The Importance of Plant Health | How Healthy Plants Create Healthy Soil | AEA and ROA

Welcome, friends. Welcome, everyone.

I'm John Kempf and I'm here with Elizabeth Whitlow.

Glad to see you all.

Elizabeth, I'm going to turn it over to you.

Great. Thanks, John. Good morning. Good afternoon, everybody. So glad you're here. Very excited about hearing from John today and the opportunity to just collaborate a bit with John and his crew on making this gathering happen. And I'm Elizabeth Whitlow. I'm with the Regenerative Organic Alliance. I'm based in Northern California. The Regenerative Organic alliance is a group of experts in animal welfare, organic social fairness, who came together to create a new standard for agriculture about four or five years ago. I've been the lucky person who was selected to lead the movement. We've developed a certification program called Regenerative Organic Certified, and it's based on three pillars that look at soil health, animal welfare, and worker fairness, social equity. It's really fitting that we just work with and learn from John on these aspects around soil and plant health, because these are, of course, really critical to our program looking at the health of the whole farm ecosystem in a very holistic approach. And so excited to learn today. And I'm going to turn it to you, John, because that's why everybody's here.

Thanks. Thanks for the introduction, Elizabeth.

And we're really excited for the opportunity to be able to collaborate with you and to bring the great work that you are doing to a larger audience. You know, it's one of the things.

That we can learn from natural ecosystems is that ecosystems thrive when the species.

Within those ecosystems are truly collaborative.

And it's one of the things that.

I learned from several of my colleagues in this regenerative agriculture science space, the agronomy science space, is that when resources.

Are abundant, when there is a surplus.

Of resources, whether that's water, nutrients or whatever the case might be, that's very.

Common for plants to compete. But the moment resources become limited, then.

Plants begin collaborating and soil biology and plants begin collaborating ever more effectively and ever more efficiently. And it's time, I think, for us as a species collectively to begin recognizing that we are on a resource limited environment and to behave accordingly.

And what it means to me to behave accordingly is to collaborate and focus.

On collaboration and symbiosis rather than this perspective of competition, which is really coming from a place of fear. So glad to be able to be here, to be able to collaborate with you, John.

Every conversation we have just like brightens up the world a little bit more. It really does. Thank you.

All right, so the Conversation. The pieces that I wanted to talk about today are a. To some degree, they're a review of plant health and soil health, of some of the concepts that I've talked about in over the last decade or so of the plant health pyramid and this diagram that we call the biological cascade. And it's really based on this, what used to be a very heretical point of view to say that it's not healthy soil that creates healthy plants, but.

It'S in fact the opposite. It's healthy plants that create healthy soil. And.

When I first started talking about.

This frame of reference or this way of thinking about it 15 years ago, I got lots of upside down smiles.

And today this is beginning to be.

Recognized as, yeah, this is the way that the system really works, which is quite rewarding.

And how this whole frame of reference came about is really a tremendous credit.

To the mentors that I had and the early teachers that I had when I was starting out on this pathway.

Of trying to understand. I approach this whole conversation from the perspective of plant health, of what truly defines a healthy plant and what is.

Really possible when we improve plant health.

And once we have really healthy plants.

How does the ecosystem change?

And approaching this conversation from a perspective of first principles, thinking of what are the foundational core principles of how soil.

And plant ecosystems really work.

And, you know, the unfortunate part about this conversation is too few of us have had the opportunity to experience what.

Really healthy plants are actually like and.

How they really behave. Over the last decade or so, I've started describing really healthy plants and the way that they behave. You just, just broadly say that they express themselves differently, and that's about the best I can do. They express themselves differently because there's tremendous variation from plant species to plant species.

And how they behave in different environments.

But all of a sudden I have, I think I've shared some of these.

Photos in some of my blog posts.

But I have photos of peas with leaves the size of the palm of my hand.

And I have fairly small hands, but that's probably three and a half inches across.

And how often do we get to see peas with leaves that size? And they produced accordingly. Is that normal? There was nothing unusual with the pea genetics. I've shared photos of our radishes that were 8 to 9 ounces in weight.

Of the radish and that were at.

Six weeks after planting, and.

And they were sweet and crisp and clear all the way through.

Is that normal? Is that what really healthy plants are capable of? So anyway, the point that I would like to make is that what we perceive today as being common and what most of us have had the privilege of experiencing, we've seldom had the privilege of experiencing really exceptionally healthy plants. And what I want to talk about.

Today is.

What do really healthy plants look like from a disease and insect resistance perspective? How do we manage nutrition and the microbiome to get there? And then how does that change soil health?

So I've got about 50 slides for the next 40 minutes. You know what that means. Clamp on your hats and buckle your seatbelts because this is going to be a fun ride.

I think I was asked to. I've set aside a couple of hours for this webinar. I'm going to try to get through the slide deck in about 40 minutes.

Or so and then going to open it up to Q and A to talk about whatever it is relevant to this topic, whatever questions you might have.

Alright, so without any further intro, I'm going to just dive right into the topic. So first, maybe I should describe when I say healthy plants, when I talk about a truly healthy plant, you've probably already surmised that I'm not talking about.

A plant that just is nice and dirty green and looks nice when you drive past it.

My definition of plant health is. It's a definition that I originally learned in the context of human health from Dr. Arden Anderson. He said that the way that we think about health is from this binary perspective that an organism, a person, a an animal or a plant is either healthy or unhealthy. But in fact, there's a spectrum. You have exceptionally vibrant health on one end of the spectrum, you have disease on the other end of the spectrum. And then somewhere below vibrant health, you have a threshold where a plant or animal is not yet diseased but also isn't vibrantly healthy. And Arden called this state a pre disease state. So you may not have the visual or obvious expression of disease, but you're.

Not at this state of really optimal, vibrant health.

And what I also learned is that when you look at this spectrum of health that we have to recognize there are two opposite ends of the spectrum and you do not have mixed signals. You don't have plants that have some signals of poor health and other signals of optimal health. It's always in one end of the.

Spectrum or the other.

And Arden described how he used to have people come into his office for medical interventions and they would say something like, aside from my prostate cancer, I'm perfectly healthy. That's an oxymoron. That doesn't exist. If you have cancer, if you have some other type of degenerative disease, then obviously you are not in a healthy state. And the same is true of plants. And this is where I have a very different point of view from the mainstream that I've developed over the last decade and a half, that when I talk about truly healthy plants, plants that are in that optimal state of vibrant health, what is the definition of a healthy plant? From my point of view, it's really simple. It's a plant that has no expression of disease, has no expression of insect damage. If either of those are true, then it's obviously not perfectly healthy. So people will say things like, I have this green bean crop, and aside from the snow mold pressure, the plants are perfectly healthy. That's an oxymoron. It doesn't exist. That's not the way that I think about soil and plant health or plant health. And I think it's also not an.

Accurate representation of how the system works overall.

So this presentation, I'm going to give you a rapid overview of the Plant Health Pyramid that we developed now, I think was back in 2014 when we first published it. And if you've heard me talk about the Plant Health Pyramid before, this is going to be a bit of a review, but there is some new information here as well. And people tell me all the time.

That I keep saying new stuff every time I present this. So we'll see what comes forward this time.

The Plant Health Pyramid came about as a result of our consulting work at AEA. We're working at this point in 2014. We're working on probably roughly between 35 and 40 crops that we have significant data on that we have a lot of experience with. And we're observing this gradual progression of plant health, where plants become resistant to different groups of insects and different groups of diseases based on what's happening inside.

The plants from a physiological perspective.

And so there is a lot of science behind this, and you can always dig in. I've got a number of webinars on.

YouTube and infographics and stuff that you can dig into this a bit further.

Further, if you want to, but I want to give you an introduction and a quick overview of what's happening and.

What we're describing with the Plant Health Pyramid.

The first level, the foundational level, the Plant Health Pyramid, is level one, where plants have what we, for lack of a better term, call complete photosynthesis. And you could equally accurately say a.

Higher volume of photosynthesis or higher plateau of photosynthesis.

Most Plants that we see growing. Commonly, what we're most familiar with are plants that are photosynthesizing somewhere in the.

Neighborhood of about 15 to 20% of their inherent photosynthetic capacity. That's usually because of deficiencies of carbon.

Dioxide and or water. Those are the number one and number two limiting factors.

But there's also specific nutrients that are evolved in this process.

So what we're describing at level one is because most plants are at 15 to 20%, possible to greatly increase the quantity of sugars that are formed in each 24 hour photoperiod. Or a different way of saying that is you can take a plant that has a brix reading of four in.

The leaves, I'm speaking specifically about the.

Leaves, the photosynthetic factory here, and move it from a 4 to a 20. And Brix is not a great metric. I have lots of challenges and frustrations with that metric. But it can be a useful analog to say when you move the plant from a Brix reading of 4 to.

A Brix reading of 20, you've just increased the sugar production in each 24.

Hour photoperiod by a factor of 5x. And all of a sudden, really interesting stuff starts to happen. And the best way that I can express it is to say that this plant begins behaving differently and it develops a different relationship with the soil microbiome.

And the microbiome on the plant leaf.

Surface because all of a sudden it has more sugar than it needs to.

Maintain itself and to successfully reproduce.

And so it will begin transmitting a much larger percentage of sugars out through the root system as root exudates and out through the leaf surface as leaf.

Exudates to support its microbiome.

So there's a number of pathways to increasing the volume, the quantity of Sugars.

In each 24 hour photoperiod. You can increase leaf thickness, you can.

Increase overall leaf size.

These are common garden variety eggplants that were just supported with really good nutrition.

You can increase the chlorophyll concentrations in each square centimeter of leaf surface area and you can increase the efficiency of.

The photosynthesis process within each of the chloroplasts and within each of the cells.

What happens at level one is as soon as plants develop a surplus of sugar, it changes the microbial relationships in the rhizosphere. And all of a sudden, these plants or these pathogens, I really dislike that word. But these organisms that are called pathogens, such as Verticillium and Fazarium and Rhizoctonia and so forth, change the nature of their relationship with the plant as a result of the presence of other, what are called disease suppressive organisms. So Vasarium can have two types of.

Relationships with a plant.

One is as a pathogenic relationship where.

It can affect a plant and eventually will end up killing it as a.

Disease, or a symbiotic relationship where it provides the plant with nutrients and the plant provides Fazarium with sugar, exactly the.

Same way as with mycorrhizal fungi.

The same is true of Verticillium.

The same is true of Rhizoctonia. The same is true of Pythium and Phytophthora.

It's possible for plants to have either a symbiotic relationship or an antagonistic disease.

Causing relationship with these organisms.

And the only question of which type of relationship is going to be formed is the only determining factor is the quantity and quality of the root exudates.

That go out through the root system.

And change the microbiome to develop what.

Is called a disease suppressive soil microbiome.

So what is needed to get here these five nutrients? If you want to get to level one of plant health, you need to have plants. Plants need to have adequate levels of these five minerals.

Magnesium, iron, manganese, nitrogen and phosphorus.

Now, I want to clarify, I didn't say that you need to add more.

Of each of these five elements.

I just simply said you need to make sure that plants have enough of.

Each of these five elements.

Our experience is that at least in an agricultural productive setting, and I know we're speaking to an organic audience here, but even in an organic setting, we very seldom see nitrogen deficiencies. Nitrogen is very seldom the limiting factor. Magnesium is sometimes, phosphorus is sometimes. But iron and manganese are consistently very deficient and are the bottleneck that slows.

Down the photosynthesis process.

And this is true in spite of these elements, particularly iron being abundant in most soil profiles. Many soil analysis will show extremely high levels of iron, and yet the crop is, and you'll even have tissue analysis that show high levels of iron, and.

Yet the crop will be deficient in iron.

And you can easily observe this by doing a test spot treatment with a.

Foliar application of a chelated reduced iron.

And you get this tremendous crop response.

As they recover from that iron deficiency.

And this is actually an important point for if we're thinking about this from an organic certification perspective, we know that if we want to apply iron, we need to have a documented deficiency. And so the soil analysis that are commonly used, and the tissue analysis that are commonly used have a critical flaw in that they measure the form of iron that is present but unusable by.

Plants, which is what is called the oxidized form of iron.

So oxidized iron is rust. It's present, it can be present in high concentrations, but it's not physiologically active.

Plants can't use it. It needs to be in the reduced form.

And the same is true of manganese as well, but it's particularly extreme with iron. And so our pathway for managing this has been with the use of plant.

SAP analysis, which does accurately report whether the plants have enough iron or manganese in the reduced form that it's actually physiologically active.

I just wanted to comment, John, because I saw that a lot when I worked in the organic sector. That is, that documented deficiency would drive the use of synthetic micronutrients. Boron and zinc were others. And it, it's this kind of that very reductive thinking that I'm sure you will expand on more.

It can really get.

This reductive thinking can really get you.

Into trouble, Elizabeth, because I would say.

Based on our database, somewhere in the neighborhood of between 90 and 95% of.

All crops are deficient in iron, in spite of soil and tissue analysis showing excessive levels of iron.

Which is really unfortunate because if we look at iron and manganese, why are they here? Why are they in this group of these five minerals that really accelerate photosynthesis, there's, there's two critical aspects of iron. One is that it is. You could think of it as being the. The wrench that puts chlorophyll together. Iron is not a part of chlorophyll, but it assembles chlorophyll. So if you're low on iron, you end up being low in chlorophyll. That's part one. Part two is iron is the. Is the. One of the foundational elements to form all of the various carotenoids. So beta carotene, alpha carotene, zeaxanthin, all these various carotenoids function in the plant as photon receptors. And so chlorophyll itself actually only absorbs a very tiny percentage of the total available light bandwidth. But all these various carotenoids broaden the frequencies, the light frequencies that can be absorbed, and they transfer photons into chlorophyll. And they're all dependent on iron.

So if you have a.

This is why when you have a plant that has abundant iron, it visually, to us appears darker green and it's absorbing a lot more sunlight and it's.

Moving a lot more sunlight and photons into the chlorophyll.

And the reason for manganese is that in the photosynthesis process, when water is.

Absorbed either from the soil or from.

The atmosphere, when that water gets utilized in photosynthesis, the first step for that water molecule is that it gets split.

Into hydrogen and hydroxyl.

This H and oh, this process is.

Called water hydrolysis and it is completely dependent on manganese.

So this means if you have a crop, even if you are in an environment with abundant water, the crop is being well irrigated, you have abundant water. If the crop doesn't have enough manganese.

Then manganese is going to be the limiting factor to slow down photosynthesis. It can be a bigger limiting factor than water in a lot of cases.

It's interesting stuff. All right, moving on to level two, I'm going to try to continue to.

Flip through this because I'm very conscious of the clock keeping, continuing to tick away here.

Level two is when we get to complete protein synthesis. And what is happening with protein synthesis is that all of the nitrogen that plants absorb in each 24 hour photoperiod, all the nitrogen they absorb from the root system gets immediately converted, either A, it's absorbed in the form of proteins, peptides and so forth, or B, it gets immediately converted to proteins. It's not healthy for plants to have any levels of nitrates or ammonium or.

Urea in the plant SAP.

So I already touched on this. We want to see immediate conversion when in our SAP analysis we measure nitrate and ammonium and total nitrogen separately, three different metrics. And our goal is to have generous levels of total nitrogen but non detectable.

Levels of nitrate and non detectable levels of ammonium. And it's so much fun when that happens because once you achieve that, you don't have insects on your crop anymore. You will not have Japanese beetles and cucumber beetles and Colorado potato beetles. They're just, they're gone. Spider mites and so forth, they're just.

They'Re none issue once you have plants.

Effectively and efficiently converting nitrogen into proteins.

So what happens at level 2 is.

Plants become resistant to all these insects that have simple digestive systems, particularly the larval insects that I've listed here, corn borers, cabbage loopers and so forth. And also aphids, leafhoppers, whiteflies and thrips.

And I haven't listed it on here.

But this is also the section where.

Nematodes fit in and also.

Any larval.

Insects that feed on the root system.

Such as, Eh, it's escaping me right now, the one that I wanted to mention, corn, rootworm beetle and so forth.

So what is needed to get to level two of plant health? Four elements, four nutrients. Plants need to have enough magnesium, sulfur, molybdenum and boron. These are the elements that plants particularly need to rapidly and efficiently convert any.

Form of absorbed nitrogen into the complete protein form.

And if you notice, I'm really lasering in here, really diving in here. There's any number of good books that talk about soil mineral balance and the.

Need to provide enough calcium and the need to provide enough basic nutrients and.

Need to provide a balance of nutrients. And what I'm describing here is not, I want to be clear that I'm not saying that that information is inaccurate or irrelevant.

That's not the case at all.

That is a very appropriate foundation. But once you've done that, found there are way too many people and way too many farmers who have done mineral balancing on their soils, but they still.

Have disease and insect susceptibility.

And so we have lasered in if you will, we've narrowed in and we've said, okay, we have a solid mineral balance that is generally, we're generally getting decent crops, but they're still in this pre disease or in this disease state. What are the specific nutrients that we need to address to move out of this disease or insect susceptibility to the.

State of vibrant health?

And these are the nutrients that nutrient.

Combinations that we've identified that are very consistent and reliable at moving to these different stages.

So if we look at, I want to expand on protein synthesis just really quickly. When you, when a plant absorbs. Well, let's start with sugar synthesis, photosynthesis. Plants absorb, create, or I should say.

Synthesize the simple sugar called glucose, which is C6H 12:06.

You can think of this as a.

This is an oversimplification, but you can think of this as being a short chain that has 24 links.

And that chain of 24 links gets modified, twisted around, rearranged.

Nitrogen gets added to it.

And we now call that amino acids. There are 23 common amino acids.

There's several hundred that have been identified in plants so far, but 23 that.

Are primary and all with slightly different configurations. Those amino acids now get bonded together in groups of two or three that we now call peptides.

So you may have heard of dipeptides or tripeptides. Those are simply amino acid combinations.

Then those Peptides are bonded together to form much longer, more complex chains that.

We now call complete proteins.

These complex chains in plants can have.

As many as 120 to 180,000 links. So hundreds of peptides, or thousands of peptides joined together to form these complex proteins.

In order to build these amino acids and to build the peptides and to.

Build up the complete proteins.

All of this building process, this reorganization.

This restructuring of these molecular bonds, is facilitated by enzymes.

You can think of enzymes as being.

This microscopic laser welding crew. That's exactly what they're like.

They absorb photonic energy into a crystalline structure, and they release that energy in a burst through the crystal facets, and they weld bonds together.

They're a catalyst.

They rapidly create these bonds to bond one amino acid to another amino acid.

Or one peptide to a second peptide.

So enzymes are these crystalline proteins, and they are all dependent. Here's some photomicrographs of enzymes within plants. Pretty intriguing structures.

If you look online, you can find hundreds of images like this.

Enzymes are quite interesting in that they function as an end wrench, in the sense that each enzyme can only perform one specific kind of reaction. Just like an end wrench only fits one size nut or bolt properly, each enzyme can only create one specific reaction. It can only catalyze amino acid B to amino acid F. And that's it.

Nothing else.

And as a result of this, there are tens of thousands of different enzymes found within plants. Because each one of them is very reaction specific, but also like an N wrench, they can perform the same function.

Over and over and over again without being used up.

Each one of these enzymes is dependent.

On what is called an enzyme cofactor. And here's where we get to the meat of this conversation.

This is why I'm taking the time to explain this. Each enzyme requires an enzyme cofactor. When I say it requires an enzyme cofactor, what I mean is that without the enzyme cofactor, the enzyme is dysfunctional. It doesn't work. These enzyme cofactors are all trace mineral keys. They're all trace mineral metals or B vitamins that contain metals.

For example, vitamin B12 that contains cobalt.

Magnesium, zinc, manganese, copper, molybdenum, selenium. There's this broad array of different trace minerals that are required for a plant to have a completely functioning enzyme system. They're now identifying that tin and lanthanum.

And rubidium and silver and gold, and.

All of these elements are required to have completely functioning enzyme systems in very, very tiny concentrations. Concentrations of a Few parts per billion. So a very small amount is required. But what happens that if the enzyme cofactor is missing, the enzyme doesn't work and the proteins are not properly built. And this is why I included those four elements. Magnesium, sulfur, molybdenum and boron. I'm going to pick on one of the four, and that is molybdenum. Molybdenum is the enzyme cofactor for a group of enzymes that are called nitrate reductases. They are specifically tasked with or the enzymes that are responsible for converting nitrates. And without those enzymes, nitrates don't get converted and you end up with a plant that accumulates high levels of nitrates and is extremely susceptible to all these.

Larval insects that I spoke of, all because of an inadequacy of molybdenum as the enzyme cofactor.

There's more that I could speak of here. It's really interesting of the mechanism of.

Why these incomplete proteins are insect food and the differences in insects digestive systems versus our digestive systems. But I'll leave that for now.

Actually, maybe I won't. Maybe I won't leave that because I'm just realizing many of you that are attending here are organic growers. And there is this fallacy within the organic agriculture community. I've not heard it so much recently.

But 10 years ago this was quite common. That.

I have a bushel of apples.

That a number of the apples have.

Worms in them and therefore they must.

Be good for me to eat because.

The fact that they weren't sprayed with pesticides means that if they're good enough for the worms to eat, then they're.

Also good enough for me to eat. That's hogwash.

These insects have very different digestive systems than we do. And an analogy that I've used in the past is to say that our digestive systems differ from that of a ruminant animal like a beef cow or a dairy cow. Ruminants can get energy from dry hay. Why? Because their digestive system contains the cellulase.

Enzyme that is capable of digesting and breaking down cellulose and releasing energy.

Our digestive systems don't have the cellulase enzyme, and if we only consume dry hay, we would starve. And the same parallel is true. The same parallel is true between our digestive system, the digestive system of an insect. If a plant has enough degraded proteins to serve as a food source for insects, it does not have the complete proteins that are required for optimal digestion and immune function.

For Us.

So what is healthy food for an insect is not a healthy food for people in exactly the same way that.

What is a healthy food for a dairy cow is not a healthy food for people.

We have very different digestive systems, very.

Different digestive enzymes, and very different metabolic requirements.

I really appreciate this quote from William.

Albrecht where he said that insects are nature's garbage collectors and diseases are our cleanup crew. And what he's describing is the ethos of what I just communicated is that different organisms require different food sources.

I want to give you a couple of quick examples.

This is an organic farm in central Pennsylvania. This is an early story that we worked on. I'd say maybe around 2012 or 2011, somewhere in there, and.

You can't see it too clearly, but this field has six rows of corn alternated with six rows of soybeans. They had just transitioned.

This field was organically certified for the first year. This was the first year of an organically certified crop.

And at this stage, when this photo was taken, the farmer called us in a bit of a panic because about.

25% of his corn seedlings were really stunted from corn rootworm and wireworm damage.

And he wanted to know what he could do. And I said, well, we don't know. We do not have experience with this situation. Here's what we could recommend. We could recommend putting on a foliar application of the four elements that I described.

Magnesium, sulfur, aluminum, and boron. We had a couple of specific product formulations that contained those materials, along with.

Another seaweed and crab shell, shrimp shell.

Product to function as immune elicitors and.

Trigger an immune reaction within the plant. We said, here's. I told them, here's what I would try if this were my field, but I don't have experience.

I do not know if it's going to work.

So they put on a full year.

Application of those that I had recommended. And I'm missing a critical photo here.

48 hours later, they dug up root.

Systems and went through those soils with a toothpick, essentially, and they identified that all of their corn rootworm larvae and the wireworms were dead. And that's so much fun when that happens. We've had so many experiences like this over the years.

What happens is you change the plant's.

Protein profile, you change the amino acid in the peptide profile, and you trigger an immune reaction.

And once you change the plant's physiology.

They have the capacity and the equipment to produce compounds that will actually have an insecticidal effect on their own.

They can kill insect pests when they are supported with the right nutrition and.

With the right microbiome.

There's another example. This is organic corn in Kansas.

In 2015, the crop scout identified spider mites. And this is an interesting story. One of our consultants was working with this farmer.

He had pulled a SAP analysis about seven days prior, and our consultant made.

Recommendations for a nutrient application to be applied in the pivot onto corn. So the pivot takes 48 hours to make a complete loop.

The morning the pivot started the applications.

The local crop scout identified spider mites in reasonably high populations in the organic corn crop. And once the pivot made its pass, spider mites were dead in 48 hours. That application with the pivot was purely nutritional. There was no insecticide applications. There might have been a couple of immune elicitors in that one as well, which are also important. And when they harvested the crop, they found no corn borer or earworm expression anywhere in the entire crop, and they ended up with a 250 bushel per acre harvest.

So those are examples of what is.

Possible when you have good protein synthesis. And I could speak about this a lot more, but we have other references as well.

One of the things that will change, and I'm sure many of you, as.

Longtime organic farmers, have observed and experienced.

This, once you start improving soil health, when the domesticated crop that you're producing.

Becomes healthier than the undomesticated weeds, in other words, when the soil is more.

Conducive to the crop than it is.

To the weeds, you will get insects attacking the weeds instead of the crop. And oh, my goodness, that is so much fun to see that happen.

I'm going to keep moving here. So we have level three of the plant health pyramid. This is when we have.

Plants that have increased energy and they begin storing this surplus energy in the form of higher levels of fats and oils. You can see this visually when you see this glossy, waxy sheen on the leaf surface.

And in order for this to happen, plants need a very active microbiome in.

The root system, in the rhizosphere, they.

Need to absorb the majority of their nutrition from biology, not in the form.

Of simple ions, not magnesium, potassium ions, nitrate ions, and so forth, but instead in the form of bacterial cells, bacterial bodies, and bacterial metabolites.

Once this happens, plants become resistant. When you have this glossy, waxy sheen.

On the leaf surface, plants become much more resistant to all of the airborne fungal and bacterial pathogens, mildews, rusts, blights, etc. And there's a number of different mechanisms by which this works, but one of them is that you have this very effective shield in place of having these waxes and oils on the leaf surface that prevent the pectolytic enzymes from actually gaining access to pectins.

So to get here, we need to.

Have a good biology, good microbiome.

Now we get to level four.

Things become really entertaining at level four because plants begin expressing themselves in dramatically different ways. This is where you hear the really radical stories about growers increasing yields by 40% or 60% and having amazing performance in drought, stress and so forth. And it's because of what is, what starts happening here at level four of plant health. What happens at level four, and this kind of happens concurrently with level three.

Is the microbes in the rhizosphere and.

In the phylosphere, the microbes both on the leaf surface and the root system.

Begin triggering the plant's immune pathways. There are many of these organisms that.

Group them into different categories. We call them phytosanitary bacteria, we call.

Them plant growth promoting rhizobacteria. The accurate way to say it is to say that these different organisms serve as immune elicitors. They trigger the plant's immune reaction by their presence. In much the same way that we, when we get exposed to different bugs, different organisms, our immune reaction gets triggered and responds. And subsequently, assuming we've had a healthy immune response, we become healthier, we become more robust, and we become immune to those initial organisms. And a similar process functions in plants. So what happens is we have these plants in the, these organisms in the rhizosphere and on the leaf surface that are constantly, every day, they're constantly stimulating.

And triggering the plant's immune system.

And this is very powerful because this dramatically upregulates, it increases the plant's synthesis and the plant's production of these compounds that we just broadly call plant secondary.

Metabolites, these phytoalaxins and terpenoids and sesquiterpenes and bioflavonoids that plants produce as the foundation of their immune system.

And then as we know, many of.

These compounds also have significant effects on the animals and the insects and the livestock and the people who eat this.

Food, where some of these compounds have.

Very pronounced anti inflammatory effects. They enhance, I think it's, you could just simply summarize it by saying many of them enhance our own immune systems and we can start having legitimate conversation about growing food as medicine.

So, and also it's worth mentioning that.

A few of these are also antinutrients. Yes, Elizabeth.

I just want to remind people that there's so much going on with that and emerging science on what we do to the soil, we do to ourselves in our bodies and the gut. Microbiome and human health, all the connections that are being drawn with that right now are very much mirror what you're saying.

So just love that there's this biblical perspective that we are comprised of Earth and we shall return to Earth. And I think you start really digging.

Into that, all of a sudden you realize, huh, maybe we are comprised of.

Earth more than we would like to acknowledge.

So what happens at level four is. Well, let me just say it this way. Over the last 15 years, every year, every growing season, we get approached by.

People who will say something to the.

Effect of, we have this incurable, untreatable disease.

And if you can come up with.

This treatment for this disease, you will be a millionaire. If I've heard that once, I must.

Have heard it 30 times.

We've worked with crown gall, on walnuts.

With Pierce's disease, on grapes, with bacterial canke, or on stone fruit.

There's any number of diseases for which there is no known effective treatment, even.

In the mainstream contemporary agricultural protocols.

As of Today, beginning of 2023, we.

Have not yet been unsuccessful once.

When we address nutrition and we develop a plant that has nutritional integrity and.

Microbiome integrity, those diseases disappear. They go away always.

And after having had such a track record of success, this is why I have the confidence of saying in the plant health pyramid, at the bottom of the plant health pyramid, the first slide.

We have this saying that I've put.

Out there that it is possible for.

Plants to be 100% resistant to all diseases and insects. And that's a pretty big mouthful. It's a pretty big claim to make.

But it's one that I'm comfortable making.

Because of those experiences.

This is not a theory.

This is not a hypothesis. This is something we've successfully put into practice on millions of acres at this point.

And once you have that track record of success, at some point, I think it's important for us to put a stake in the ground and say, okay.

This is the reality.

Few of us have gotten to experience.

And live this reality, but this is real. This can be real for all of us.

It's worth noting and mentioning that it is at this stage. We don't yet have enough experience that I can say this definitively, but we have. We've had several experiences with different crops, working with seed Stock genetics that and seed stock producers that were being tested for viruses before being planted and after being harvested, where the presence of viruses was detected at planting.

I'm thinking of potatoes in this case, but there's other plants relevant as well. And then moved to an undetected harvest. And there's.

I found some really interesting snippets in the literature that describe how viral expression.

Can be shut down when plants have generous levels of some of these, what they at that point in time called high atomic weight trace minerals like molybdenum and selenium and nickel. There's some pretty interesting stuff out there that we haven't looked at well enough in terms of managing virusis implants.

And of course, to get to this stage, we have to have the correct.

Microbiome, what we call a disease suppressive microbiome.

So if you notice the pattern that.

Happened through this pyramid, through this diagram.

The first two levels, level one and level two, what I refer to as passive immunity, we're just simply changing the food source. We are creating a plant nutritional profile that is no longer a food source for an insect or it's no longer.

A viable food source for these pathogenic organisms.

And the second point is that they are based purely. These lower two levels are based purely on balanced nutritional profiles. A hydroponic grower can achieve level one.

And level two and quite rapidly.

Level one and level two we find a relatively easy and relatively straightforward to.

Achieve when we're working with growers in the field.

You can put on, as in the.

Case of the corn example that I both corn examples that I provided, you.

Can put on a foliar application and you will get an observable crop response.

Assuming the foliar was properly designed.

You'll get an observable crop response usually.

In 48 to 60 hours, sometimes less.

That makes that knowledge essentially as effective.

As an insecticide in the organic agricultural world, because you change plant physiology and you shift plants away to the point where they're no longer a food source. And that can happen very quickly.

But level three and level four are different. I have yet to observe level three.

And level four being achieved in a hydroponic setting because they're dependent on biology, not chemistry. We need to have functional microbiomes in the rhizosphere and on the leaf surface in order to get to level three and level four of the plant health pyramid.

So there's obviously a tremendous amount of science behind this that I don't have the bandwidth to review in the short.

Amount of time that we have available. But we have quite a few additional resources available online if you want to dig into the science behind this deeper.

So now the next place I want to go to is when plants begin.

Behaving differently, they begin expressing themselves differently.

What does that mean for soil health? And I got ahead of myself here. I want to, I guess I did.

Speak a bit on passive resistance versus active resistance.

So the bottom of the plant health.

Pyramid act a passive resistance, passive immunity. We simply remove the food Source.

The top two levels, Level 3 and Level 4 plants switch to active resistance when an insect feeds on them. They will begin producing compounds to specifically.

Suppress the digestion or to produce an anti insect effect. So they move from passive to active.

There's a couple, there's two different immune.

System pathways, what are called the salicylic acid or the systemic acquired resistance pathway and the ISR pathway.

And I wanted to include those and just mention them to make the point that the concentrations of the compounds produced by these two pathways will change at different stages of plant health. And this is really valuable, important for anyone who's growing crops that cares about flavor and aroma. There's very few crops that actually get.

Paid directly for flavor and aroma. As an industry wide statement. The one of them for which this is true is wine grapes. Wine grapes get paid for based on quality directly. There are individual examples of other farms that for which that is true.

But for many of us, if we have our own brands, our own fruits.

And vegetables, we care about flavor and aroma. Consumers care about flavor and aroma.

So what happens? There's been this historical knowledge, if you will, that if you want to produce fruit with exceptional flavor and aroma or with high concentrations of these aromatic compounds, the pathway to achieve that is to stress the plant either with water deprivation.

Or nutrient deprivation in the form of nitrogen or phosphorus.

And so what happens if you look at this graph, this is just intended to be an illustration on the left side of the graph. If you look at plant biomass and let's just say that where that particular, all the way on the left, the chart that represents a stressed plant, A plant that doesn't have enough water or.

Doesn'T have enough nitrogen or phosphorus in most cases.

So let's for the sake of conversation.

Say that that plant represents 5% photosynthetic efficiency.

When you have this stress plant, you have really high concentrations of plant secondary metabolites. And then once you remove the water.

Deprivation, you start adding water or adding.

Nutrients, the photosynthetic efficiency goes up. It'll go from 5% up to 10 or 15%.

And as that photosynthetic efficiency goes up.

You get a lot more plant biomass.

Your concentrations of plant secular metabolites drops down.

And that has been the story, that's.

Been the industry knowledge for quite some time, that if you give plants an ideal environment, they're going to produce lower concentrations of these aromatic compounds.

But that's not where the curves end.

That'S not where the story ends.

What happens is that if you then address nutrition specifically to increase photosynthesis, this curve of plant biomass and photosynthetic efficiency continues to escalate, continues to increase, you'll go up to 30%, 40% photosynthetic efficiency. And when that happens, you get to level three, level four of the plant health pyramid. All of a sudden, you'll get these higher concentrations of plant secondary metabolites that will be in higher concentrations than they were when you had a stress plant. And the ratios are likely to be different, the flavor and aroma profiles are.

Likely to be much more complex and much more nuanced.

There's lots of really interesting stuff that.

Happens here on the right side of this plant secondary metabolite bell curve.

And anyone who doesn't believe that this.

Is reality or that this doesn't exist should try to persuade cannabis growers to grow their plants a stressed environment. It's not going to happen.

One last point that I'll mention here is that as this changes, as you change these concentrations of secondary metabolites, that.

Changes the microbiome in the root system and on the leaf surface in significant ways.

If you want to produce a disease suppressive soil, a disease suppressive microbiome, the pathway to achieving that is to change the plants or to increase the plant's.

Production of these aromatic compounds.

Because as they send these compounds out.

Through the root system as redexudates, they change the microbiome in very significant ways.

So this leads us to the last.

Point, which is that it's widely believed that healthy soils create healthy plants.

But I would contend that the opposite is true.

It's actually healthy plants that create healthy soil. And.

What is soil without photosynthesis and without carbon, soil is nothing more than decomposed rock particles. There are microbiologists who will say something.

Along the lines of, it's really fungi, it's fungal populations, it's lichens, it's all these different organisms that degrade rock particles and release minerals and make them available to plants.

And so they are really the drivers.

They're the pioneers of developing soil. And there's Just a simple question that I have in response to that is what is the food source of fungi? The food source of fungus is derived from photosynthesis.

So whether we have photosynthetic algae in soil or whether we have photosynthetic plants, it is photosynthesis that drives this entire process. And what we should care about as organic farmers, if we have a desire.

To regenerate our soil health, then it's.

What we really desire is we want to move as much carbon as possible from the leaves down into the root system. And when you ask the question how much is possible?

The answers become really intriguing.

In the peer reviewed literature, there are descriptions of plants transferring as little as 5% and as much as 95% of their total photosynthetic, their total photosynthesis that they produce in their entire lifetime out through the root system as rude exudates.

That'S a pretty wide range, 5% to 95%.

And in some cases there's variation from 5% to 75% with the same plant species. So this is not just genetic variation.

Across different plant species.

There's a lot more at play here. And what I've identified as kind of the, a fundamental failing of the quote, unquote carbon sequestration research is the assumption.

That photosynthesis is a constant, that photosynthesis.

Occurs at a constant rate of speed. We assume that a corn plant in Iowa and a corn plant in California, or we can pick any type of plant but in different environments, are all photosynthesizing constantly at the same rate of speed. But nothing could be further from the truth. Photosynthesis is incredibly variable. And it is variable as a result.

Of nutritional integrity, microbiome integrity, but it's really nutritional integrity is the foundational driver that I described there at level one of the Plant Health Pyramid.

So what happens again? I have a couple of webinars on this topic on YouTube of how to build organic matter fast while we're growing.

A crop I think is the title.

Of one of them. But here's the short version. If you want to have a plant that moves 75% of its total sugars into the soil instead of 5%, it's actually not difficult.

You just have to get to level.

Three of the Plant Health Pyramid. You get to level three, you have a plant that has surplus energy, and a plant that has surplus energy will.

Move a lot more sugars into the, into the root system.

There's a lot of science here. I could talk about soil ph and redox and all of the contributing factors.

That contribute to these various ratios.

But think of it this way. What we're talking about is a combination of two big drivers, two math drivers.

That really change the equation.

When you have a crop that is at 10% photosynthetic efficiency versus 30%, that means you've tripled the quantity of sugars produced in each 24 hour photoperiod, you've tripled the quantity of sugars produced over.

The course of that crop's entire life cycle.

Does that mean you're going to get triple the yield?

That's unlikely. Will you get a 30% increase in yield depending on the crop? Maybe depending on the crop it might be 10% or 5%. A few exceptional crops might be larger than 30%.

So if you've tripled the sugars production and you only get a 30% increase in yield, where does all the extra sugar go?

It goes out through the root system as rude exudates to build soil biology and to build soil carbon levels. That's where the extra sugar goes and that's how we create really healthy soil rapidly while we're growing a crop.

If you go back into the agronomic.

Literature of the 60s and 70s, if you ask the agronomists of the day what was the fastest way to build.

Organic matter, there was common consensus, there.

Was very little disagreement.

They all understood that the fastest way.

To build soil organic matter was to grow corn. Today in contemporary agriculture, we think the fastest way to deplete a soil of organic matter is to grow corn. What has changed? What's different? There's many things that are different, but in essence we are doing a much better.

Our corn crop today doesn't have nearly.

The photosynthetic efficiency that they did 40 or 50 years ago because of a whole number of factors related to carbon cycling in the soil profile.

So I developed this diagram.

I'm going over time here a little bit. I'm going to try to wrap this up.

I developed this diagram to observe what.

We see happening with this soil microbial relationship and interaction.

The first is the first action that happens.

The foundational driver of this system is full capacity photosynthesis. That's step one.

And if you notice, step one of.

This biological cascade and step one of the plant health pyramid are identical. It starts with increasing photosynthesis and photosynthetic efficiency.

Then what happens next in this plant soil relationship that plants begin moving sugars out through the root system as root.

Exudates at younger stages of immaturity. When plants are in a vegetative growth Stage, it'll be mostly sugars.

And here's the interesting part about sugar. Sugars contain carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.

Glucose is C6H12O6.

There are no minerals in sugar.

There is no zinc, manganese, copper, calcium, magnesium and sugar.

And yet bacteria need minerals, just as plants do to form their own cells. So bacteria begin consuming the sugars that are released from root exudates and they extract minerals from the soil mineral matrix and incorporate them into their own cells.

And this process we call mineralization, where bacteria are extracting nutrients from the soil mineral matrix that are unavailable to plant roots and incorporating them into their own cel.

Then, as described by Dr. James White in his work in rhizophagy, plants begin absorbing nutrients in the form of live.

Bacterial cells in large amounts.

From what I've been able to learn at the present moment, my opinion is that plants can absorb upwards of 90%.

Of their total nutritional requirement in the form of live bacterial cells.

And so this is what we can. I used to call this microbial metabolite nutrition.

They can also absorb microbe poop.

Then when they have this microbial metabolite nutrition, at this point they become extremely energy efficient. This is when you get to level three of the plant health pyramid. I didn't get into the mechanisms and describe why this is happening, but in short, when plants begin absorbing bacterial cells and they begin absorbing bacterial metabolites, it is the equivalent for them of absorbing prefab compounds. It's prefabricated nutrients. They don't need to expend all the.

Energy to convert nitrates to amine nitrogen, to amino acids, and then to peptides and complete proteins. The biology have already done all of that for them.

So they become very energy efficient. They store the energy in the form of higher levels of fats and oils. Now you get to level three of the plant health pyramid, and when this happens, really interesting things start to happen in the soil microbiome, because plants now also begin transmitting oils and lipids out.

Through the root system and out as rhodixidates as well. But bacteria don't digest lipids. So you have these lipids and these oils in the root system.

And fungi begin consuming the lipids and.

The fats and oils. In our culture, when I was growing up, we used to preserve meat by storing it in fat. Because bacteria can't digest, they can't access it. They can't get through the fat to access the meats.

So what happens is when you have plants that have this high oil content that triggers fungal digestion and all of.

A sudden you build these fungal populations in the soil profile.

Now, this is really important. This is another heretical concept. There is this belief. There's been a lot of conversation over.

The last couple of years on our need to develop soils that have the.

Proper bacterial to fungal balance as our soils progress through different stages of succession. And there's a part of me that I understand the conversation, but to some degree it's irrelevant because plants and the degree of plant health determines bacterial versus fungal populations. As you improve plant health, there's a degree to which all of this takes care of itself. So what happens now is we have this fungal digestive process. And.

Here'S another aspect that I really enjoy digging into.

I'll try to keep this brief. When fungi ingest something, when they ingest.

An organic residue, like a crop residue, high carbon crop residue, or these lipids.

From rude exudates, their digestive process is very different from bacteria in that they hold on to whatever they ingest and.

They extract the maximal possible amount of energy from it. They, you could say they digest it or they process it over and over and over again until it reaches a.

Point where they can't extract any more.

Energy out of it, at which point they release it back into the soil environment.

What do you think establishes that threshold.

Of where they can no longer get energy out of it? It's the lipid concentrations.

This digestive process.

This fungal digestive process.

And again, like the plant health pyramid, this diagram is a bit of an.

It's not a bit. It is a gross oversimplification. And there are. I'm sure there are many scientists who would want to pick about specific points. But in general concept, this holds true.

As a general concept, this fungal digestive.

Process we now call humification, and the.

End result of fungal digestion are these relatively stable humic compounds that used to.

Be called humic substances, fulvic acids, humic acids, and so forth.

These are very complex molecules that usually.

Will have molecular weights in the 100 to 300,000 range.

And so the question is, what determines the threshold where the fungi can no longer extract any additional energy from it?

And it's the lipid concentrations.

Stable humic substances have a lipophilic acid.

Concentration ranging from 38 to 42%. So you can just say 40% plus or minus 2%.

So what this means, this is the whole nexus point of this whole conversation leading up to this point. What this means is that if you have two fields. Let me back up just a step and make the point first, the point is, what this means is the amount of organic matter. The amount of stable carbon that gets held in a soil profile has nothing to do with the quantity of carbon that is added.

It has everything to do with the quantity of lipids that are added. This is a really big deal if.

You have two fields that have an identical amount of COVID crop biomass on them.

They both have 10,000 pounds of biomass per acre.

And one of those has 2% fat.

Content on a dry matter basis. The other has 6% fat content on a dry matter basis.

The field that has 6% fat content will form three times more stable humic substances and three times more stable organic.

Matter than the field has 2% fat content.

This is how you build organic matter fast. You have really healthy plants at level three of the plant health pyramid that produce lots of oils.

Transfer those oils and lipids out through.

The root system as root exudates and the crop residue gets contributed to the.

Soil, to the soil as well.

And when you have the generation of high fat content plant that is going.

To contribute to abundant organic matter in the soil, you can build organic matter while you are growing a crop by this method.

There is this belief, this fallacy, that somehow the process of agriculture, the process.

Of growing a crop is by its.

Very nature inherently extractive and that we're.

Going to extract organic matter, we're going to extract nutrients.

That's not the way the system was designed to work. I believe there's a reason the Bible.

Talks about the fat of the land.

That when you have these plants that.

Have these very high fat levels, you are billing the soil while you are growing a crop. And that is the, this is what is possible and this is what we can co create as conscious stewards of the landscape, is creating these vibrant ecosystems that rapidly regenerate while we are producing disease and insect resistant crops. So the bottom line, if you want to get to level three of plant health, you can't get there without first going through level one. And the pathway to getting to level three is to first get to level one and to increase photosynthesis. This is kind of the hack, it's the trigger point.

When you think about shifting systems and shifting ecosystems, this is the leverage point.

That takes the least amount of input to produce the most highly leveraged outcome. That's what I call hacking the system.

So there's all kinds of possibilities and.

Opportunities you can start. You can realistically achieve reduction in insecticides, even organic insecticides, and produce completely disease and insect resistant crops. And the most fun of all is that not only do you have these disease and insect resistant crops that have this awesome flavor and aroma and are more drought resilient, but you're also building soil while that is happening and that's becomes so much fun.

So if you want to dig deeper.

Into this process, if you want to learn more information about specific diseases or specific insects, please reach out to our team. We're always happy to talk about what you have going on in your farm. So with that I want to say thank you to all of you for hanging with us here. My presentation took a little bit longer than I expected, but I'm going to dive into the Q and A. Elizabeth, were you hoping to moderate and share anything with me?

No, I just wanted to thank you and I thought you were wrapping it up and aiming for 11 o' clock and I'd say you crammed a lot in there. So thank you. I'd love to see more to come and partner more with you all to do this again. And maybe it needs to be a three hour webinar.

There's this saying that the content expands to fill the time allotted.

It's going to have to be a couple days. There are so many great questions in here. You've got a lot to dig into here. So I'll just say thank you. And I think Philip just put some of our details in the chat window for people who are looking to follow the ROA or get signed up for our newsletter. And thank you. This has been really informative always.

I really enjoyed it. Thank you Elizabeth for having me here.

Yeah, let's do it again.

All right, so to dive into the questions, the first one is here from Stanley.

In a conversation with Dennis, you mentioned.

That you do not create conditions in which soil pathogens are suppressed, but we create conditions in which the microbiome that destroys pathogens abounds. Can the same be said for weeds?

In brief, yes. You simply change the environment so that your soil environment is more conducive to.

The crops that you're seeking to grow than it is to the undomesticated plant that we call a weed.

And that soil environment is comprised of three things.

It's comprised of the soil's physical structure, it's comprised of the soil microbiome, and it's comprised of the soil mineral balance. You need to address all three, three of those, and usually it's possible to create some significant changes in weed populations fairly rapidly.

Question here from Mr.

Anonymous.

What are your key issues with using Brix? I got asked that question Often enough.

That I actually wrote a fairly extensive blog post on that topic. So if you just do a search for Jon Kempf bricks or you can go to my website john kempf.com and find that blog post, it's too much for me to go into here, but.

The fundamental issue is its tremendous degree.

Of variability based on all kinds of extraneous environmental factors. Is it storming? Is it going to storm in three days from now? What's the barometric pressure, the time of the day, the amount of moisture? The list kind of goes on and on. So it's the fundamental challenge is that it's so variable that it takes the highly experienced and practiced user with a lot of practice to be able to get some type of interpretation from the data.

And then once you do have that.

Interpretation, the second challenge is okay, yeah, this is too low or this is high, this is adequate. Now if it's low or if it's barely adequate, what do you do about it? Brix doesn't answer that question either. So those are my two macro challenges with using BRX readings.

Question from west do you have a John do you have a resource for.

Expected nutrient levels in the different crops or is it a professional judgment call based on ratios?

West if you're referring to SAP analysis, it is a combination of observed experience.

In the field and looking at the top performing crops, plus looking at nutrient ratios plus looking at how plants partition and move nutrients around. So when we are with the SAP analysis, we're doing both old leaf, new leaf analysis and occasionally a third leaf in the middle of that. And so we're looking at how the plants express themselves plus overall yield plus the degree of crop health and performance. Is it truly resistant to disease in insects? A combination of all of those, I hope. That was the question you were intending to ask and I answered it correctly. Question from Lloyd Increasing Brix readings from 4 to 20. Is that realistic? Most brix level charts reflect high Brix readings around the 14 to 16 range, except for alfalfa type plants. Lloyd I was just using that as an example as a figure of speech. It is possible on some types of crops, particularly on salad grains. We've seen those types of reactions, but certainly there's genetic variability from species to species.

Question from Benjamin when we express our.

Leaves to do a brix test, we also test pH and ORP. PH often comes out around 6.5. I find that intriguing actually. And ORP around 150 millivolts according to the Porbay diagram for iron. This is a very reduced state yet we always see iron deficiency. How can iron oxides that are in the soil exist in the SAP if the. The SAP is extremely reduced? So, Benjamin, if I'm understanding.

I need.

To learn more about this and I.

Actually, I don't fully know the answer.

To your question right now. I'm having conversations with a few people who I think do know the answer. But my present understanding is that it's true that the SAP is very reduced.

But the majority of the iron that.

Gets absorbed by the root system is in the form of various siderophores that.

Then are transferred through the plant SAP into the cells. And it's only once it's inside the cell that it kind of gets unwrapped.

And so it remains in the oxidized form, can remain in the oxidized form through that transport chain through the xylem tissue.

And in many cases, once it is inside the plant cell and it's discovered.

To be in the oxidized form, it.

Is then stored in the chloroplasts and.

Remains inside the cell in the oxidized form.

So this is why you end up.

If you do a tissue analysis, you'll.

Actually often find plants that have very.

Elevated levels of iron because the plant.

Is perceiving that it still has an.

Iron deficiency, just keeps absorbing. It just keeps absorbing and keeps storing it inside the cells because it can't use the form that it's getting.

So that's my current understanding and it's.

Probably at least partially incorrect, but I'll be hoping to fix that soon.

Question from Kent.

What is the best calcium to magnesium ratio and calcium to manganese ratio to support level one? Kent, I'm most familiar with SAP analysis data because, well, to be frank, tissue analysis data doesn't report accurately enough, isn't sensitive enough to describe disease and insect susceptibility based on nutritional profiles. And so we use SAP analysis data and the desired value ratios vary from crop to crop quite significantly. So we have, when we run SAP analysis, we put out those desired values on our reports and what those ratios are, but there's, I don't have a neat concise answer for you that reflective of a broad range of different crops. Question from Shannon.

Can you please expand on what you.

Mean by a crop not having the complete proteins needed for a human to digest, however, is digestible by ruminant animals.

There are many foods that do not.

Have complete proteins for humans, but we are still able to digest them.

Yeah, Shannon, I think your question, if I'm understanding it correctly, isn't isn't quite.

An accurate reflection of what I intended to communicate.

What I intended to say is that when you have a food source.

When.

You have an apple that doesn't have complete proteins, it's true that we can still consume it and we will still.

Get energy from it. And it's also true that apple is.

Not at a state of optimal health and doesn't benefit our immune system and.

Doesn'T benefit us to the same degree. An apple that has a complete protein profile.

So it's a question of relative benefit for our immune system and food having.

A medicinal value above and beyond just simply carbohydrates and proteins. I hope I answered your question correctly.

Question from Mr.

Anonymous again, has AEA had success managing whiteflies? The short answer is yes. Dozens of times. Probably hundreds of times actually.

Question from Andre Are there any definite.

Advantages of using pure fulvic acids as opposed to the more common humake fulvic mix as a chelating complexing agent in foliar formulations? I don't know the answer to that question. There is so much variation from one formulation or one source of fulvic acid to the next. The only way you can know that for sure is by testing it and trying it. In high rainfall areas where soils can become frequently waterlogged, is it more difficult to establish soil biology? The short answer is yes. Biology doesn't like to drown. And those would be areas. And we actually live in an area here where we have high clay content soils and 45 inches of rainfall a year. And there is there are lots of.

Conversations in this biological agricultural world, particularly.

As it relates to grazing and livestock management and broad acre crop production, about developing a soil's ability to conserve moisture and to conserve water, to hold water.

And that's a very valuable conversation.

But there's a parallel conversation that needs to happen as well, which is in some environments, in high rainfall environments and soils that hold water extremely well, we actually need to be able we need.

To have soils that can percolate and.

Move water deep rapidly. Or we need soils that can move water horizontally and move water out of the profile.

So I see this is a topic.

That I don't see addressed often enough is how do we keep soils from being waterlogged for extended periods?

And a quick example that comes to.

Mind, I was just starting out doing consulting work 15 years ago and there was a farm a couple hours south of here that had amazing soil. This farmer, organic dairy farmer, had bought a farm that had 7% organic matter. And part of the reasons it had 7% organic matter. It was, it was quite wet. It was on the edge constantly being just a little bit too wet to graze. And because it was on the edge of being waterlogged, it stored carbon really effectively, really efficiently. But there were challenges with productivity and the cows were constantly in danger of creating compaction.

So my recommendation to him was to.

Shallow drain tile that soil using 2 inch diameter drain tile and spacing it 15 to 18 inches apart. He did not like that advice and I wasn't sure that it was the right advice but I thought it was worth trying. Well, he didn't like the advice well enough that he didn't follow it for 10 years. But 10 years later he drained tiled really shallow and his productivity took a dramatic jump and his organic matter started building again. He started building soil and there's this really interesting thing.

So I don't know. This is worth.

This is off topic a little bit here, but you can do shallow drainage so that you don't affect the deep water table, but you remove surface water that can be very valuable in a high rainfall environment such as he has.

In a previous webinar I had mentioned.

Using a high magnesium starter instead of a high phosphorus starter, you get good root development. Are there any references you can point us to or any additional reading? I'm not aware that there are additional references. This was just based on our own experience.

Question from Andre what is the best.

Organic approved humectant agent for foliar formulations? Does it need to be added as the. The last element before. After ph? This is a little bit off topic Andre and I don't know the answer to your question. We've experimented with a number of different ones, but I'm not sure where on the globe you are located on what you have available. Plant derived sources are usually the better ones.

Question from Dan do you have specific.

Case studies where spotted lanternfly infestation was quickly eliminated or prevented in an area where there was an endemic population by achieving level 2 or higher plant health? Dan, we don't have that experience yet, but we're on track to get that this year. Working with grape production in an area in the Carolinas that is surrounded by Tree of Heaven. So you have grapes and Tree of Heaven, which is the absolute perfect environment for spotted lanternflies. So I guess we're going to find out, but I'm not really concerned about it. We've been able to have. We've been able to limit crop damage effects on Japanese beetles and Colorado potato beetles and locusts and grasshoppers and after a while, I mean, who knows, Will spotted lanternfly be the first one that we're not successful in reversing? Maybe. I don't know, but I kind of doubt it. Question from Tyrco what about heavy metals? Can soil biology help with this problem? I feel with high levels of cadmium for example. Tyrko, thanks for mentioning cadmium specifically. There's actually some interesting research in the literature on the use of humic substances to remediate cadmium. Or maybe the proper word is not to remediate but to prevent crop absorption of so biology can help to some degree, but humic substances and just the direct application of humic substances can be very effective for those Question from Nicola can you please speak on the topic of the importance of rainfastness of fully reapplied nutrition products, especially in tropical fruit growing? Do you regard high rainfastness in general as an aspect of a good plant health product? It's a very interesting question Nicola, and in most of the environments we work.

With that has not been a significant factor. And part of the reason for that is because we counterbalance a high priority.

For us getting rapid foliar absorption.

So well designed foliar nutrient application should.

Be I think the there's some interesting research on the absorption of foliar applications and if they're well designed you should be able to achieve 75 to 80% absorption in 24 hours. In your case, in your environment with daily rainfall and high levels of rainfall, rainfastness may be something to pay attention to. It's not something that I have a lot of experience with. A follow up question from Nicola on Copper Read your blog post on copper rolling plants, especially for stem flexibility. What do I think of using copper based fungicides for farmers who are transitioning to regen AG but still don't have the courage to completely stop spraying at once. What copper form would you recommend as active compounds for best disease control? That's your last question is outside the scope of my area of expertise. I'm not really comfortable making recommendations for specific forms of copper. But I will say this.

The copper the forms of copper that have a fungicidal effect are not nutritional forms of copper. So if you want to improve and.

They don't show up on plant analysis, they don't really move the needle. So address copper as a nutrient and.

All of a sudden you'll find that.

Your need not just copper but also the trace other trace mineral elements. Zinc and manganese in particular have very pronounced antibacterial effects. Once Inside the plant.

Question from Patrick.

Two questions.

First question is what is your experience.

With perennial systems, orchards and vineyards, etc. Being able to get to the point where no further inoculation or amendment is necessary beneficial.

We do have a number of growers that we've worked with that appear to have reached a state of soil health and overall ecosystem health where they are now at the stage of tweaking the system and they are no longer dependent.

On any additional soil inputs. And the one thing I'll add specifically regarding these perennial systems, the successful perennial systems always include a heavy cover crop component or companion crops, whatever you want to call them. Bare soil doesn't contribute very well to establishing soil, managing soil as a petri dish. And then your second question. We've heard you talk about COVID cropping between rows to feed biology. Do you have experience with perennial ground covers? Yes, we do. Similarly, can perennial systems like parks, home orchards, golf courses, Bermuda grass lawns utilize this approach and achieve 100% organic nutrition from biology with no further inoculation or additions?

So to the last aspect of the.

Questions that you ask, with no further additions, it depends on the soil's geological context.

If you have soil that contains.

Limited or no levels of boron or sulfur or zinc because of its geological foundations, because of the original parent material, then those are contexts for which there is arguably a need for constant maintenance dependent on rainfall, depending on everything else that's going on.

So I'm not in the camp that suggests that once you fix your soil.

Biology, you never need to add anything else to your soils ever again. I don't find that to hold true in some geological contexts. It can be true, but not at all. It's not a universal.

Question from Rodrigo.

What do you think is the biggest flaw in organic nutrient programs?

I'd say there are two that come to mind. One is many organic farmers don't measure very well. They don't measure, they're not using SAP analysis. And I've pointed out some of the.

Flaws of soil and tissue analysis.

So it's challenging to manage well what.

You'Re not measuring well.

And as a result of not measuring well, many organic programs end up with.

Nutrient excesses, particularly potassium and sometimes, surprisingly enough, nitrogen, if a lot of manure or compost is being applied.

So I see a lot of nutrient excesses, particularly nitrogen and potassium, creating a.

Lot of other imbalances that then create all these disease and insect susceptibility challenges.

And the second one that I'll point out, which is one that I mentioned.

Earlier, which is the need to define.

A documented deficiency, which is challenging with.

Some of the existing technologies with soil and tissue analysis for some of the trace minerals.

There's a question here from Nicola on.

Slow release, extended release foliar applied nutrients for plant health. I have no experience with those, Nicola. Usually we design a foliar spray to get a rapid response. Question from Stanley in light of what has been said today, is it possible to conclude that by managing plant nutrition it's possible to redirect pests to weeds, thereby using the power of nature, the pests fight weeds for the benefit of a healthy plant? The short answer is yes, it's possible to conclude that. And there's obviously boatloads of specific ecosystem context for each specific environment.

Would you say that there is a scale at which doing SAP analysis and.

Engaging AEA's consultation makes sense economically? This is a question from Ben.

One of our consultants did an analysis.

There's some variation from crop to crop of course, but he was looking at higher value fruit and vegetable crops that are being managed intensely. And he was doing the did an analysis at where's the threshold at which investing in SAP analysis and managing nutrition very closely is going to result in break even or greater. And for fruit and vegetable crops he concluded the number was somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 to $7,000. If you have a crop that has an economic value of 5 to $7,000 or above, then you're likely to get an economic response much greater than what you've invested.

Question from Kyle.

In a highly productive small scale market garden employing four plus crop cycles per piece of land. Sorry, I missed the first word. Is a highly productive small scale market garden employing four plus crop cycles per piece of land an extractive process? Do minerals and elements need to be added regularly to the soil to replace what is taken off the garden by the crops?

Kyle, this is an interesting question.

I would say the answer based on what we discussed today is it depends on.

It depends on.

The relative degree of health, the crops that you're growing and what stage you're taking them off.

If you're constantly just taking them off.

At a vegetative stage, maybe I would.

Ask the question, the flip of that.

Question is can you build soil while doing so? And I think it's possible for the answer to be yes.

The removal of minerals, the removal of nutrients in that type of an ecosystem.

Going to be much, much smaller than.

You think if you're harvesting salad greens or if you're harvesting crops that are.

Still in a vegetative Growth stage, the quantity of calcium, magnesium and zinc and manganese and so forth that's removed is very tiny. It's very tiny. And when you compare that with the reserve that is in most soil geological profiles, you're not going to run out in 400 years. And you can actually, I would suggest you measure this. Don't guess, but actually measure. And I talk about this, and I have a webinar where I talk about how we use soil analysis today. And there are soil analysis that you.

Can measure the geological nutrient profile to.

Say, hey, in my top six inches of soil, I have 400 pounds of manganese and 40,000 pounds of potassium. You're not going to run out in centuries. So this whole idea of needing to replace what is taken off isn't always relevant.

But it is relevant if you have a geological context. If you have soil that contains zero.

Manganese or only £20 instead of £400, then that is something you have to pay attention to.

And this might be a good moment for me to make a point. You know, there are so many dogmas.

In this space of organic and biological agriculture.

And if there's anything that is a trigger for me, it's idealistic dogma. The idea that I'll include one example of idealistic dogma. Once you build amazing soil biology, you never need to add minerals anymore. That is just wrong. You can never till your soil and.

Have healthy biological profiles. That's also wrong.

You must always use cover crops.

You must always use livestock.

These dogmatic positions are not useful. They tend to divide people instead of bringing us together. And Gary Zimmer, when I was first starting out 15 years ago in this.

Space of biological agriculture, he said he.

Had this one phrase that he used.

A couple of times.

He said, there is no rule of biological agriculture that has not been successfully.

Violated by someone somewhere.

And anyway, the point that I would like to make is we live in a world today where we can inexpensively measure what our soil's geological nutrient profile.

Is and what that looks like?

And we can know, is this a type of soil where we may need to add more nutrients in the future, or is it true for our soil that we can build amazing biology and.

We don't need to add nutrients? Again.

In most agricultural soils, sandy soils.

Are generally an exception. But in most agricultural soils, it's true.

That you can build biology and not need to add potash for the next.

400 years or longer, but not in all soils.

The good news is, today you don't have to guess. You don't have to take this idealistic dogmatic position. You can take a test measure, find.

Out and know you have empirical evidence, not an idealistic theory to support your decisions. Question here from Benjamin Thompson about lipid production and building humate stable carbonate soil should we select cover crops with a high fat oil content? Yes, you can. I would suggest that those cover crops with a high oil content should be part of a symbiotic combination and blend rather than just individual species and that will amplify your effects even further.

A question from Antonio I have a.

Vineyard in northwest Spain. Our climate in spring is the perfect storm for fungi like mildew, high temperatures and high humidity. What's the difference to reach level four compared to someone in a Mediterranean weather? Actually, Antonio, it's easier for you to reach level four than it is for someone in a Mediterranean climate because one of the significant challenges is in a high temperature environment you have plants switching from photosynthesis to photorespiration when they are challenged by high heat for extended periods. And so it's actually a lot easier to get to level four in cooler environments than it is in warmer environments. I'm skipping through a few questions here that are repeats of what I've already answered. Question from how to manage Foliar Nitrogen organic Systems we now have a number of organically certified amino acid type products that can be foliar sprayed dry powder soluble amino acids that come from various sources and we find that they can be very effective. Question from Lucas could you elaborate more on what chelated reduced iron is and where it's found? Lucas, this is a very important topic. I'm not going to take the time to answer it here, but if you go to our YouTube channel, advancing EcoAgriculture's YouTube channel, I have a webinar on this topic on reduced trace minerals where I go into some detail on where you can find that. Question from Garver in consideration of the five elements for photosynthesis, magnesium in particular, how important is the relationship and ratio between magnesium and calcium? It's very important and it's different from crop to crop. Yeah, I'm not sure I can elaborate on that in a brief way. Would take me too long to give you a more accurate answer.

Question from Rodrigo. Based on the Plant Health Pyramid, this.

Is a really good question.

If we have several deficient mineral levels in a plant and limited resources to deal with all of them at the same time, should we prioritize them from the bottom up? For example, if we have low calcium.

Iron, molybdenum, cobalt and silicon.

The best is to prioritize iron and.

Molybdenum and move on until they improve in SAP analysis.

The short answer is yes, prioritize from the bottom up. But what you'll often find is that when you address some of the critical deficiencies, other nutrients will come into balance.

And into the appropriate ratios on their.

Own, assuming that they are present in.

The foundational geological profile.

I've had many experiences where we've addressed.

Cobalt or where we've addressed molybdenum, and all of a sudden manganese and iron and others will increase all on their own without us adding any.

Question from Stuart Are there cash crop or cover.

Crop species that are more able to build the fat of the land than others?

I would say in general pick the crops that have a high oil content.

Grow them in combination with other crop species, not just by themselves.

Question from Vicki how does very hard.

Water used in irrigation play into this model? It's bad news, sadly. I have a webinar on water quality for foliar applications and for irrigation. The short answer is that water that has high levels of bicarbonates really suppresses microbial activity and it really limits nutrient availability. So it's important to address water quality in both irrigation systems and foliar sprays. Question from Andre does promoting perennial grasses, legumes and forbs in a dry land large acreage grazing system lead to increased lipid exudates in the rhizosphere?

It depends on the grazing management. The brief answer I didn't really get into this in this webinar. I've talked about it in other places. But there is also a component of.

The stage of maturity. As you might guess, as crops become more mature as they approach seed maturity.

And senescence, their root X a date.

Profile will also change. They will start assuming they have the available energy in addition to filling seeds. Some plants don't because of poor photosynthesis. They will also begin moving lipids out and have higher lipid concentrations as they are more mature rather than at a vegetative stage where they're mostly dominated by sugars. Moving through the rest of the answers here, there's additional duplicates.

I am not going to be able.

To answer the questions that are asking for specific recommendations for specific products. I think that's a bit outside the scope of the topic of what we want to focus on, and you're always welcome to reach out to the AEA team and get specific recommendations. Question from Is there any soil type that it is not feasible to use as an agricultural production, even if you have all the level one elements and level two elements. In other words, is any land too hard to regenerate if you add the needed elements, minerals and nutrients? Recovered lands, such as mine lands.

I don't have a lot of experience.

With remediation, Cynthia, so I don't have a good answer for your question.

We know that nature has an extraordinary.

Capacity to regenerate degraded landscapes and degraded ecosystems.

And I've been amazed by some of.

The research that I have read on remediation where there are extremely high levels of certain heavy metals or toxic elements like zinc or cadmium.

And I would suggest that there is a high probability that if we can identify the right plant species associated with.

The right biology, we can regenerate just about anything.

And that is also likely to point.

To the limiting factors that if we.

Have really high concentrations of toxic elements.

Then the question is to what degree do those toxic elements suppress biology or suppress plants? And that's going to some degree determine our ability to recover those ecosystems. ALBERT Unfortunately I do not have a known list of COVID crop species with a high content in lipids, but you can think of many of the brassicas, for example.

Just think of the plants that have.

A really glossy waxy sheen on the leaf surface generally. So these beads of brassicas, mustards. But again, don't forget you can get.

This oil synthesis with any crop when.

You provide it with good nutrition.

What would happen and how would your soil ecosystem change if you managed the nutrition of your cover crops as well.

As you manage the nutrition of your crops? We work with farmers who do this. They foliar feed their cover crops and the results are amazing. You regenerate soils at least several times faster, three to four times faster than you do by just planting a cover crop and ignoring it. Question from Bob what is your experience on plant health? From one, dynamic and holistic grazing and two, subsoiling in a keyline design.

BOB I would say the greatest contributors to plant health are.

Well.

As you've been, as I've described, this virtuous cycle.

This symbiosis between plants and soil biology.

There's an argument to be made that it's true that plants are the driver.

Because they are the photosynthesis engine. Plants are the only way we have.

Of bringing new energy into the ecosystem.

Because biology, what biology does, is it recycles that energy that plants bring in.

And yet we know that biology can.

Have very different degrees of recycling that energy efficiently, varying degrees of efficiency, and.

So holistic planned Grazing, managed grazing, and subsoiling in a key line system. What they can do is they can focus on regenerating the biological component, increasing.

The efficiency of the biological component, so.

That the plants in that landscape do.

Begin to perform better.

So this is a chicken and the egg question reality where for the purpose of this conversation, I've been focusing on the ability of photosynthesis to be the driver of the system and how we can manage that. And your question is really a question of what is the relative value of biology to that system. So if you think of these two major engines, you have photosynthesis as the primary engine, it brings new energy into the system. And then you have the biology engine, which recycles the energy that the photosynthesis engine brings into the ecosystem.

That's the way that I think about it generally.

And the the two management aspects that you described or that you mentioned can very efficiently increase the efficiency of the biological engine. And obviously it's primarily management.

There's not a lot of input costs, particularly in the case of holistic grazing.

So the only question that I would ask is, does your soil contain all the nutrients that it needs for plants.

To have completely functioning enzyme systems?

If your soil doesn't have enough selenium.

Or doesn't have enough molybdenum or doesn't have enough moron, there will still be.

A lot of economic value. Even in a holistic plan grazing setting.

There'S a lot of economic value in.

Addressing those few trace minerals because they can contribute a lot to grass productivity, to forage productivity, and to livestock health.

So anyway, that was a long answer. I think I need to start truncating my answers. My goodness, we're already at 251 here. I'm going to try to breeze through the rest of these and give you make sure everyone gets an answer to their question.

Question from Jack.

Are there any organic soil amendments that can help boost CEC in very sandy soils? The best organic soil amendments to increase CEC are organic matter. Or you could look at concentrated organic matter in the form of humic substances like lignite and linardite and so forth.

Question from Ben Benjamin Thompson.

After our last SAP analysis and foliar correction for iron and manganese, we immediately got faster growth and a week later, followed by powdery mildew, a calcium deficiency appeared, but wasn't there prior. Is this a common problem that when.

You remove a bottleneck, calcium can become.

Deficient because the calcium is slower to transport to leaf tips where growth is accelerating?

So that's an Interesting question, Benjamin. I wouldn't say that this is a common bottleneck. It's context dependent.

This obviously happened for you on your farm.

And I've seen similar situations occur with.

Other nutrients on other farms.

It's not uncommon that when you address one bottleneck, there's two very common reactions. If you address a few key bottlenecks, it's very common for plants to enjoy.

A growth and yield spurt where all of a sudden you have a lot more biomass as a result of fixing the problem.

And usually one of two things happens. In many cases, both things happen at the same time that when you fix this, you get this growth spurt. Some other nutrients will come up all on their own even though you didn't add them. And that's because that increased growth spurt also translates to more sugar to the root system.

And so the biology does a better job of accessing more cobalt or manganese or iron and the levels of those.

Nutrients go up even though you didn't add them. And the other reaction that can happen.

Is what you experience is that some nutrients go down because the soil biology isn't capable of delivering them yet.

So that's, that's a context dependent reaction.

It'll vary from soil to soil and crop to crop depending on what's going on.

Question from John. Hi, John, you have said that chemical.

Fungicides will set up the plant to be more susceptible to the fungus one is trying to control. For those of you who haven't heard me say that, yes, I have said that, and that's because.

I suspect there's a few modes of action, probably others that I'm not aware of. But I currently believe that many of these fungicides have a include penetrating agents. And those penetrating agents weaken the wax lipid membrane on the leaf surface and.

Increase susceptibility from a purely mechanical perspective. And the fungicidal active ingredients also reduce the many cases.

There's speaking broadly here, and it's active.

Ingredient dependent, but generally many of the.

Synthetic fungicides tend to reduce the plant's.

Ability to or change the plant's ability to form these different plant secondary metabolites. So John's question is, do organic fungicides have the same effect as chemical fungicides do on the plant? Do on plants? John, you've temporarily got me stumped here. What is an example of an organic fungicide?

If you're thinking of plant extracts.

With.

What I presently know, I am of the persuasion that plant extracts like Japanese.

Knotweed extract and so forth do not have that negative effect. In fact, they have their mode of action. Their mechanisms in some of these cases are that they have a positive effect in upregulating the synthesis of plant secondary metabolites.

So I'm not aware that organic fungicides.

Have the same effect as the chemical fungicides do. I hope I answered your question correctly. Follow up from Dan Lefebvre. The question was not a white fly on spotted lanternfly. Yep, Dan, I understood your question correctly. I may have said whitefly, but I understood spotted lanternfly. And yeah, I'm not. We're gonna find out this year if we have it, if we have challenges with it. Question from South Africa I'm aware that you're a firm advocate of SAP analysis in South Africa. This is a challenge. Do you have any recommendations where to send leaf material for SAP analysis? Obviously logistics become a concern here in the US in our work at aea. Right now we export everything to the Netherlands to Nova Cropcontrol for analysis. So I would suggest I know that there are other growers in South Africa sending samples to Nova Crop Control in the Netherlands as well. I was just starting to look there.

When you mentioned a question.

When you mentioned 24 hour photosynthesis, does.

This mean in two days?

No, what I was referring to is a 24 hour photosynthetic cycle. So I was referring to the full cycle of a single day. Question from Adams which of these processes is best for adding soil for soil nutrient improvement, leaving residue of the harvested crop on the soil surface or incorporating them into the soil to decay? Adams the answer is that from a mineral perspective, if you're thinking about phosphorus and potassium and so forth, there's unlikely to be much of a difference. There will be a difference in nitrogen and there will be a difference in carbon. If you want to build nitrogen and carbon most effectively.

In many soils, you can make the most rapid short term.

Gains by incorporating them into the soil. But in the long term you will want to get soil health to the point where you're not constantly tilling it and plowing it. Question from Yadi hi Yadi, in level three and four, what are some of the ways to help increase nematodes and protozoa populations to help accelerate nutrient cycling in addition to balanced bacteria and fungal communities? Yada, you're asking me a question I don't know the answer to. I know that there are people that will make applications of protozoa nematodes to enhance those populations. And then there are others who suggest that when you add a kind of build it and they will come. When you add the bacterial populations, the protozoa will come all on their own. I don't have enough experience and haven't measured it well enough to know the answer to your question, unfortunately.

Question from Mr.

Anonymous again, would foliar applications of copper sulfate chelated with amino acids have any negative effects on microbes on the plant leaf surface and endophytic bacteria? As long as it remains chelated and as long as the concentrations remain low as in nutrient type applications and not bactericidal applications, it's my understanding that the answer is no, they will not have a significant negative effect.

Question from Chuck in theory we should.

Be able to develop a soil to the level of optimal soil health and ecological function to where we no longer need to fertilize or supplement with mineral nutrition. How do we make this determination? I've had success with very little to no inputs many years into a cropping system with very good yields and quality. The question is, can I get more without jeopardizing the soil system? It's a tough threshold to cross. I don't think it's a tough threshold to cross, Chuck. I actually think it's quite easy.

You need to keep two things in mind.

First, I would suggest you get what is called a total digestion analysis and I talk about this. This has come up a couple times in the questions, but I talk about it. One of my webinars get a total.

Digestion analysis to really understand what minerals.

Are not present in your soil profile.

If you have soil that doesn't have.

Selenium in it, it doesn't matter how much composting you do and how many cover crops you grow, you are not going to produce selenium in those soils. So there is a need to address some of those nutrients and some soil types based on the geological analysis. So that's step one. Find out exactly where you are there.

And then to your second question is if you need inputs, if you need.

To make soil amendments, how can you add those without jeopardizing the soil system?

In my opinion, this is actually really easy. You simply utilize forms and sources of.

Nutrients that do not suppress soil biology. When you add them, use rock powders, use plant materials, or you can even use concentrated forms like copper sulfate and zinc sulfate and so forth if needed, but in dilute amounts, small amounts spread out over time. I hope I understood your question correctly and answered it properly.

Question from Gerardo do you recommend to.

Add microbial formulations or developing the natural microbes in the soil with the use of COVID crops, organic matter and bugs. Gerardo the short answer is both. I'm not in a position where I'm forced to choose either one or the other. In most contexts we can do both. Microbial inoculants are very necessary and valuable in many ecosystems. Not in all, but in most. And we need to have cover crops or properly managed grazing or constant maintenance of a living healthy root system to build soil biology over time.

Tim asked a question.

Can you talk a little bit more about how soil Redox affects the plant health pyramid, specifically in relation to nitrogen and how it relates to amino acid and protein formulation? Tim I would love to, but that's an hour conversation just to establish kind of a foundational working ground. So I would say refer to our webinars on Redox and if you want to dig into that deeper, Olivier Houson.

Has a six hour long completely free.

Course on kind harvest platform. So it's kindharvest Ag. He has a completely free course on.

Redox and the impact that that has.

On soil and microbial populations. And it is extremely valuable information. I highly recommend it. Question from Damon does lightly tilling organic grown cover crops increase soil organic matter faster? Damon the answer is in many soil types the answer is yes, but not always. Question from Benjamin we started a trial of putting tomato starts in bare soil versus a permanent understory cover crop dense with a variety of different species at a single liter on 18 inch spacing. The tomato starts in the bare soil jumped faster, they grew quicker early on. One month in they are one foot taller.

However, six weeks in, the tomatoes surrounded.

By the COVID crop now have thicker foliage and are starting to catch up and will soon overtake the bare soil tomatoes. Is this a normal phenomenon? What does this mean in terms of competition versus collaboration? So Benjamin, that's again could be a foundational question for a one hour conversation. The short answer is yes, that can be a normal phenomena. It depends on the selection of COVID crop species that you have around that plant. It's absolutely possible to have species that collaborate with the tomato plant and enhance it rather than compete. And.

This gets into epigenetic expression.

But we, we did some really interesting research years ago where we transplanted tomato seedlings that were only an inch and a half to 2 inches tall and manage their nutrition very carefully with the intent of removing all stress, all nutritional stress I should say. And we were able to document that we could get anywhere from 20 to 30% higher yields from seedlings that were planted very small with no stress versus a seedling that was three times the size but then had transplant shock and didn't have well balanced attrition. So those early stages are extremely important and it's very probable that some of the species that you chose are collaborating rather than competing. Yes, John, going back to the question on organic fungicides, you were thinking of copper and sulfur. Specifically, organic copper and sulfur applications do.

Not have the negative effect on plants in the sense that they I'm not aware that they have the penetrating agents.

And they don't have that immediate negative effect on the Krebs cycle and reducing the plant's capacity to form these aromatic compounds that I'm aware of. I think continuing to look through the rest of these questions, many of them I've answered already. Question from Robert Smith in California Almond grower no Till with rye and fescue cover crop using drip irrigation Are there benefits from applying compost on the soil surface without incorporation? It's probably going to be challenged. It depends on if you want your compost for microbial as in a microbial inoculant or as a source of nutrients and what the application rates are. I know that in similar dryland environments we found equal benefits or from an.

Economic perspective, when we measured the dollars and cents, there was no significant difference.

Between using mulch, as in straw or wood chip mulch, and compost. There are nutritional value, probably additional nutritional value to compost and so forth. So it depends on the cost and the economics. But that's a question I'd be happy to dig into. Further.

Question from Clinton Clinton, you asked.

You saved the very best question until last when water is the major limiting factor in a near drought scenario, can foliar nutrition cause more stress or can.

It help plants keep going for longer?

And if so, what do plants need most? Dry land, small grains and legumes is your context. SAP tests show all sorts of deficiencies that mostly correct themselves with a decent rain event. Clinton, this is an awesome question and the answer is it's design dependent.

So fol your nutrition can increase drought.

Resilience or it can increase drought stress.

And this we're having this conversation with.

In kind of an organic context. So I don't want to go much down this earthworm hole.

But if you want to increase drought.

Stress from a foliar spray, the two.

Ways of doing that are a to.

Apply nitrates in any form, calcium nitrate or any type of material that's not relevant for organic sort of organic acidified crops, but it's worth mentioning.

And the second is to put on a foliar application that has high concentrations.

Of soluble electrolytes, so high levels of potassium, high levels of chlorides, anything that's going to increase the electrical conductivity and the plant SAP is going to increase its water requirement. So essentially you want to avoid a spray solution that has a high ec.

Actually, this question has come up often enough.

I had a conversation with our team last week about putting together a webinar on creating, on putting designing foliar sprays to increase drought resistance. It's come up three times just here in questions here. So I'm going to we're going to put out a webinar in the next week or two on that specific topic because obviously with the current El Nino weather pattern, managing drought susceptibility is a major concern. So we're going to be putting out another webinar on that specific topic here in the next couple of weeks. I think that concludes the questions. Tim has one last follow up question here. Could you talk about how applied forms of nitrogen affect plant levels, plants level on the plant health pyramid and could application of amino acids and cornstep liquor help accelerate the plant's movement through the pyramid? Yes, Tim. So the short answer is that when.

Plants are absorbing nitrate then that is.

Going to cost them a lot of energy. In fact, I've never seen plants get to level three of the plant health pyramid when they were getting a lot of nitrate nitrogen. So our preference, our common recommendation in non organic farms is to use urea and to apply it in crop season to avoid having the applied hydrogen be converted to ammonium and nitrate and yes, amino acids and any form of amino acids, any form of organic nitrogen is going to really enhance plant health and move them through the plant health pyramid more rapidly.

So I want to say thank you.

To all of you who've stayed around here for the time that we've been here in the webinar. I hope you found the information valuable and useful and I look forward to doing this again with you. Elizabeth and Happy growing. Have an awesome growing season. Love that.

Thank you John. This was really enlightening. You answered 60 questions in the last 30 minutes. People come to you for this knowledge and really generous of you how you share it. So thank you.

You're most welcome. Thanks Elizabeth. Thanks everyone.

See you all soon.

I hope so. Bye.