearly as I can determine. Dana Fletcher asked the question, can foliar elements with SAP analysis in the first year beat any fungicide in crops such as pinta beans for white mold, for example, or is that further into soil health a few years later? Dana I can't tell you that we can control disease with nutrient applications from a regulatory perspective. What we have observed is that with SAP analysis and with foliar applications of nutrients as indicated by a SAP analysis, we do get immediate responses the first year with plant health and with disease and insect resistance. So there certainly are cumulative effects where we have greater effects further down the road. But we do expect to see disease resistance increases the first year immediately right when we begin applications. Question from Malcolm Ledbeater. Increasing the brix through foliar spraying. Thoughts on lunar cycles and spring to enhance that uptake even further. Malcolm this is a good question and I know the answer, but I don't know the answer. What I mean by that is that there are two weeks of the lunar cycle in which foliar application absorption is average, one week in which it's exceptionally good and one week which it's exceptionally not so good. And unfortunately I can't recall which of those weeks is which. Right now I believe that it is the new moon, the week after new moon. That absorption of nutrients is quite poor, both from foliar application and from a soil absorption perspective. But I would have to validate that and verify that it's a good question. Scott Lowe asked the question how long does it take for the plant or soil to respond. Scott, I'm not sure exactly what context you're referring to, but in the case of a foliar application, we expect to see a response on the Brix reading within 24 to 48 hours. We expect to see see a response with SAP analysis within 24 to 48 hours. We expect to see a yield response the first year. We expect to see a plant health and vigor response the first year. So in order to really be profitable and to regenerate a farm's bank account, we can't have a conversation about long term benefits. Long term benefits are valuable, they're important. But we also need to have immediate economic responses as well. Question from Rob how does iodine control fire blight in pears and apples? The mechanisms? I don't fully understand all the mechanisms. I think there is both a direct My understanding is that there's both a direct and indirect action in that. Iodine directly is antibacterial. That's why it's used for teat dip in dairy cows when milking dairy cows, for example. So it's a very strong antibacterial. But I think also that within the plant structure itself, iodine is an important enzyme cofactor that is required for some of the enzymes which contribute some of the resistance mechanisms to fire blight. That is not well understood. I think there's a lot more research and homework that needs to be done in that area, not just for fire blight. Before iodine's effect on a number of different diseases, Amos Rowe asked the question hi Amos, you spoke about treating carbon dioxide as a nutrient. Can you expand on this? How do you suggest to remedy the situation you mentioned where plants may run out of carbon dioxide? I think I already answered this question somewhat earlier. The key is that we need to develop soil health, soil microbial populations and organic matter to such a degree that they supply a constant supply of carbon dioxide throughout the entire day and throughout the entire season for that matter as well. Olivier, is it useful to analyze seed or potato tuber chemistry composition before planting? I would ask the question, are you actually going to do something about it? Are you going to manage nutrition differently? You have the capacity to manage nutrition differently if you actually analyze it. So I don't have any experience with analyzing seed nutrient content, but I do know of people who have done that who have reported that. What I can say, just in general, is that if you were able to produce seeds or find seeds that have a higher nutritional value, you're going to get much stronger germination and much stronger seedling establishment. So measuring the nutritional integrity of a seed stock can actually be very I can see where that would be very valuable. Question from Charles Gross. Hi Charles, is it a farmer's job to maximize a plant's potential, trying to remove all the limiting factors, even if it takes labeled pesticides to do it? Example, high yielding corn with synthetics can grow 500 bushel per acre versus a good regenerative grower growing 300 bushel per acre organic corn? Which system would be feeding soil biology more? Well, Charles, I think there's an assumption within your question that I disagree with, and the assumption is that a good regenerative grower can't grow 500 buffer per acre corn in a regenerative system, which I completely believe is the case. So when you speak about removing all the limiting factors from what I've observed and my present understanding of the modes of action of various pesticides and fertilizers, etc. I believe that in many cases the use of pesticides is a substantial limiting factor that it is absolutely possible to grow 5. I mean, don Huber and Charles Tsai and the team that they were working with were producing 450 to 475 bushel corn per acre in the late 70s without the pesticide applications and everything else that we have today and what we would today term a regenerative system. So I think the system which feeds Biola the most is a regenerative grower that is growing 500 bushel per acre corn. I wouldn't, I don't agree with the assumption that regenerative growers necessarily need to produce less. In fact, I would suggest that they typically produce more. JoJo asked the question, are beneficial elements like lanthanides that I mentioned generally available for farm use? I would suggest these elements are typically required in such small concentrations, parts per billion parts per trillion concentrations, that the best way to supply them is to use rock powders or naturally occurring materials in which they're contained, such as seaweeds, volcanic rock powders, liquid ocean minerals, et cetera. John Warmerdam asked the question in tree crops, how do you quantify changes of brix levels when you necessarily have varying periods of demand, such as during fruit fill? Is it best to check post harvest? John, you can certainly take a longer term perspective and measuring the fruit itself post harvest, measuring leaves post harvest. But in reality what happens is you have a 24 hour photo cycle and the brix readings are going to change substantially within a leaf within each 24 hours, or they should. If they don't, there's attritional reasons and problems that are underlying that. So you should be able to. The way to use a brix meter and a refractometer to measure the performance of a foliar spray is before and after application. It can be as little as 60 minutes. You should expect to see the beginning of a response and then 24 to 48 hours later, treated versus untreated. You should be able to use those metrics to determine what's actually going on in the season when full. Malcolm asked the question when foliar spraying and making a combination synergistic stacks with different ph levels how do you balance a water's PH to match? Malcolm the most effective band of foliar PH for plants to absorb most effectively ranges from about 4.5 to about 6.2. And generally many of the products, particularly the products at AEA recommends and manufacturers will self balance a water to about that PH range. So it's a fairly broad band. It's a very broad band, obviously and we typically PH measuring foliar spray ph is important, but it's so common for it to automatically fit within that band that we don't spend a lot of time measuring it and thinking about it. On most farms it's more important to clean up the water and get rid of the bicarbonates and the foliar sprays from the water source and then the foliar spray ph becomes much less of an issue. Anthony asked the question microbially active carbon. Can I give some examples of what this is? I'm using that specific terminology of microbially active carbon because it is what is measured and reported on a Haney soil analysis. So they actually measure the fraction of organic matter in the soil that is microbial active. So it's possible to have soils with high organic matter that is completely dead and sterile. And it's possible to have soils with low organic matter, as in some sandy soils which have a very high level of microbial active carbon. And the sandy soil has better biology and will out compete the soil that has a higher organic matter but has low microbial active carbon. Nathan asked the question, are there certain deficiencies in plants that indicate excess watering? I'm not aware of any. Do we use chelation agents? Yes, we do. Mlady Fogel is asking the question, is there any public Data supporting the 1 pound of amino acid nitrogen equaling 4 to 5 pounds of nitrate? There are dots that are out there. It hasn't been organized into a cohesive whole. There is some research that has been being reported out of France from Olivier Houston, where he reports that the absorption of nitrate decreases the plants overall photosynthetic efficiency by a factor of 30% and increases the water requirement by 50%, which I think is going to really make some waves. That has already been published, but it's not widely known. So there's a number of different dots that have been identified about how inefficient nitrate is and how efficient amino acids are. But I'm not aware that a lot of it has really been organized into a cohesive whole at this point. We're getting into some interesting questions here. I'll answer a few of them. But at this point I'm unable to answer all the questions that have come through and I'll try my best. I really want to say thank you for all the questions that have come through. I really enjoy the interaction. Leonard asks a question, Once a plant reaches the fourth state of health on the plant health pyramid, do they pass on the capacity for systemic acquired resistance in their genes? If yes, isn't seed sitting a very important tool for future crops? So the answer is yes and yes. In fact, I would say that all seeds and all genetics have the capacity for systemic acquired resistance and that using epigenetic expression you can manage attrition and increase the plants epigenetic expression to the period where over several generations you can produce an extraordinarily healthy plant with very large root systems. Mark Weinheimer asked a question, chemical resistant weeds. What we can do about it? Well, there's one chemical which I don't think weeds are going to become resistant to anytime soon and oh, it's not chemical, it's an element. It's called iron. I'm joking, of course, but I think that I would reference the podcast episode that I had with Claus Martins where he speaks about using cultural management, crop rotation tools, etc. It is possible to manage weeds, even chemical resistant weeds, without using chemicals very effectively in most farming environments with most crop types. It's obviously a very involved conversation, but I would refer you to that podcast episode and follow up on some of the references that are mentioned there. Scott Wall asked the question, we're measuring both brix and glucose fructose sucrose as percentage sugar in plant SAP. Are we more interested in plants conversion to sucrose or the brix reading? The reality is what we're most interested in is understanding how the plant's total sugar production increases from the application of a foliar application. From the application of a foliar. So that can be measured with sugars or in some cases it can also be measured with the glucose and fructose fraction of the reducing sugars or excuse me, the non reducing sugars. And we've got one more question. Bryson asked the question, if you have a large diversity of vegetable crops, 20 plus crops in 10 acres, how would you go about doing a SAP analysis without testing all crops? The approach that I would take is to pick the leading crops with the greatest economic value, which are the crops which make you the most money, which are the most profitable, Focus on those and manage those. And when you manage those well, there are different crop groups that have different nutrition requirements and they are not correlated by species association. So, for example, tomatoes and peppers, you would expect, might have similar nutritional requirements, but they are radically different because a tomato produces a solid fruit and a pepper produces a hollow shell. One of them requires extremely high potassium, one of them requires extremely high calcium compared to each other. So I would say focus on the economic crops and have the greatest economic impact and speak with an AEA consultant about how to group the various crops together which have similar nutritional requirements. All right, there's still some questions here that I would love to answer. Unfortunately, I have another commitment that I'm running over on time for and I want to become considered everyone else's time as well. So for the questions that have come through that I haven't been able to answer, I'll try to respond to those later in a follow up email. I want to thank all of you for attending and for participating here in the webinar. I've really enjoyed it. I hope that you have as well and I look forward to seeing you on another one sometime soon. Thanks everyone. Have an awesome afternoon.