Podcast Extra - Highlights from the Year

Hi friends, this is John. Welcome to the Regenerative Agriculture podcast where we have all kinds of fun conversations. We all benefit from reminders. We benefit from being reminded of important things that we would have otherwise forgotten. And what I find so intriguing is that I enjoy these conversations so much and yet I go back and read transcripts and listen to recordings and say, oh wow, I forgot we talked about that. And so here's a highlight review of some of the highlight moments in conversations from this last year. First up, we have Rick Clark. A conversation that I had with Rick. Rick scarcely needs an introduction. For those of you not familiar with Rick's story, he's a fifth generation farmer from Indiana who is no till organic on a 7,000 acre scale and is very successful at that scale by many measures. And Rick and I had a fascinating conversation reviewing and discussing what we learned from a field day on Rick's farm with Christine Jones present. It was a really enlightening and extraordinary day.

The, the one that really stuck in my mind.

There's.

And again, there's several, like you said. But when Dr. Jones was talking about if you have two plants that are within proximity of each other and they are from different, different species groups and one has a, has a characteristic of microbes that the other one doesn't have, they have the ability to share those microbes back and forth, that, that just, that was just too much for me to almost comprehend. And that really stuck with me. And then when you think about what she's saying there, it makes total sense that diversity is key. And diversity is key for so many reasons that we don't even understand yet. And that's why I could see that in our fields. And we can, we can go anywhere you want on this conversation. But I could plainly see from being in our fields that I thought I was doing fairly well with diversity. And I've got so much more to do.

Well, building on the point that you just mentioned, and we also can bring up James White and Walter Goldstein's work on transferring microbes from one plant to another. The key piece is that these various plants can share organisms with each other, but that sharing is accelerated in stressed conditions, in stressed environments. That when you have optimal environments, then there isn't really any need to share and they stay somewhat more self contained. That there is less sharing going on when there isn't the need for that.

Yeah, you're exactly right. When that stress event triggers a reaction from one or more of those species, they all can partake and share. That's just unbelievable to Me, but it makes sense when you, when you really stop and think about it. But you know, it was great to have those folks on our farm and actually out in the field because I want people to see what, what we're trying to do here. I mean, I mean, John, what we're trying to do is extremely difficult. No till organic. I'm not thoroughly convinced that I need to maintain this purest trajectory that I'm on. I think we need to finish figure out how to incorporate tillage at the right times, the correct times and all that. All that came to light when this group was together because Christine was very, very clear about that. But he said if you are going to perform a tillage event, you have to immediately follow up with the COVID crop of, of multiple species.

Yeah, let's talk about this because this was another one of the golden gems of the day. And that was Christine's perspective on tillage versus herbicides. And this is this recurring conversation that people are like, which is the lesser of the two evils? And how do we pick between the two? And the evils that are associated with tillage are the destruction of soil aggregation and the destruction of the soil microbiome. And on those two topics she had a very interesting perspective. And again, this is environment and context dependent. I'm sure there are regions and areas where we have certain soil structures and wind erosion, water erosion susceptibility that we have to be very careful with. But she was very clear that herbicides cause greater loss of soil aggregation and soil structure than tillage does in most situations. There was like no question, no reservations. That was very clear in her mind that tillage was preferable to using herbicides. But then when talking about tillage, one of the questions that came up in conversation was, and this is a recurring question that I get asked all the time is what happens with mycorrhizal fungi? Don't you disturb and destruct your soil mycorrhizal fungal population when you do a tillage event? And her reaction to that was quite interesting. Her response was if you only till the top six inches of soil, there is a reserve of the soil microbial population of mycorrhizae below that. But in addition, you fracture up all of these, this fungal hyphae in the top six inches and those hyphal strands that remain actually colonize the next generation of seeds faster than spores do. And that you do not lose any of your soil mycorrhizal fungal population as long as you immediately replant. She just re hammered that when you till, you have to immediately replant and get seeds and roots going back into that environment.

And the other thing too, that John, that I remember from that conversation was. And she even had a. We had a whiteboard up there and she was drawing a few things. And she described that where this plant was and its surrounding area is its own microbial biome, that if you replace that, pull that plant out and put another plant in its place, some of that micro or most of that microbial biome will stay in place and re. Associate with the plant that you just put back in the ground. This, to me, I've not thought about it like this. What I mean, have you thought about it like this?

And the next piece that she said, Rick, that really caught my attention was that that effect will last over winter.

Yeah.

Did you catch that? Yes, this effect will last over winter. So we've had this perspective that if we want to have overwintering cover crops and a healthy microbiome the following spring to plant seeds into in the spring, then we need overwintering cover crops. But what she was pointing out is that you can plant cover crops that winter kill and the microbiome that is associated with those plants when they die is still present in the soil and that it. It will slowly degrade over time in the summer months. I'm sure if you have other growing plants, then it will degrade more rapidly when you have abundant moisture. When I say degrade, it'll. The microbiome will shift to a different population. But in the springtime, when the soil is cold over winter and you plant the following spring, you still have the microbiome present from that cover crop that winter killed. Next up, we have erin Martin from FreshRx in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Erin is one of a growing group of people. She's a leader in the space, taking the concept of food as medicine and translating it into actual effective practice and developing the data around what is the human health benefit and what is the value to our overall healthcare system and our overall government and policy system? What is the monetary value of food as medicine? And it's significant. How are you incorporating that perspective of nutritional integrity into the produce that you're providing?

That's such a great question, John. And it's become like my favorite question. And so I'll tell you a little bit of a backstory about this because it's really fun. There was a community committee that was kind of putting this program together. And originally the doctor who wanted to do this program, he said, oh, we'll just source from Walmart or Amazon. And I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. I said, if you want me. So they wanted me to fundraise for the program and execute it and staff it and like carry the torch, right? And I said, if you want me to do all that, I'm going to source only local and regenerative grown produce. And the committee was like, good luck, like there's no way that you're going to be able to do that and there's no way you're going to, number one, do it at scale and number two, you're not going to be able to do it year round. And I said, okay, I like a challenge. I love when people say I can't do something because I'm like, all right, watch me. So when I started, I started by finding the farmers and talking to them about their practices and visiting their farms. And slowly over a few few months, I built a small cohort of growers that really cared. They actually many of them, surprisingly, which is not average, they were younger farmers who had quit their corporate jobs and said, no more. Like, we care about the health of our families, we understand these practices are better, we're done with this, we want to grow our own food and we also want to be farmers and sell it to the community. And so I was able to find some really extraordinary growers who I started at the farmer's market and I would interrogate all the farmers to see what practices they were using. And a lot of them may not have identified as regenerative farmers, but they certainly were using regenerative practices or at least on the spectrum of those practices. And so we definitely don't work with farmers or source if they're using pesticides or herbicides. They're using very little to no till practices. Many are incorporating cover crops, some are incorporating livestock integration. And so now I've built a cohort. We've certainly 27 small scale farmers that are using regenerative practices. We source directly from those farmers, we pay the price they want. It's a little bit cheaper than farmers market rate, but it's not cheap. We want to pay for the quality and we want them to kind of dictate their pricing. And so we have really seen them grow economically from sourcing from them. When we first started with those 52 patients, I just had to buy everything they had available and now I'm having to keep up with them. So now they've grown so much that we need to enroll more people so we can keep up with the quantity that the farmers have available, and we've seen the farmers increase their growing areas dramatically by being stimulated through this program. We've estimated about a 1.5 million investment in local economics through purchasing locally through our program. And we've also helped farmers get funded for things through the USDA and the nrcs, like high tunnels to extend their seasons. So we have provided food to 150 people twice a week and then before that when we had less participants. We've provided food year round since July of 2021 and we've stopped. And like I said, now we have more produce than we can handle. And we've got to scale our program side so we can buy more from the farmers.

Dr. James White's work establishes the foundation for a very different type of agronomy, an agronomy that is focused on biology rather than on chemistry.

I agree that the bacteria are the most critical. So feeding the bacteria is a really good idea. That's the, that's the best way actually is to feed those bacteria. Increase the bacteria, you increase plant growth. You, then you follow with the fungal growth also will be increased. But, but I want to say before. Okay, so I agree with that strategy, but I want to say there is a, a way to look at why this ratio is important, right? I mean, if you consider the components of the soil, the microbes in the soil, consider the fungi, right? And the bacteria, and you can consider other groups too. They, they all have their own functions, right? They all have their own ways of working. A fungus has a mycelium that goes down into the soil, that goes around and colonizes plant material, secrete enzymes onto it to break it down. The bacteria can benefit in that because they can get some of those nutrients that the fungi are releasing, right? So what happens is you have these different components of the microbial, soil, microbial community. One, the bacteria that benefit the plant directly in rhizophagy cycle and being absorbed into plants and moved throughout the plants. The other one, that then will help break down organic material in the soil. And that as it works, then these bacteria can then get some of those nutrients and move them back to the plant, right? So you have a healthier system with the fungi and bacteria together, right? And if you, if you take one out of the system, you take one out, it's a little less healthier if you only have bacteria there, but you're still probably going to have some fungi there and you can build them up if you, if you focus on that, putting organic material into the soil and so forth. So my Point is that the most efficient operation is going to be the most efficient nutrient absorption is going to be happening or nutrient production in the soil and acquisition by the plant is going to be happening when there's both fungi and there's bacteria. And as that ratio changes, you know there's going to be an optimum ratio. Right. The most efficient for the most amount of nutrients. Right. So that would be the optimum. But that doesn't mean that if it's not optimum, it's also not going to be good. If you have good bacteria there, it's going to work. And you can also, you can easily build up your fungal populations, like you said.

Well, I have this other suspicion, I won't even call it a hypothesis, but a couple of observations that have raised question marks in my mind is I wonder if the. When the microbial population becomes rich enough and there's this incredible microbial fertility in the soil, whether the ratio conversation becomes a lot less relevant. In other words, you have such a vigorous total population that the exact ratio isn't. It's not the most important factor to consider anymore.

I think it's not. I think it's about. I think the whole question comes back to efficiency in nutrient absorption. Right. Nutrient acquisition from the soil. And so if you've got lots of microbes there, it's probably going to be highly efficient, super efficient.

Amy Williams has been a leader in the fashion industry and the apparel space by championing regenerative cotton. What I so greatly appreciate about the work she is doing with citizens of humanity is the authentic and deep direct relationships and the symbiotic and collaborative relationships that they're developing directly with growers and farmers. In this regard, their enterprise is a shining beacon and an example of what other enterprises and other CPG companies should aspire to to engage with deep relationships with farmers and regenerate the very foundations of our supply chains. So when you think about 50 to 70% of the cotton in the US eventually being demanded as under a regenerative, with a regenerative verification, what is the timeline for that? What's a reasonable timeline for that in your mind? And what are the barriers that need to be overcome to make that a reality?

I would say it's probably so. Given that the major brands like Lululemon, who we've spoken to, and the gap, given that their supply chains are like two years out, right. They're planning and strategizing that far in advance, I would say it's a three to five year, five years, like for the percent that I talked about, but I think it's a three to five year transition. I think if there are goals that can be said, certifications in place, there's a group of farmers that are part of a collective more at the same time, we work on a brand collective and then we continue to the number of mills that are interested in making the change. Mills are the buyers of cotton right now. Right. Brands don't purchase cotton or do forecasts of cotton. We are. And those that are choosing to partner with us in this project, like Faraday, are, they're doing the same thing. But the mill is the primarily decision maker. So one of the important things is to continue to look at a list of leading mills around the world that are purchasing cotton out of the US and saying to them, let me show you this alternative, let me tell you why it's important and let me give you a steady stream of people who can supply it for you. So the mill piece of it, I think is critical to making that transition and that happen as well. Faravo is a great example of a mill partner who was very quick to adopt this for our products. They have brought in other brands and they are looking to us to say, here's how much we can supply to you, not just for us, but that you can use. And so you can go out and tell all your customers from Everlean who they're talking to and who they work with to others that this is available on a regular basis.

When I think about we're entering the 2024 growing season and when I think about a five year time horizon, let's be generous and call it six and give it the convenient date of 2030. When I think about 50% of US cotton being in a regenerative system by 2030, that's not an unreasonable ask. I think certainly with the premiums being associated with that and the way that you've been rewarding the growers you've been working with, I think there will be tremendous appetite for that. But there is also just the purely logistical and execution piece of how do you execute on scale. This is my perception, having had some exposure to this space, is there are a lot of questions about how to transition effectively. How do you grow regeneratively verified cotton? And so, given the context that our podcast listeners are primarily farmers and agronomists, what's the pathway to executing on scale on the farm side?

I think that's realistically that's a better question answered by someone like James Johnson, who's been at this for years. Right. And who has made an commitment to change. I know he's worked with AEA for a long time. We were lucky to be introduced to him. And he's been part of different bodies and groups. He's traveled around the world and worked with mills in a range of locations. I think that's a better question answered by someone like him and other farmers who are on the ground and have made the forefront. I think to your point, right. When I say that the 50% number, I'm looking at it as a brand from the demand side. Like I believe that we can generate that sort of demand in and before that time period based on the steps that we're putting in place. Certification, proven quality of product. We have a significant percent of our collections for citizens and a Goldie. I'm looking at the corner of my calendar because I can't even remember what year it is, let alone what month shipping in February. We have retail partners from Net A Porte to Nordstrom's to some of the local specialty stores excited about this transition to regenerative cotton and having the products on their floor for consumers. So we have a wide spread sort of communication and education plan program. So I'm talking about the demand from the brand side. But I think if simultaneously folks like James and Kelly Noland and other regenerative farmers can show the path that they took, the things as you said earlier that didn't work, the stumbling blocks and how we can address those and then we work in the middle to generate more interest with mills who are purchasing cotton then I think that's when within that six year time frame we could see significant transformation in our industry. But we've got to hit it from all three sides.

Keith Burns is the co founder of Green Cover Seeds and we have enjoyed a growing collaboration and relationship with them with our work at advancing ecoagriculture. They have been the pioneers of translating the work of Christine Jones and many other pioneers in the COVID cropping space into practical application and into practical management and cultural management practices on scale. When we think about COVID crop diversity and the benefits of having different types of plants in a system, how do we actually make that work? How do we make it work effectively and be cost effective and deliver good results? Keith and his team are at the forefront of working on that, figuring those pieces out and supporting their customers through that process. We're not talking about moving 20 pounds or 50 pounds of calcium from down in the B horizon up to the soil surface. We're talking hundreds of pounds per acre, sometimes as much as three to 400. And that's just calcium. It's also true of all the other elements as well.

Yeah, for sure. And, and if you were to really, you know, run that through your calculator, that's, that's a lot of dollars worth of fertility that you don't have to put on if you can cycle that. And some crops, you know, like buckwheat, for example, not only is it moving it around, but it's changing the form, you know, so buckwheat roots, you know, have some unique acids that they exude and they're able to convert phosphorus. That's not available to most plants, but they're converting it, they're using it. And then when that plant dies, not only is there more phosphorus now available, but it's in a, it's in a form that other plants now can use. So, you know, there's, there's, it's exciting to think about that. And then when you, when you compare that then, or when you combine that then with the biology that they're bringing along with them. And again, this is one of the things that just blew me away that Dr. Jones told us, is that, you know, a single seed can have up to, what did she say, 7 or 8 billion microbes in and on that seed. So they're, they're bringing their own microbes to the party, especially when it's seeds grown in a regenerative environment. And I know, you know, you and I had a, a webinar on, you know, regeneratively grown seed and why that's important. But when they come with the right microbe package, then what they do, they can do it much better, much quicker and much more efficiently.

Marty Travis has built a thriving community of small scale market gardeners and also some not so small scale gardeners in Illinois, where they are supplying excess exceptional quality food to restaurants in Chicago and to local families. And Marty is an inspiration to encourage us to think about what is possible. It's fascinating that with the model that he has developed, we have small scale farms that might be making more of an income on 2 or 3 acres of land or even less than some farms are making on a thousand acres.

$1.50 to $1.75 a pound, so roughly about $90 a bushel.

And that, my friends, is the difference between selling product per pound and selling it per ton.

Yes, and that has been game changing. We don't have, and we're not, we don't have to grow a thousand acres of wheat. We only need, I don't know, 15, 20 acres of wheat and rye and some corn. One variety of our corn that we've, that we've kind of brought back from near extinction it sounds like, is this Iroquois white corn. I basically had to do a reduction in our price because the chef offered more than what I thought it was worth. He was willing to pay $20 a pound for this roasted white cornmeal. And I said we would probably get beat up really hard by our neighbor conventional farmers if they realized that we were making, you know, over $1,000 a bushel on, on our corn. And so we settled at $15 a pound for it. And, and we, we only need to grow like an acre or 2 acres of it to make, to make bank for the year. So there's, that's incredible. There's a lot of that. And so now we're kind of streamlining things. We've, we're putting in an 8 acre orchard with peaches, apricots, nectarines, plums, apples, pears. We want to do some brambles in there, figs. If we can pull that off, Will still does the grains. We have a wild harvested pawpaws, but also a plantation that we've put in that's producing really well. In the last year we did a lot of brassica crops, cabbages, Brussels broccoli, kale along with, we sell, we plant a lot of squash and sell squash blossoms at 50 cents apiece. I don't really particularly care if we end up harvesting squash off of it. That's, that's bonus if we do. But if we can have squash blossoms, we could sell as many as 3,000 blossoms a week. And it's quick. It's, you harvest them a couple mornings before Wednesday at 5, 30, 6 o' clock in the morning for an hour and you can, you can create a lot of revenue during the summer months for that. So we've really done some of the more challenging crops and kept those for ourselves. But, but it's been, it's been good. It's, it's been a way that we can, we can make small plots, you know, as much as, you know, I think will's probably on 35 acres in the south field and 8 acres of orchard. There's a 50 acre field across the road that he's doing some more conventional organic food grade crops. But the vegetable side is, is between 5 and 10 acres.

You know, this, this whole conversation about the, the price point for grains and growing squash blossoms, which is something that we did on the farm that I grew up on as well was harvesting squash blossoms. There's. What is striking to me about this conversation is in some ways, Marty, you remind me of kind of my outlook on life. I, I have a different strengths pattern than what you describe. But I'm always just, I travel the countryside and I look at what is happening in rural landscapes and look at what is happening in cities. And to me, there is just, I, I see this, this overwhelming opportunity. It's just the land is awash with opportunity. There is, there are no boundaries. It's your imagination is the limit. It's not accurate to say that the sky is the limit. The sky is not the limit. It's your imagination that is the limit. You are the limit. I've really come and then I can travel the exact same pathways and with other people who have a different mind. They're different individuals, they have different history and they don't see the opportunity. They don't see what I see. They don't see the potential that exists. And so I'm delighted to be having this conversation with you because not only have you been able to see the opportunity, but also to manifest it and to turn it into reality in your own and the pathway that you've been on. And so I'd love to ask the question, for young people, or not just necessarily young people, but for starting farmers, even for established farmers, for people who have an interest in going down the pathway that you're describing, who are not located in Illinois or not in your geographic region, what advice would you have for them to identify and to develop these opportunities that exist?

1. I feel like it begins with some introspection. Who do you want to be determines what you're going to do, what financial program? What do you need this experience to become? What's the goal? What's the dream? If it's just I need to make some extra money on the side in the summertime with the kids are home, or I, I want to get to a point where this becomes my, my, you know, foundational income. I want to do something with my partner or, you know, you, you have some definition that needs to happen first. Then before you plant a single thing, we need to identify where does it go?

Lena Shaw is a research manager dedicated to discovering practical solutions for farming, particularly focusing on intercropping and sustainable cropping systems on the Canadian prairies. And her work holds a lot of promise and points in the direction of relay cropping and intercropping opportunities for many other crop types as well. What have been the significant successes? What are the things that you have been able to study, that you were able to identify as being successful that were then adopted by growers in the region.

One of the big ones has been chickpea flax. Now it's not really broadly grown as a combination yet, but it's being more accepted as a, a reasonable method for growing chickpeas. Chickpeas are very susceptible to disease ascochyta and growing the chickpeas with the flax has reliably over years and I've been doing this since 2012 reliably known a reduction in disease and we get a good stable yield. So there's not a yield reduction per se. Sometimes there's a yield increase, but there's a reduction in disease. So it makes the disease pressure less, it improves the maturity or the reduces frost risk of those chickpeas in our cold region and improves the quality of the chickpeas. So there's so many benefits to that combination that I'll be surprised if that's not the dominant method of growing chickpeas within 10 years. It's grown commercially, but it's not as though 90% of the farmers are doing it. It is established commercially though.

Can you tell us a little bit about what this system look like? What, what does planting spacing look like and relative seeding density now that you're planting both of them together and, and ultimately I think one of the big questions that is really going to drive farmer adoption is what do the economics.

Look like that's getting in the weeds? Some for sure. It's some farmers like the alternating rows. And when I say getting the weeds, it's unsettled what the best way of doing it is. So some people alternating rows, I prefer mixed rows. I've seen really good results out of mixed rows where we have chickpeas planted a little within the flax using a double chute, either a disc drill or hoe drill. So we're getting them almost right side by side. The seeding rate of the flax is about 10 to 15 pounds an acre, which is maybe a quarter or less than a quarter of a normal flax rate. And then the chickpea rates are fairly close to a normal chickpea density, which is about 4, 3 to 4 per square foot. So we're, we were doing 10 inch row spacings. So the chickpeas and flax are right beside each other and the rows are 10 inch row spacing. That's what we were doing for quite a lot of years. In trials we also tried alternating rows so that each chickpea row would be 20 centimeters. Now, in theory, maybe those wider rows would reduce disease, but in 2022, we're not seeing a reduction in disease from those wide row spacings. It looked better in the mixed rows. And we have not yet solved the mystery of why this is reducing disease. What's the mechanism? We have sensors out there measuring temperature and humidity in the canopy, and it doesn't match with humidity. You think we would be seeing less disease where the humidity is lower? That's not really what we're not giving those things to correlate, really. So there's something else going on. It could still be about the dispersal of the spores, or somehow it's changing the structure of the plant enough that it's less susceptible somehow. We were just out there doing meetings last week, and I don't know how it's turned out because they haven't done the analysis on those plants yet or on that trial yet. But it's an ongoing experiment.

You anticipated what my next question was going to be, which is, do you have any speculations on the cause of the disease resistance? But you know, some of the things that we're learning with Dr. James White's work and some of his colleagues work is that in a number of cases where we have these companion plants that generate disease resistance, it's actually an exchange of microbiome where perhaps the microorganisms from flax are colonizing the chickpeas and becoming associated endophytes, colonizing the entire structure and producing disease resistance. There still remain among us farmers who remember what it used to be like to farm and grow crops before the widespread, intensive use of fertilizers and pesticides. One of the fascinating conversations I had this year was with Benny McLean from Uncle Matt's Organics Citrus in Florida, where he described some of the history and the trajectory of what it used to be like in citrus production 40 years ago, 50 years ago, 60 years ago, and how it is different today.

I'll fast forward to when glyphosate was first introduced. And I had a caretaking company here in. In Claremont, so we did a lot of contract herbicide. And herbicide was not popular at that time. Most of the groves up here in Lake county, which there was about 300,000 acres of Bering citrus right up here in central Florida once it became popular, we did contract herbicide anyway. My dad called me up one morning, he said, hey, didn't y' all just put out some. We didn't call it glyphosate we call it Roundup. Didn't y' all put out some Roundup up in a couple of blocks up there in the Minneola Hill? And I said yeah dad, we did. He said and how long have they been out? I said oh, about 30 days. He said let's ride up there and take a look at them. So we go up there and he's riding with me and we go into the first. It was about a 20 year old grapefruit grove set 30 by 30, which is, that was normal back then, 48 trees to an acre. And we're easing along down one of the middles and he says to me, he says okay, tell me what you see. And I said dad, man, look, all the weeds are dead. This is awesome. It killed the lantana and killed the guinea grass. Everything dead. He said, that's what you see? I said yeah dad, what do you see? He said what about those 6, 7, 8 grapefruit laying on the ground? This was like in September, okay, so you know the fruits, grapefruit got decent size, they're not ready to harvest yet. And I said oh dad, don't. That doesn't, that's nothing. He said what do you mean that's nothing? I said well, you know, we got a big boom on the tractor that goes under the tree and applies the herbicide. And I said more than likely the, the boom is what's knocking the fruit off because it's hanging down low on the limbs. And my dad said, you really think so? I said yeah. He said don't you have another block right up here that that's young grapefruit that you treated? I said yes sir. He said let's ride up there and look at that. So we ease on down the road going there and, and these are about, if I remember right John, they were about seven or eight year old trees. Anyway, we're easing along. He said what do you see there? I said man, dad, look at the weed control. Because you know, younger trees, you get a lot more sun on the ground and weeds are really rampant. And I said man, look at that, what it's killed. He said, you see any grapefruit on the ground? I said yeah, matter of fact, what do you see on your side? Well, two or three grapefruit per tree laying on the ground. He said huh, Boom. There's no fruit hanging down for the boom to hit because this is a young tree. So how do you explain that? I said dad, I don't know. He said I'm going to tell You. He said, we have been lied to about glyphosate. He said, this chemical is absorbed through the trunk. It's absorbed through the leaves. It's a sword through the root. And he said, you watch, it's going to be a major disaster in this whole citrus industry of what it's going to create. Now, this was 1973, John. Wow. 1973 when it first came out and was released here in for citrus, you know, in Florida. And what little bit of citrus is left in the state right now, we still have major fruit drop, but all of, not all, but the majority of the fruit drop is blamed on the disease, what we call greening, which, that's true, it does create a fruit drop, but we have a few organic groves left in the state and we do not have near the fruit drop as our neighbors do, that are conventional and they use glyphosate and we don't.

Tamer Malik is an innovator developing his own regenerative practices and systems in a desert environment in Pakistan, where they don't have the same access to resources that we are privileged to have in many countries around the world. And Tamer has been an inspiration to many people for developing his own methods and giving us a vision for what is possible in. In very challenging ecosystems.

So I'll give you an example. The first time after we started doing more regenerative, you know, these regenerative practices in earnest and the foliar applications and the compost applications, we got a at least 50% yield bump in our sweetland crop.

Wow.

You know, there's this framing that you achieve what you incentivize. And we've been talking about the improved pest resistance, heat, stress, flavor, aroma, et cetera. But what has the. Just broadly with the various things you've tried, what have the economic benefits been?

The economic benefits, I think it depends on from crop to crop.

Right.

Obviously, it's been fantastic for chilies, where, you know, no pesticide usage. So you're doing this huge saving. You're getting a really good, very solid crop. It's led to other economic opportunities that otherwise wouldn't have happened because now, you know, this big company that I mentioned is thinking of working with us for us to expand our chili production and cater to their needs. So that's a great economic opportunity. Chilies, by the way, are a. If you can do them well and get a good yield or a very good yield, then chili is probably the most economically lucrative crop in Pakistan today. These dried red chilies, specifically. So again, it's opened up this huge economic opportunity for us, which I hope we can capture. Now, again, with orchards, we. We are getting much better performance than under a conventional system we did before. So again, huge economic advantage, both from the point of view of not having to use synthetics, but also in terms of like pesticides or fungicides or herbicides, but also in terms of, you know, the quality and yield specs and what it's leading us to. Now, now that we have confidence and we've created a regenerative product, we are now seeking to launch a direct to consumer brand for our mangoes and our sales citrus in which we can capture much higher value than taking it to the middlemen. So hitherto we've been selling it to middlemen, but now that we've established this premium product, which I'm almost certain is also much better for, you know, customers to be because we know that this stuff generally has much higher nutrient density, which at some point I hope we can get tested. But just from taste, aroma, all of that stuff, you know, is an indicator that it is better for customers. But it's also better because we're not using pesticides, we're not using fungicides and herbicides for.

Right.

So that opportunity has additionally emerged because we've created a superior product that's free of these chemicals and we hope the customer will then patronize because of these attributes. And in terms of the cane, we are seeing much better stress resistance, we are seeing slightly higher yields, but we are only at the beginning stages of our regenerative protocols. And I have zero doubt that a year from now, and especially two years from now, our yield specs are going to be so much better than the conventional cane that we used to grow and the conventional cane that our sister farms are growing in the same bioregion just a few kilometers away.

I want to say thank you to all of our listeners, to all the guests who have participated in the journey and people who've joined me on the podcast this year. I really enjoy having these conversations. I enjoy being able to share stories and for all of us to learn together. Everyone knows something that I would benefit from knowing, and I enjoy being able to draw that out as we look ahead. Agriculture at the moment is in very difficult economic environment for many growers around the world, here in North America and globally. And there is so much opportunity. There has never been a better time to get into the regenerative agriculture space. There has never been a moment when the message of hope and opportunity that is communicated by the guests here on the podcast is more beneficial and more needful. So I ask that you please share the pieces that you find encouraging and hopeful and inspirational with other people in the agriculture community to share the joy and the opportunity with them as well. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for what you contribute. May you have an awesome growing season this coming year. At aea, we believe that growing better quality food and making more money from your crops is possible, and since 2006 we've worked with leading professional growers to help them do just that. At aea, we don't guess, we test, we analyze and we provide recommendations based on scientific data, knowledge and experience. We've developed products that are uniquely positioned to help growers make more money with regenerative agriculture. If you are a professional grower who believes in testing instead of guessing, someone who believes in a better, more regenerative way to grow, visit advancingecoag.com and contact us to see if AEA is right for you. Thank you for listening and we look forward to working with you.