Podcast Short #6: Key Qualities You Need in an Agronomist with David Miller

Hi friends, this is John. Welcome back to the Regenerative Agriculture podcast. I have another short episode for you today and I'm pretty excited about this one because it's with a longtime friend of mine, David Miller. David and I have been working together for 15 years and we have had so much fun in those in that time, haven't we David? So, David, you're now one of the top leaders of the team, the AEA team and the agronomy side. You've been in this space for 15 years. You've gotten to work with lots of consultants. What is the knowledge base necessary to be a really good agronomist in this regenerative agriculture space? Or just even a really good agronomist generally? What are the opportunities that you see and what do you see that is so commonly missing?

Well, thank you for having me, John. This is, it's been a very exciting journey and continues to be exciting because of all the new things we get to learn and all the things that we have learned and things many times that we thought we knew something and then figured out that we have a lot more to learn. So what do, what does a consultant need to do or know? I would, I would respond to that by A consultant needs to be able to think big picture, needs to be able to understand systems overall and look at plant physiology, look at soil biology and have a deep understanding of all of that.

So okay, you just mentioned a couple things that seem to be very different from each other. You mentioned big picture thinking, systems thinking, and I'd like to explore what those are. But then you said understand plant physiology and soil biology and these various pieces very deeply. How can you understand things very deeply and yet have a big picture perspective at the same time?

To be a consultant is not something you do, you know, you decide to do one morning and that afternoon you're a top agronomist. It really does take time and a lot of study, which is also exciting about our team because we have very, very enthusiastic, very brilliant minds that have applied themselves to some very, very in depth study and training. And you have led that team and meaning myself and the team as it grew. And now I'm honored to play a significant role in that. So by general I mean we need to understand mineral balance, we need to understand how nutrient availability is more than just the application plant uptake. So, so that's the big picture and we could go very big picture and I like to think in the big picture of perennial versus annual crops, looking at the way nature does it and Moving in that direction. But on the more specific side is details like oh, one example might be pecans. They, they determine which buds are going to be female flowers versus vegetative shoots as late as four to six weeks before you see the flower. It's very unusual for a preannial tree crop and it's, it's very unique. So, so that's one example of, of understanding the plant. The other thing, when I think of spec, take cotton for example. And we've, we've been diving with the, on farm research that we're developing and building. We've, we've really been focusing on cotton. In fact we have the mantra that every year can be a cotton year because cotton growers have this feel that or their experience is that some years are cotton year, some years are not. And so we're really exploring and, and so diving specifically into a cotton plant physiology. Understanding when the number of locks are determined, when the number of, of seeds per lock and what initiates the fiber and what determines fiber length and what are the stressors that would reduce the fiber length or, or what would increase the mic and how is all of that measured and what are the inputs that are commonly used and how, how do those line up or not line up with what the plant is trying to do at that time? Herbicide applications play into that. So once that at this stage the plant is initiating or determining the number of locks per bowl and you put out an herbicide at that specific time, then guess what, you've just knocked your yield. Or you put out a nitrate application and then follow it with a PIX application. And if those aren't timed just right, you'll lose a lot of bolts. In fact, many growers have just become used to that. Like oh, we lose 30% of our potential fruiting positions. It doesn't need to be that way.

And that's coming as a result of a PIX application at the wrong time.

More likely, I'm just going to say a stress application or an application that will cause stress. Such as it could be an herbicide application, it could be a pesticide application, it could be excessive nitrate. That's, that's, you know, triggering. So those are specific details and on our team we have people who are very, very knowledgeable in certain crop or more knowledgeable, more, more specialists in, in various crops.

Yeah. So what you're describing is the need to understand what happens at, with plant physiology in some detail. Understanding when buds are initiated and when all these pieces like lock initiation, flowering, pollination, all these pieces how they all fit together. But at the beginning you also said that people need to be generalists and to hold a high level view. And so to play devil's advocate for a moment here, is it in a regenerative system, is it truly necessary to have that level of in depth, detailed knowledge? Couldn't you just more broadly address the foundational pieces of building soil organic matter, incorporating cover crops, incorporating livestock and balancing soil mineral profiles and so forth? And don't though those things tend to take care of themselves when you just address the foundational pieces?

Yeah, you're the devil's advocate. Yeah, of course they will. But do you have the time and are you able to actually replicate the natural system? Are you able to have the level of diversity on your farm to support the whole system, bringing enough carbon, having enough gas exchange? There's. The answer is yes. And I really think that farmers and agronomists need to be thinking in that, that holistic manner. We need to, as, as a society, as a people, we have to consider our short term investments, the long term, like where are we going, what's the, which direction are we headed? So definitely, I think we need to consider that. We need to consider where can we implement livestock, where can we, where could we have perennial crops? Again, that's one of the things I see. We go, you know, field border to field border and, and there's no trees where there used to be lots of trees. Trees used to grow on the irrigation ditches and now they don't and growers don't. Why it doesn't rain like it used to rain? Well, there's so many big picture things. The reason we need to be specific is because we have to be profitable. We have to, we have to grow a crop. We, we don't have ideal conditions. We have a degraded soil. There's, there's biodiversity that's been, I don't even know that I could come up with the right adjective to describe how degraded the soils are in most of the agriculture region. And so to restore that, we need to be able to understand where we can have the greatest impact with the least amount of input, where we can stop doing things and not risk potential revenue. And so it's about maximizing the return on investment. It's about understanding what can I stop doing that's not going to create an exponential risk and what can I start doing at the specific time?

Right.

So if, if you can delay an herbicide application by two weeks and get to the other side of say pollination, if you're Talking citrus, right? Don't, don't put out an herbicide application on citrus right during peat bloom because that's when your spray crew's there. It's, it's that level of timing that or it's because of those timing factors that understanding what the plant is doing at that specific time that will have exponential benefits to the grower.

So I think what I hear you describing is that when you have this deep knowledge around the crop plants physiology that gives you a much deeper and a better understanding of what you can safely remove, what inputs you can remove, what inputs must be removed in order to reduce negatives and to reduce negative pressure in the system and where you can position influence in order to have where you can position products and applications in order to have a yield response that gives you a much deeper and a better understanding of what you can safely remove, what inputs you can remove, what inputs must be removed in order to reduce negatives and to reduce negative pressure in the system and where you can position influence in order to have, where you can position products and applications in order to have a yield response.

Yes, yes, exactly. And I'm just going to use the example of pecans. I did a presentation on this a couple years ago where pecan growers typically they will turn off the water towards the end of the season, they'll head out. Well, what we found is that during that time the plant is dropped in potassium and therefore it didn't have enough potassium to maximize the fruit load or even if it did, it didn't have enough potassium to translocate sugars to the roots and therefore the whole carbohydrates level that the plant ended up with going into dormancy affected the carbohydrate level the next spring, which determines how many female flowers you're going to have, which determines the fruit level load. So if you have biannual bearing, don't, don't turn off the water, don't limit the potassium at that time. That's when you really need potassium. That's when you really need to be on your game because your next season crop is being determined at that point based on the carbohydrate level. So yes, exactly. It's the better you understand how any given application or, or it might even be a cultivation can affect the response for the plant. You can then time it accordingly to have it work in your favor instead of against you.

This is one of the pieces that I find interesting and it's interesting about our business approach at advancing eco agriculture is we started as a Consulting company. Then we shifted to being a specialty plant nutrition products and microbiome products company. And that's for a long time how we've paid our bills and we've kept the lights on. But yet when we have conversations with our growers about what it is they really enjoy about working with us, it's about the depth of consulting knowledge that they get. It's not about the products, it's about the consulting. Because these, understanding these cultural management practices like how to manage irrigation timing and how to manage specific pruning timing and so forth, all of that is deep knowledge that comes along with, with it's. You're absolutely right. This is an inherent part. We have to understand these pieces deeply and well in order to transition to a, to a more, to a model that is friendlier to the soil and to the ecosystem.

Yeah. And reflecting back on how we used to be a consulting company. I mean, that's what you started. And when I first got to know you, you were just at the development stages of the product. I remember sitting on my porch swing and you, you had a notepad and you were writing down names of products and, and how they were going to work and whether like the, you had some of the products that were already, that were ready to go, but you were developing others. And I think it's, I think it's a very important point in that the reason you develop products might get lost on a lot of people. And that is because the responses that you were getting from just putting non chelated micronutrients or the challenge that it was for growers to be able to apply specific nutrients at the right time because it wasn't easy to source them is what, is what brought us here. But what I, what I've Learned through these 15 years of, of consulting and working with the products and in areas where I've worked with growers where the products weren't available. You understand the system, John. You understand how things work and what we're trying to accomplish. And that's embodied in the products in a way that is not apparent just looking at it from the outside. And so that's one of the things that I think is also important. We can have all the knowledge, but we do have to have the tools that are in alignment with the way the plant is functioning, with the way nature functions, so that we're not bringing, we're not bringing tools that actually create an energy drag. Right. It's synergistic. It fits within the system. Yeah.

You know, as I'm reflecting back on what you were saying a bit ago about the timing of reproductive buds for pecans and how that translates to managing moisture in the fall, I think the one piece that so impresses me and that I'm so grateful for with our team at advancing eco agriculture is the depth of that knowledge that exists across dozens of different crop types. All right, we, not only do we have we been able to find that information for pecans specifically, but we also understand that it makes it unique and an interesting contrast to many other tree fruit crops. So it's that understanding of the context and placing that particular knowledge in the context of the greater whole, the whole farming system, the whole ecosystem. As we started the cotton research project and turning every year into a cotton year, I found it quite interesting how much of this information is already out there and how much of the information already exists but isn't. It isn't common, it isn't commonly known, it's not widely known. In fact, it's not even widely known in the case of cotton. It's an even widely known by most cotton agronomists. Why do you think that is?

I think there's a couple of reasons. I think one of the reasons is because a lot of the research is very. Most research trials or where people learn them are, are very isolated or specific for a specific part of. So it might be related to the response of a certain application of a certain nutrient that gives this response. But then you might need to go 100 papers north or south or, you know, until you finally find, oh, this is how this works and this is how these two fit together. And then you add that to the element of, you know, another paper that's a couple thousand layers down. So I think it's that level of complexity. And then when you have people within what, you know, a given crop, let's just say cotton, you have people who are focused on entomology, you have people who are focused on, on microbiology, you have people who are focused on all these different aspects and they, and they're very, they're very good at what they do, but they very rarely combine all of that information. That's something that I feel you have done extremely well and that, that we, that's really our focus and why we are stepping up or why we're focusing more on collaborating with growers to do much deeper research on specific crops, which this year we're focusing on cotton and it's been very exciting.

It's remarkable to me how particularly within the academic world we can develop such a remarkable degree of tunnel vision. We're all human, we all do it. I'm sure I do it in domains that I probably don't see it as easily because we tend to not see ourselves as clearly as we see other people. But I was at an event a couple of weeks ago where I picked up, didn't purchase it. I just picked it up and flipped through a book that was a scientific review of all of the most recent up to date literature on photosynthesis and how we can improve photosynthesis. And of course, this is a topic that's important to me. So it was the first book on the table that I picked up and started flipping my way through, skimming through. And there's all these in depth conversations about the Rubisco pathways, the various photosynthetic pathways, how they are more or less efficient, how their efficiency might possibly be improved. And with genetic engineering approaches, there's conversations about how rapidly stomata open and close and carbon dioxide gradients and water use efficiency, et cetera. Nowhere was there a conversation about leaf thickness or increasing leaf size or. It's like the entire framing for photosynthesis is framed at the cellular level with no consideration for the organism as a whole. And I think that captures in a microcosm what you are describing. You're describing exactly the same thing from a consulting perspective is that we have, and from also from a science and research perspective for these specific crops, we have this very deep domain knowledge in specific places that completely loses sight of the hole that it's supposed to be operating in.

Yeah, exactly. And what you were saying about photosynthesis just reminded me of the whole idea of supply and demand, which is something that, that has come up in our study with cotton, is that we can. So we can enhance leaf size.

Right.

That's a great idea. Maximize photosynthesis. We can make sure we have maximum level of chlorophyll and all of these things that contribute to maximizing photosynthesis. But what if the root is compromised because there's compaction or because we don't have biology or because we don't have sufficient levels of boron for that mechanism of moving sugars up and down into the roots? And so sugar gets moved down into the roots and it's not utilized. Right. More sugar is photosynthesized and moved into the roots than the root can use. What happens? The root sends it back up the plant and it's a signal that the plant has sufficient levels of photosynthesis. And so we can, we can do all these things to maximize photosynthesis. But if, if we've not taken care of the compaction issue or if we're limiting our root growth in whatever manner, then that can affect how much the applications that we make for photosynthesis may be less than, we may get less than optimal results because the plant is compromised somewhere else.

So in short, if we go back to the beginning of this conversation, what you're describing is we need people with deep domain knowledge of plant physiology, but not just of plant physiology. In order to be a good consultant, you need to be, you have deep, specific knowledge of many different areas.

That's right. And that's why it's so.

But also be able to translate that into practical application.

And that's why it's important to be a part of a team. And I think that's, that's one of the things that, you know, if you're, if you have 20 consultants or however many consultants there are now, you know, I don't know how's this work? Or we all, we're constantly bumping up against new things. And I believe as long as we live, we're going to continue to say ooh and awe and wow. When we look at the creation, we say wow. We just don't, we just don't know very much. But inspires me to continue learning. And so I think we should constantly be learning. We need to be looking at the systems and we need a system of people as well where, where we can have that combination of specialists and generalists, where we can have a, an immediate term focus with a long term focus in mind.

So, David, for all of our listeners, we have listeners here in the podcast from around the world, including many places that AEA isn't doing business in yet. You've gotten to see the AEA team develop. You've. Over the last 15 years, you've gotten to see lots of consultants in the field who perhaps farmers might have been better served to not listen to their advice. How would you suggest a farmer evaluate their consultant and or people that they're considering working with? What are the things that growers should be looking for in their consulting advisory agronomy team?

Does the consultant care about you? Does the consultant care about your farm? So that's one thought that immediately pops into my mind. I think another thing is considering the questions that are asked before a recommendation is made is also important. And that may play into the first point of when a consultant cares about you, about your farm, they will need to understand what it is that you're dealing with. The Root of why you're dealing with whatever the issue is in order to make the best recommendation for what's the most efficient, economical way to address this limiting factor. What's the most significant limiting factor? And how do we address and prioritize?

David, we're running up against our time slot here, but you mentioned something interesting that I think it's worth you and I talking about a little bit. You said, is the consultant or is the advisor peddling products? And I find it interesting because I get asked this question from people who are not AEA customers who are on the outside looking in, and they say, well, you pay your bills by selling products, therefore your advice is unbiased and impartial. Or, excuse me, it is biased and it's not impartial. And yet we never get that critique once from customers who are inside and who actually get to see our recommendations. In fact, we get the opposite. We get people like James Chen Johnson telling us we're the worst salespeople that he's ever met in his life. What are your thoughts on that?

My thought on that is when I talk about peddling product, I'm specifically talking about a consultant who has something in his warehouse, and this is what he's selling today. And so he's figuring out every which way in which he can sell that specific product, regardless of if it's needed or not needed. I'm not embarrassed or ashamed whatsoever to be able to offer to a grower the best tools out there. And so I, I and our team are honest with our recommendations to give the growers what is going to give them the best return on investment. And I'm confident that we have the tools that are able to accomplish that.

So. Well, one of the things that really inspires trust is that when, when we look, we'll make a recommendation and we say, well, what we. What you really need in this situation is you need an application of soluble or you need to apply boron to your soil at the exact same time. When we are, we have a product that is rebound boron that we could have recommended instead, but we looked at the best interest of the grower. And that's, that's a common theme.

I think at the end of the day, John, if we help growers, they can stay in business. They can be profitable if, if we don't do what is in the best interest for the grower? Well, I think there's principles in life that, you know, what comes around, goes around. And so I think the confidence and the trust in the consultant should be based on. Does it make sense? Farmers aren't dumb. Farmers know if something makes sense or doesn't make sense. So allow that. Allow. And maybe that's an additional point that you could add, is to say when. When a consultant invites the grower to be a part of the decision. Right. What do you think? What do you. How does this. That's. I think that's also very important, but.

Also offering explanation for why and how. How it works, why it works. That actually makes sense and in the context of a greater whole. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you, David. Thank you for all your contributions to the AEA team and for all of our listeners. This is a very abbreviated glimpse into what consulting looks like internally within advancing eco agriculture. If you'd like to experience it for yourself, please pick up the phone and give us a call and we'll make that happen. We would love to do that.

Thank you, John. And I would just say to your listeners, or maybe I can call them our listeners, because a part of your team, if you have questions, deeper physiological questions, and you'd like to run some trials and you'd like for us to help set those up, certainly don't hesitate to. To give us a call as well. We're. We're pretty well planned out for the 2024 season, but we have plans and development for 2025.

All right, thank you, David. Thank you all to all of our listeners. Have an awesome growing season.