Understanding AEA Products & Programs | Regenerative Agriculture | David Miller, John Kempf

Well, hi, friends, good afternoon, and welcome to our webinar sponsored by Advancing Eco Agriculture. I have David Miller here with me as well. David is going to be leading a conversation with us this afternoon where we're going to have a deep dive in understanding AEA products and programs. This is an important conversation because we talk about a lot of regenerative agriculture practices and systems and ideas on the podcast and previous webinars. And frequently we have customers who call us, they have specific problems, and we say, well, yeah, there's an easy solution. You just use this product and it'll fix the problem. Far too often we've heard the response that, well, I had no idea you had that product, or I had no idea how those things worked. The intention of the conversation today is to give you a rapid overview of how our products are different, what products we have, and how to use them to get the greatest amount of effectiveness out of them. So, David Miller, thank you for being here and for agreeing to share your information. I'll turn it over to you.

Great. Thank you, John. And thank you for being here with. Always enjoyable to be together on these webinars. Good afternoon or good morning to all of you out there, wherever you are. It's great to connect again. And as John said, we have, there's been a lot of information that John has shared with the agriculture community in podcast, in blog, seminars, webinars, YouTube. There's just a little bit of an indication looking at like 175,000 watch hours. And I don't know what you all value John's time or John, I don't know what you value your time, but when you think about 175,000 hours, what is the value of this information? So as John said, you know, we, we considered and we got, we have gotten these calls where people listen to the podcast, people listen to the webinars. People are inspired by the idea of regenerative agriculture. It makes sense. So if you are consuming all of this information, if you're, you're listening, you're inspired, you want to do this, and you're not aware that AEA has a toolbox, then we are here to let you know maybe you were aware but didn't really know the scope or extent of the products or how to use them. So this is just an overview to introduce you to the AEA toolbox and give you a little bit of an outline and hopefully stimulate a lot of questions and then introduce you to your consultant who will answer the questions in detail. So to start the conversation, John, I'D like for you to give us a bit of a history and maybe I'll just ask you the question. Why did you create products? Why did you go through the exercise of developing products and putting products on the market instead of just being a consultant company, which really is your heart is to share information. Why?

Life was a lot easier when we were just a consulting company in some ways, but it was also a lot harder. Product development and getting products in the marketplace was not a fun process and particularly in regards to dealing with regulators and getting products through the regulatory process. But the foundational challenge was, and to some degree, we have a very different product landscape of what's available in the marketplace today from what existed back in 2008 and 9 and 10 when we first started doing product development work. And at that point in time, farmers had a very. Growers had a very difficult time accessing good quality products for use in irrigation systems and in foliar sprays that were properly designed. It was easy to get conventional ionic products like you could get water soluble triple 20 and 9, 15, 30 and those types of water soluble formulations, those were widely available. But the challenge is that they suppressed soil biology. When we use them in irrigation systems, they produce a nice crop response, but they suppress biology. And so that was the first challenge that we wanted to address, is that plant nutrition has to benefit. Products have to benefit both plant health and they also have to benefit soil biology. So that was one of the primary challenges we needed to address. William Elbricht said it well many years ago, he said that products should be available but not soluble. And that was what we set out to create is how do you create products that are plant available but not soluble? The second piece was as we learned more about plants absorbing nutrition from biology, it became imperative to have products that stimulated biology rather than suppressing it. We wanted to be able to sustain both plants and biology at the exact same time. Then the third major challenge that existed both for organic products as well as non organic products was nutrients that contained counterproductive components such as nitrate. It's very common for growers to use products like calcium nitrate or to use products like calcium chloride. And far too frequently we end up where we need calcium in a crop. But in order to get calcium, we also had to apply these other nutrients that might have had negative plant health effects. And lastly, the one additional piece I would add is that in many cases it's just simply difficult for growers to access some of the necessary trace minerals and microbial inoculants. If you need molybdenum. Where is a grower going to find a chelated molybdenum or a chelated cobalt? And in many cases, we would make recommendations for growers about what products they needed to apply and they would not get applied, and plant health would not change and productivity would not change because the growers had difficulty accessing the product. And that was a real struggle because we saw that many growers had a lot of opportunity left on the table, and we wanted to bring that onto the table. So that was why we. Those combination of reasons why we started making products.

So, John, that's a great overview as to why. And now maybe you could tell us a little bit of some of the considerations that went into development of the product. And I have here on the slide dynamic and not denatured. So maybe you could talk a little bit about some of the core products principles that you considered as you develop these products.

When reading the literature about the different. The way that humic substances used to be defined, and this science is now rapidly evolving, and we're recognizing that we need to understand humic substances differently from what we have in the past. But the literature clearly described that in the process, during the manufacturing process for humic substances or for liquid seaweed or for a lot of these materials, that we were losing a lot of the original parent material that was very valuable as a result of the extraction process. So if we. Commercial liquid seaweed applications are generally. There's a few exceptions today, because we've talked about this quite a bit in the past, but generally they are extracted using an alkali extraction agent such as potassium hydroxide, which is a form of lye. And this alkali extraction process denatures a lot of the cell compounds which have very beneficial impacts on plant health and plant performance. And I could go into detail if we had the time. But one of the compounds in seaweed that I'm particularly interested in is this compound group of compounds called betaine osmoregulators. And this is a group of compounds contained in seaweed that when applied to plants, produces this effect that it makes them a lot more resilient to drought stress. It allows the cells and the plants overall to regulate water much better, and they require less water. So this is something that I really wanted to see for improving drought resilience and just improving plant stress in general, Stress tolerance in general. The only problem is that when you extract seaweed with an alkali extraction agent, you lose all the betaine osmoregulators. That's just one example of Dozens. And the same is true of what used to be referred to as humic substances. And many of us are still familiar with this lexicon, this terminology. When you start with the raw lignite, Oregon and you put it in a liquid solution that has, with potassium hydroxide that has a ph of 12 and agitate it for a period of time, then you are left, once you let the sludge settle down to the bottom, you pull off this dark colored liquid off the top. And that is now acidified with, usually with acetic acid and called humic acid. That's what commonly gets called humic acid on the marketplace or it's dried down and now you have a dry powder that has the high potassium content because of the potassium hydroxide used in the extraction process. You now have this fraction that has been removed from the parent material that historically has been called humic acid. Then they go back to the original sludge that's left in the bottom of the container, left and bottom of the tank, and add an acid solution, usually using acetic acid, agitate it for a while. And that acid solution has, when they're done with it, has a golden amber, honey colored liquid that is now sold as fulvic acid at a pH of 2 or 3. And the substance that's left in the bottom of the tank historically has been referred to as human. H U M I N and the human. Think about what we're talking about regarding human. It cannot be degraded by alkali and it cannot be degraded by acid. And when I started reading about some of the properties of human as well as these different fractions, I said, well, that's the stuff that we want. We want that stuff that cannot be degraded by acid, that cannot be degraded by alkali. And so this is one of the foundational problems of these chemical extraction processes. You end up with a fraction of the parent material and you lose a lot of, of what was originally in the product. And you also denature it a lot. And then when you think about phosphorus, when we start with raw rock phosphate, tricalcium phosphate, it contains a lot of calcium, it contains a lot of trace minerals. And in today's modern process, that product is then acidifies first acidified with sulfuric acid to produce what used to be called triple superphosphate 020, so it would still contain phosphorus and it would combine with calcium sulfate or gypsum. And that was a very useful material. But now today, in order to get higher purities and to get higher concentrations on the bag, that product is Then further processed by ammonifying it. So we end up with ammoniated phosphates, monoammonium phosphate, diammonium phosphate, and now the calcium and the sulfur are stripped out. So originally you had apparent material. Here's where it gets to be really interesting. You had a parent material that contained calcium and phosphorus and trace minerals in a plant, available but not soluble form. And now you've processed it with this very energy intensive and chemical intensive process where it is now water soluble and it locks up very rapidly in the soil profile. It's very reactive because it's so purified and it no longer contains any calcium or any trace minerals. So when you contrast this today, if you buy ammoniated phosphates, let's say DAP1846O, if you apply £100 of DAP that has had all these other good materials removed from it, you can expect that in a matter of five to seven days, 90 plus percent of that phosphorus is going to have reacted and be tied up in the soil matrix and not be available to the plant. Compared to our holo phos, which we'll talk about in a little bit, which is a micronized suspended rock phosphate which we can apply at a rate of a couple quarts per acre and produce a larger phosphorus response in the crop than we can with £100 of DAP, we know that if we continue using phosphorus at our current rate globally, we have about a 15 year supply left. And you think about the resource use efficiency of using a few quarts per acre, that is at a couple, that's basically a couple pounds per acre of original material versus a couple of hundred pounds per acre of original material. We're talking about completely different levels of resource use efficiency and we produce a bigger crop response and we enhance soil biology all the same time. So those were the background macro reasons for taking a very different approach to developing products.

Great, excellent. Thank you, John. And maybe if you could just add to that a bit about the considerations for uptake, translocation and metabolism, especially of as you develop the micronutrient package, the rebound lines.

Well, we understand very well today that the question of trace mineral availability from the soil has nothing to do with the level of trace mineral supply. It's common for many soils to have abundant levels of manganese and abundant levels of iron or abundant levels of copper. And for the crops growing on those soils to be deficient those exact same nutrients. This is a function, it's a combination of different things of historical mismanagement or lack of knowledge. We simply didn't know any better. And some of the things that products that we've used in the past, but because of these soil imbalances, microbial imbalances and chemistry imbalances, it's often common in the early phases of transitioning a soil to a region of agriculture approach. The first year or two or three years as soil biology is regenerated, if we still want to produce really healthy, vigorous, high yielding crops in the first couple years of that transition, then we need to use products that are, that we can be certain are going to be plant available in very compromised soil conditions. And that means that these trace minerals need to be chelated, but they need to be chelated with non synthetic chelation agents. Because again, we cannot use or don't want to use chelation agents that suppress biology. We're using chelation agents that have a positive impact on biology, a positive impact on soil health. Of course, major part of what I'm talking about, I haven't really spoken specifically about Redox, but the reason these trace minerals are often in the soil in generous amounts but not available is because they're not in the right oxidation state. So we need to make certain that any manganese or any iron that is applied is in the reduced form and that it stays in the reduced form once it's in the soil. And this is, this is the challenge because today we have, if we use manganese as an example, manganese sulfate is a fairly readily available product commercially, its inexpensive form of manganese and as long as it's in the bag, it is in the reduced form. The problem occurs once you open the bag and you put it onto the soil. Since many soils are very oxidized, the manganese sulfate that you add to the soil also tends to oxidize and quickly becomes plant unavailable. And we have an abundance of data that shows that plants do not absorb manganese from soil applied manganese sulfate. The soil level, soil test levels go up, but the plant SAP analysis levels don't go up. And that's what the liquid chelate products are designed intended to fix.

Excellent. Thank you very much, John, for that overview. I'm going to now introduce you to the team, meaning not the people at aea, but the products at aea. And we're going to go through this fairly rapid fire and then we're going to look at each of these products as they fit in a program and how we put them together in a program and talk a bit more in detail about each of the products in the program context. So John, just jump in at any point, if you have additional insights or anything you'd like to add, especially any good stories of how these team players played well and came through with great win. So we're going to start with the micronized suspensions. John talked about the Holofoss already and the value of not denaturing these materials in the manufacturing process. So in the micronized suspension family are the Holo Phos, the Holokay Holokal. So you have three nutrients products and then there's Humicarp, which John touched on, and the sea stem, which John also talked about. Next we'll look at the Sea Sweet and Stem is a part of this. And then we have Sea Shield, which is a blend of crab shell, shrimp shell and fish, salmon specifically. And we have Sea Crop, which is a concentrated ocean water with a low sodium level. So. So these three Cs are very special in our product lineup and play very, very specific roles in certain situations. And then we have the AEA Superheroes, which are Rejuvenate, our favorite and one of probably the core product, the most gallons and the most acres covered is by far and above all the others. Rejuvenate Accelerate is high on our list of favorites. And then Fotomag following closely. And Micropack is a good old standby that's been with us from the very beginning. Next, I'll introduce you to the Rebound family. And this is kind of like the micro pack broken apart into individual components so that you are able to address your nutritional needs specifically based on the SAP analysis. So if you have an excess of manganese but a deficiency of copper, you're able to adjust your program using the rebounds. So we have manganese, iron, zinc, boron, cobalt, molybdenum and copper, all packaged individually so that you can put together your own micropack for your operation, for your specific geographical location. And then we will look at the mighty microbes. So we all know microbes are very important. Biocode Gold is a seed inoculant that John developed. And we will look more at biocode Gold later. And then we have adopted into our family of products the Tyneo technology materials. So Spectrum is probably the most commonly used and a couple of its cousins, Spectrum DS and Spectrum psp, which are very similar but have higher levels of phosphorus solubilizing bacteria. And then we have OP8. OP8 is a hydrocarbon digester, breaks down toxins in the soil and has become a very frequently used tool. Working with perennial culture and actually a lot of the people we start working with OP8 is one of the first, one of the first tools that goes out with the rejuvenate and soil primer. And then biodigester is for any lignified material, helps digest very lignified crop residue. Used frequently in compost management and in orchards where we have a lot of wood chips or heavy residue to digest. Next we have micro 5000. These microbes are phylosphere microbes, meaning they are sprayed on the surface of the leaf to help protect that leaf and to help with nutrient absorption. We have an organic version of the micro 5000. We have the PZ1000. So that's a lineup of all the products, all of the players that we have. And we're going to look at how they play with each other. A team by looking at the programs and we can, we'll take a little bit more time looking at each of the individual components of those programs. So first we're going to look at the foundation, which we have named the regenerative soil primer. The soil primer is just that, it's, it's the foundation of really all that happens. If we don't have good biology and if we put out biology and don't have good establishment support, we really.

Are.

Starting off on the wrong leg. So this regenerative soil primer consists of rejuvenate, C shield and spectrum. And then occasionally, depending on what the specific use cases are, we use Spectrum DS or Spectrum PSP or add some OP8 to it. If there's history of hydrochemical or chemistry application that we want to break down. Here is why the regenerative soil primer is so important. Let's think about soil balancing without biology. So there's a school of thought that you put out. You look at a soil sample and if you're deficient in calcium, you put out X level of calcium, you create that balance and you have a good looking soil sample. But what we've learned, and I actually learned it the hard way, John probably remembers this conversation where after applying a couple thousand pounds of rock phosphate, we got a soil sample back and it was the exact same phosphorus level that we had already, you know, that we started out with. So as a young consultant, I remember telling John, this doesn't work like I'm, I don't, this doesn't make any sense. This farmer spent this money with me and our soil sample is exactly same. Well, if we don't have biology, we're just adding more ground up rock to the ground up rock we already have in our soil. So we do need that biology. The next point that makes the regenerative soil primer so powerful and the reason that we are so focused and why most every recommendation that you'll get from our consultants will contain the regenerative soil primer and is because if you don't have a good rhizosphere symbiotic relationship going on, where you have bacteria and fungi connected to the roots and they are oil, if you don't have that good microbial system functioning and you put on a foliar application, you enhance the photosynthesis and the sugars go down to the roots, but there's nobody there, then you just hit a dead end. That foliar application may have given you a little bit of a response, but. But a foil is never to supply all of the nutrients that the plant needs. It's to stimulate the plant to a higher level of photosynthesis so that we can cycle more of the minerals that are within the soil. So another reason why regenerative soil primer is such a powerful part of the program. So establishing a functioning microbial plant symbiotic relationship is key to success. And that starts with rejuvenating seashield spectrum. They're thinking, well, you absolutely can. That's what we're saying here is that you need to have an effective and a consistent way to establish a microbial system with your plants and soil. So if you have the infrastructure, if you have the resources to build and to create consistent compost tea, then more power to you. And we have growers who do that and who are able to do that. But many growers, after they've used this system, realize that with the consistency of the results and the ease of use, this is a very good option to establish that microbial symbiotic relationship. So looking at each of those players in the regenerative soil primer in a little bit more detail, we have Rejuvenate, which is a blend of complex carbohydrates, which is important. You don't just want simple sugars that the microbes can just suck up and then it's gone like soda pop. You need stable humic substances which rejuvenate contains and enzyme cofactors. So Rejuvenate is a blend of all of these to be a complete and comprehensive support package to help establish the biology. Rejuvenate won't feed the biology for month on end days, weeks maybe, but really the goal is food source, whether that's in crop residue or whether that's with a living plant. For the continued feeding and establishment and progression of that biological inoculant that you're making. If you'll note the picture on the left, you can see the treat it with rejuvenate. And Spectrum was also a part of that. And the untreated in the crop residue. And if I'm not mistaken, this was sprayed in spring and then this was the fall pictures. So in a matter of a month, there's a significant difference in the breakdown of this crop residue, which means your nutrient cycling is happening in time when your next crop is able to take that up and to utilize it. SeaShield, the next component of the regenerative sole product, SeaShield is crab shell, shrimp shell and fish and oils from the fish that support and function as a fungal food source. And then you have the minerals that are naturally occurring in the crab shell and the shrimp shell that feed the biology. And you'll get some nutrition for the whatever plants you have growing out there as well. And then you have nitrogen in the form of proteins and amino acids coming from those living sources. And then finally we have the Spectrum. And whether this is Spectrum psb, Spectrum ds, it's all the same. It's a very diverse blend of PGPRs, which simply means they promote good, healthy plant growth there. Phosphorus solubilizers included, nitrogen fixers included. There's iron solubilizers included, the facultative anaerobes, which simply means they create a reduced environment for nutrient availability, especially of the metals. So Spectrum has. And the blend this team, Spectrum Rejuvenate, C shield have functioned since the beginning. John. Really? I mean, I think it was 2010 or 11 when we put this team together and they have just played phenomenally well. And there's probably no set of teams that has brought as consistent results across the country. Across every application is just very consistently we see significant changes in soil structure, in nutrient availability, in water infiltration. Just the benefits of establishing biology efficiently and effectively cannot be overemphasized. Here's just a couple snippets of the of plan where this team has functioned well. So this is from a Haney analysis and an average of a number of samples. And if you look in the yellow column, you can see the before treatment and the green is the after. So a 2020 versus the 2021. And then you have to change in the white column. So you can see we have an increase in literally every nutrient by significant percentages. This is also a Haney analysis, which is even more extensive. Trial we ran 12 samples throughout the season, every two weeks, we collected a sample and we also collected a SAP analysis to correlate with this in the. In the off weeks. So what looking at the treatment block, which is the blue, and that has, that is a. A vineyard that has been on a regenerative program for four seasons. And the control is the first season on a regenerative program. So as you can see, we have available phosphorus by more than triple. We have calcium at almost double. We have total organic carbon at double. We have nitrogen at triple again, we have double the organic matter. We have tripled the soil health calculation. So the benefit and value. Now this was not just the soil primer, but the soil primer was. I don't believe this could have been accomplished without the soil primer. There were also foliars based on the SAP analysis. There were fertigation applications based on the SAP analysis, soil amendments based on the Haney analysis, the total mineral extraction, and regular soil analysis. So it's been a very comprehensive program. But the point is that without the regenerative soil primer, I really don't believe we would see these numbers because we wouldn't have the biology to mineralize all those nutrients that are out there. Soil compaction, has that been an issue on your operation? This is just with one year. The green is the farmer standard and the blue is the regenerative grammar. That specific one says nitrogen efficiency program, but it's. It's actually the rejuvenate soil or the rejuvenate seashield and spectrum was applied there and with one within. Within one season. So I think this was done in 2012 and then 2013, there was a difference and it continued to 2014. So a very significant difference in soil compaction. So that's the regenerative soil health primer. John, do you have anything to add on that to our planting, our planting program?

Well, the regenerative soil health primer is. It is our single most popular product. It's most widely used, and there's. And it's also our most expensive. So usually your most popular products are your lesser expensive ones. That's not the case. And that is simply the reason that that's. That's the most effective testimonial you can give to its effectiveness. Growers use it because it is effective. And there are. I could talk for hours about the stories that we've had of increased soil porosity and water infiltration and crop responses as a result of soil primer. What we can say very simply is that it consistently drives observable Yield differences, an observable crop difference. It's our most popular product for a reason.

So let's look at planting, which is also a great opportunity to establish soil biology. And that got it relationship that we were talking about. But also it's the perfect opportunity to set your plant up for successful season. And if you're planting perennials, this is of utmost importance because the inoculation, the establishment of that symbiotic relationship between the plant and the biology and the soil, if that happens early on, the effect of that, the cascade that happens when that system is functioning from the beginning, I don't think we understand. I don't believe that John and I have even seen what can happen when that is, when that, when the plants get established and out of the gate and running right from the get go. So let's just take a quick look at some of the products that we would use for establishing biology, establishing that symbiotic relationship and getting your plants set off to a good start. So first let's think about biology. And when we think about biology we must think about establishment support. And again, this is, this is basically what we were talking about, the regenerative soil primer. But think about this in specific planting situation, whatever it is that you're, that you're going to be planting this season, how will you best establish the biology to help you solubilize all that phosphorus, to help you make available all the iron and the manganese that's in the soil? And I have yet to see very few samples, only in like pure sand do we not have enough manganese or enough potassium and phosphorus for good plant growth. It's out there, it just needs to be mineralized, it just needs to be cycled. We just need biology and plants to be working together to get all of those nutrients. So a biological support package or the established to support that establishment, we must think about food until that biology is established in whatever food source that it's going to be using and utilizing in wherever we're placing it, in this case for planting, it will be the plant itself. So we think about simple and complex carbohydrates, we need to think about shelter or stable humic substances. What about tools? And I think about half inhabiting an island that's been either deserted or nobody lives on it. And if you just drop some people off, they probably their level of surviving would really, I don't know, if you give them some tools, if you give them a little bit of shelter, if you give them some good, stable food, that's going to spoil. For example, rice and beans versus burgers and fries. You know, it's going to be your establishment success is going to be very much dependent on what you equip those people with. And the same way with their biology. When we put them out there into that environment, how will they be established? Do we have enough carbon? Do we have enough food? Do we have enough to keep them going and multiplying so that as soon as that seed germinates right there, we have the team available ready for that symbiotic relationship to happen. And then nutrient support. So there's, there's various different nutrients that can support the biology and that can support the, the plant itself. So let's think about cellular development and reproduction. What do these, what do the, what does the biology need? Early on we need to have sufficient levels of calcium. We need to have micronutrients for both the biology as well as for that early plant establishment. So let's start with BioCode Gold. If you don't do anything else of the, of a regenerative program, treat your seeds, treat them like gold, actually use biocode Gold and treat them with mycorrhizae, with bacteria, with a food source that allows them to create that symbiotic relationship very quickly and very effectively. There's no other product or program that you can do that gives you as great a return on investment as the biocode Gold. And here again, John said he could talk for hours about what BioCode Gold has done or what the regenerative soil primer has done. I think he could talk about biocode Gold and what it has done for, for at least an hour. Spectrum is another way to add additional biology. So if you've not put out the soil primer as an inoculant on large scale, consider putting it in furrow. Consider putting Spectrum, just a regular spectrum across and then Spectrum PSV or Spectrum DS in furrow for specific scenarios. And our consultant team is very experienced with all of these products and all of these programs. So they're feel like you need to understand all of these products in detail. This is an intro so you have some idea of what a program might look like and we can help you think through which product, which program is going to be best for your specific crop, for your specific goal, for the specific challenge that you might be trying to address. And this is why we are focusing on this program at planting. Check this root out. This is what's possible with Rejuvenate and Spectrum. I think this was treated with BioKoat Gold also, this one specifically did not have, did not have Sea Shield. But this is what the untreated looks like. This is just across the road. Same soil type, same crop. What a difference. Which of those is going to be more drought resistant, resilient? Which of those is going to infiltrate more water? Which of those is going to change the soil profile and give you more nutrients? Thinking about planting, you can also add some sea stem which is the seaweed product. It's been co processed so you have optimal microbial and plant response. It gives you an additional food source for the biology. It incentivizes root growth. It's just a great balancing. Putting a pint or a quart of sea stem out with that starter is a very common practice. We do it quite often in our programs to help establish that early in that biology. And then phosphorus or calcium using Holo phosphorus or holocau. So here we're thinking about cell division in those early roots or even cellular structure of the bacteria and fungi. They need available calcium. And with the holocal or the holo phos. And holo phos because it's not denatured through the manufacturing process because we' separating calcium and phosphorus, you're actually getting 7% calcium and 7% phosphorus with the holofos product. So adding some holofos gives you calcium and phosphorus all in that package in a form that stable in the soil. It's not going to react and tie up with the calcium in the soil and the Sea shield. We talked about the seashield. But adding a little bit of this can be an additional enhancement at planting. Then micronutrients. I introduced you to the rebound family. So here you can say, well, my soil, the Haenia analysis is very low in manganese, very low in zinc. I'm planting corn and I know that zinc is very important. So I'm going to put a little bit of this in the planting solution to make sure that I have those bases covered. Or if you don't have a specific one, you could just add a little bit of micropack which is a combination of all these provide enzymes or enzyme cofactors for the biology and for the plant. And also if you have any nutrient deficiency, you can spike that program with that with that specific micronutrient. John actually touched on this earlier that about the reduced form and being chelated. And one of the unique things about the rebound micronutrients that I always appreciate is how John worked on these using the plant SAP analysis to develop a product that was really going to work well. So we're going to keep right on rolling because I want to look at the next team or the next program that we really focus on and the players in that team. And I'm going to touch just a little bit on why it's so important. So photosynthesis, the driver of the whole system. The sun shines, the water is taken up by the plant. CO2, if you have biology is coming up. You have the reaction of those photons with the chlorophyll and you have sugars being built. So we can, we can manage the water. We can not do very much for the sunlight, but water, CO2 and minerals we can have some effect on. And especially minerals we are, we are able to really dial in the nutrients that the plant has and adjust based on the plant SAP analysis. So we're going to specifically focus on this for the minerals. But just a quick mind, just a quick note on how this works. When we increase photosynthesis, we increase the sugars that go down into the roots. We have accelerated microbial activity. If we have microbes, if we don't have microbes, this is the dead end I was talking about. If we have microbes, that means we have more efficient mineral absorption, which when you look at that whole symbiotic relationship and you take mineral absorption from simple ions to microbial metabolites and as James White in his research has found, that the actual rhizophagy cycle and how all of that works, this is, this starts getting pretty exciting when we increase photosynthesis and you can just follow this thing around and it's, it just keeps getting better and better and better with healthier and healthier plants. So that's why photosynthesis is so important. You link photosynthesis with the regenerative soil primer and you have a very powerful system.

That.

Those two functioning together will take care. A lot of the challenges, a lot of the symptoms that you have, such as insects and diseases and plant death, will be minimized or go away when you, by simply enhancing and increasing the photosynthesis. So we're going to focus on the minerals that enhance photosynthesis, which are magnesium, which is needed for the center of the chlorophyll molecule. Nitrogen is a part of that chlorophyll molecule. Energy is, is transferred by phosphorus. And then we have iron and manganese. Iron's role is in putting that chlorophyll molecule together. And then manganese plays a role in water hydrolysis. And there's, there's, I'm. Sure many other nutrients that play some role. But these are kind of the five core minerals that you need to focus on when you are thinking about photosynthesis and moving this system in the right direction. So Photomag, holo, phos, seashield, iron, the team players that you'll be using to enhance photosynthesis. We've talked about the holo, phosph, we've talked about the C shield, we talked about the iron and the manganese. So we're just going to look at Fotomag at this point. And Fotomag was developed for a very specific use case. Actually John, maybe you'd jump in there and just give us a quick.

A.

Quick, if you remember still that specific use case of high nitrates in Pennsylvania that really triggered the reason Fotomite was developed.

Well, when we started using SAP analysis, it became very clear that many crops were experiencing nitrate excesses and that they were not converting nitrate to complete proteins effectively. And as a result they were also experiencing lots of insect pressure, particularly aphids and flea beetles and whiteflies and stuff like that. So the Fotomag was designed to give plants the exact nutrients that it requires to convert nitrates to complete proteins. So we know that molybdenum is needed, needed for the nitrate reductase enzyme. We know that plants need sulfur for all the sulfur bearing amino acids, the stop amino acids to form complete proteins. And we need magnesium for chlorophyll and also for nitrogen management for all the enzyme cofactors that it is required for. And so we put together this combination. We also put in boron because of boron's specific properties on increasing insect resistance. And the response was much greater than what we expected it to be. Photomag is another one of our really popular products. It's very widely used. There's one caveat that I would mention when dealing with biological systems, we sometimes develop these products or we observe these interesting synergistic interactions where 2 +2 does not equal 4, but it equals something else entirely. Sometimes it's 10 and sometimes it's 400. Fotamag is one of those materials, particularly as regards to boron. When you do the math of the quantity of boron that Photomag contains or that shows up on the label, it's very small. It's. I forget what it is exactly 3% or 0.3%. Whatever it is, let's just say it's a small number. And if you calculate the quantity that you're applying, it comes out to A few grams per acre, it doesn't amount to a whole lot. And yet when we do SAP analysis on crops that have had Photomag applied, we get this tremendous boron response. And I don't have an explanation for that. I don't know why that is or what's going on, but I know that it is. And it occurs very consistently. So it's one of the materials that we use a lot to confer very rapid insect resistance even when there are already insects on a crop, is Fotomag.

Thank you. And just to that point, I'm reminded of the situation that we had with hops where the aphids were just crazy and it's one of the biggest challenges that they had. And by using Fotomag was a key component to reduce that excess level of nitrate, manage the nitrate and have complete protein synthesis. And then I also, I think of the story just, I think, John, the, the story about the 4H and the fat content increase in forage would fit in here really well to also add to not only the protein synthesis, but what happens next. And the plant's defense.

When what happens next, as you described in your diagram earlier, David, is the other thing, the other reason this product is called Photomag is because it increases photosynthes. And when you increase photosynthesis, you obviously get more sugar production. Lots of that sugar or some of that increased sugar production gets stored in the form of lipids. You end up with very high fat content forages. It's not difficult with photo mega applications and managing other nutritional basics to get up above 4% fat content on a dry matter basis. And when that happens, you start having really high energy forages and livestock that are satisfied very easily. Excellent.

Great. Thank you, John. And we're going to move to the bud optimization program here. We need to think about energy and energy and energy which starts with photosynthesis. So the bud optimization program is normally applied early in, after post harvest. And we really need to, as I shared in the region in the actions and reaction presentations, I'd encourage you to go and check that out and then look at your specific crop. Talk to one of our consultants about where your buds are being developed or where the buds in your crop are being developed and where those are being initiated. Because the timing of this program and the timing at which you engage this team, if you will, is very important. So the team for bud optimization obviously is all of the photosynthesis, right? You can't have be optimizing your buds if you don't have Enough energy. So if you don't have enough photosynthesis, if you're not covering those faces, then it may give you, depending on what your specific situation is, may give you a boost. And does it many times. Accelerate is very effective as a standalone product and we have used it a lot where say a soybean grower or a blueberry grower has used just Accelerate and see a phenomenal results. But the best results will come when your photosynthetic energy is being maximized, when you're, when you're, when those photosynthetic minerals are at optimum levels. And then when you apply Accelerate, you are helping to balance that reproductive versus vegetative energy. And the Accelerate will help to take that energy more towards the reproductive. And it'll also support those reproductive functions like pollination and that early cell division stage with the level of manganese and sea stem that we have in that. Here's why. Here we go. I wanted to point out in this specific picture how the energy of the buds when they are being developed really makes a big difference in how, how even your pollination is going to be and how even the ripening is going to be of your crop. And thus the quality of your fruit and the quality of your whole crop is affected by the quality of the buds that are being developed. So think about your specific crop, do some research, think about when you need to be applying these products, Apply Accelerate and make sure the nutrients, your SAP analysis are nice and balanced because in the end it'll really pay off when you have whatever the crop is. This example is blueberries. But when you have all of these flowers coming out opening at the same time, being pollinated and your crops setting at the same time because of the sugar division or the way the sugars are divided then based on the size of the specific fruit. So if you have earlier fruit, that'll be the bigger fruit because it's going to be hogging the sugars. If you have all of the fruit at the same time, you can have more of the fruit, be a good, nice, even size. And then we just have here at the end, we, when we were putting this is this happened way back in the early days, we were putting together a lot of forage recommendations. And the 4H blend or our 4H recommendation was always photo mag, it was always holo phos, it was always seastem, was always micropack. So we were always starting with that as a base program. And we decided, well, why not just blend those together? So we offer a product that's called 4H foliar blend. And really it's a great foliar blend for anything. It just happened that when we were doing this, we specifically were mostly using it on forages specific mix. And so it was called 4H Foliar Blend. And it'll probably be updated in the future at some point or as R and D continues developing more blends and products, maybe it'll be, it'll be replaced. But at this point we do offer this blend that is very effective in providing photosynthetic nutrients, the phosphorus for energy transfer. You have some sea stem and you have micropack and then you add some micro 5000 to this and you are good to go. And just about any crop. So if you do nothing else, just put on the 4H foliar blend at 4 to 6 quarts. If you're doing like if it's on a forage and you're doing a one time application in between every cutting, then four to six quarts. If you're doing a vegetable or a fruit, then two to four quarts and you can look at your SAP analysis and determine if you need more or less or if you need rebound manganese, rebound iron, etc. And we also in the same fashion have a plantar solution which is a very similar mix but has the rejuvenate. So with this you would just add the planter solution mix and add some spectrum. Treat your seeds with BioCode Gold, enroll in the field. So those are great foundational blends that are good to start off with. So in closing here, before we go into some Q and A and I see we're running right up on the hour, I do want to say that AEA products embody the principles of regenerative agriculture and this regenerative rebuilding the soil. But just because you put on some of the AEA products, you're not automatically a regenerative food producer. It's important that you are looking at the whole system. It's important that you're looking at the future and where you want to go. It's important to consider all of these aspects and be moving your soil in a direction. This regenerative process is not something that you can just write a check and immediately clap your hands and pow. Your soul is regenerated. It's a journey, it's moving. We've come from a place and we're going to a place we're rebuilding, right? And it takes time and it takes focus and it takes more than just, you know, using these products. But these products are amazing tools.

All right, well thanks everyone and thank you. David. We've had lots of questions come through on the Q and A and a few that were misplaced on the chat as well, but I tried to catch them, but I'm not sure I caught all of them. But on the Q and A we've had quite a few questions for a number of you. I've been responding to them in writing as the webinar has been ongoing because I saw that we were running up on the clock and so we really do appreciate the questions. Thank you for putting all of those in. There's a few more that I want to go through with David and for you to hear David's perspective as well. David, there's a question here from Lynn. Is it realistic to assume that in broad acre crops that over time the soil will not need soil primer and then over a longer period of time many of the foliar products will not be needed if we are treating the soil without tillage and using cover crops?

There's a lot of ifs in that answer. But I would say when you yes, if you're not destroying what you're building, if you're able to create a system that doesn't destroy the biology and that is is able to put cycle more carbon, collect more nitrogen, you know, and be building on itself, then yes, I would absolutely say there should be a time when you don't have to put out the regenerative soil primer, you know, where you can at least be reducing the spectrum because you have a, you know, a significant amount. Maybe you can cut it out and you just need to feed it with rejuvenate. Or maybe you don't even need that. Yes, the answer, in short, is yes. If you are able to create a system that functions the way it was created, the way nature functions.

And I would echo David's comment and build on that to say that from our perspective, the purpose of using these products is to accelerate the overall ecosystem, to accelerate the regeneration of biology and plant health to the point where we don't need them anymore. That's the goal that we're striving for. In some ecosystems, with some management systems that can happen in a few years. With some of them it might take a decade or more. And in some ecosystems, if you're growing strawberries in California, it's probably never going to happen. But that from a principles perspective, that should be the ultimate ideal that we should strive for. David, you can also shut off your screen Share.

I would also just add John to that That I find a lot of growers get that, get to that point, are then saying, well, what is the next level? You know, so it's obviously you can get to that point where you can just kind of coast, but a lot of times it's like, well, what's the next level look like?

Right. Question here from Jared. Do you ever apply mycorrhizal fungi in your programs?

Yes. The biocode Gold has seven different types of fungi. So treating your seats with mycorrhizal fungi and if you're in a system where you're not planting seeds and it doesn't work to use biocode Gold, you can use microgenesis through a fertigation system. But yes, definitely, definitely.

David, a question here from Claire Kaufman. What Type of BioKoat Gold and other products do you recommend for a root dip on trees when planting bare root trees?

So when planting bare root trees, the biocode Goat works well in, in a mix with something like a little bit of rejuvenate, a little bit of seed stem just to make it a bit sticky and just that whole root. So yes, we put together a lot of root dip programs that include the mycorrhizae and the bacteria inoculation and then that rejuvenate for an establishment support package.

Yep. Awesome. Here's an interesting question from Philip. Will Biokot Gold still provide positive results on seed corn that is already treated with commercial biocides?

Good question. Yes. In fact.

Of all the things we do, David, that's the piece that I marvel at the most. Go ahead.

I was just going to say, John, that probably that is, it's more important to apply it where you have the fungicide, which may sound counterproductive, but really there's enough biology that. And the other thing is this biology is dormant. Right. So this biology wakes up, you know, when it's introduced to the environment and moisture and roots. So especially the mycorrhizal fungi needs to have a root contact in order to be, you know, to wake up and to create that establishment. So short answer is yes, absolutely. It may, it may seem counterproductive, but just run a trial, just do.

The piece that I'm amazed by, David, is that this actually works. But yeah, we've got lots of growers who do it because it works and they get good results from it. And so we continue to do it. So yeah, there is, there's a very observable crop response question here from Christopher. We have already applied the soil primer in the fall and we plan on another application in the spring. After cutting our cover crop, do you have any available data on applying to bare soil as compared to application of freshly cut cover crop?

I don't know that I could point to any specific.

Yeah, not as a comparison.

I could point to any specific use cases and say this was way better than this. What I will say is the most effective establishment is when you get it in the soil. So having good moisture, applying it ahead of a rain, like if you're spraying it on top of a cover crop, I don't know what the following crops going to be or how you're planning to manage that, but if it's not going to be incorporated, then putting it on when you have moisture, putting it on when you're going to have moisture very soon after the application to get it down in contact with those roots and in that soil profile. If you're going to be planting like corn, I would suggest that you consider looking at applying it in furrow. If you've applied it broadcast and now you're taking off the COVID crop and planting another crop, you may be better off putting it in the fro right on the seed. And now you have good soil contact. It's not exposed to any of the UV environment and then the plant comes out and bam, it's right there. So I don't know the situation, but that's something that I would put out to consider.

Yep, there's a question here from Steve. What is the release curve time on the holo line of products, the holocal, holo phos and so forth, which are the micronized suspensions? And the way that I would answer that question is it is available immediately but not soluble, which means it doesn't leach. So if you apply holo phos or holocal, and this is based on the context of the question, I'm assuming this is around soil application, it is going to be available immediately for plants to absorb. You should expect peak absorption in a matter of two or three, maybe four days after application. And then it's going to remain available until it has been depleted, until it's completely gone. It's not going to leach out of the system. I think this is something that's very important is you don't need to worry about the whole line of products tying up, becoming complex or leaching. They don't do those things. They stay exactly where you put them until the plant absorbs all of them. So the release curve starts immediately upon application and it lasts until the product is gone. And so sometimes that's a few days and sometimes it's a few weeks. Question from Chris to get those results from Fotomag, what volumes per acre are we needing to use, David?

Not sure exactly, Chris, which specific example you were talking about. But like in the 4h examples that we, that John was talking about, the fat increase that would been like a six quart rate. And then if you're looking at it really depends on how much nitrogen you have in your system, how much nitrate challenges that you have. So if you're, if you can imagine this protein synthesis line and then you are just below that, you know, a quart of Fotomat may be all that it takes. If you're way below it, you might need to put on six quarts or two quart or six quarts or two gallons. But typically if we have like an insect infestation and we want to change it, we go like in that 4 to 6 quart range as a one time application. Now you probably don't want to be or don't need to be applying that on a consistent basis throughout the season unless you are getting an excess of nitrates from some other source.

Yeah, and I would say that if you're thinking about the responses in terms of insect resistant producing insect resistant crops, David's answer is generally correct and that it depends on the level of nitrogen and it also depends on your timing or your application frequency. On crops that are getting an application every seven to 10 days, we might put on a quart to two quarts. And if you're putting on an application like on a forage crop once a month or every 30 days, then we're looking at 4 to 6 quart application rates. Question here from Vijay. We grow crops for edible oils as in peanuts and sesame seeds, etc. Are the recommendations to get more oil content in the seeds? You have thoughts on that, David?

Photosynthesis.

More photosynthesis?

Yeah. We talked about the fat content in forage and really the oils in the seeds are really just a, the that plant health pyramid that you talk about, John, where that top level is plant secondary metabolites, essential oils and these oils that we're talking about here in the seeds. Is that so the healthier the plant, the more of those oils that it'll be able to produce and move into the beans or into whatever, whatever the crop was. So and then of course you also have the need to have sufficient levels of zinc, manganese, copper. Many of those metal micronutrients play a key role in auxin synthesis that controls or determines the concentration or the Flow of sugar into those whatever, whatever the seed is.

Really there's a question here from Michael. Is it necessary to apply a soil primer in both fall and spring? Is there an improvement if you apply it both fall and spring?

Yes. Really? The primer in high value crops put on a spring application, a summer application and a fall application. Obviously if you're growing corn, that's probably not going to work. But if you're going grapes or if you're growing blueberries, and maybe it's not the full rate of spectrum, maybe it's half rate of spectrum just to make sure you've, you've continued the growth and building of those populations and some rejuvenate. So yes, I've seen advantages of, of reinoculating or feeding that biology. And this is going to. The biggest difference is going to actually depend on so many things do. It depends what's happening that could cause the biology to be stressed. So if you have extreme drought or you had extreme drought, or let's say you, you had to resort to using an insecticide or a fungicide, that is going to have a negative impact on the biology, then reapplying that regenerative soil primer is definitely going to be beneficial. Just think about your situation. You can actually look at some of this based on your plant SAP analysis. If your plant SAP analysis has a nice consistent level, then your biology is probably functioning quite well. If you have a lot of up and down, up and down, up and down, then it's a real question of what's happening with that biology. Do we need more biology or do we need better food source? So think about your system and your situation to determine that. So it boils down to really a couple of questions. One is. What does your crop, what does the economics of your crop sustain? And maybe actually the question that precedes that is how fast do you want to get where you're going? So it's either really pushing that, inoculating that, feeding that the plants and the photosynthesis, or taking time growing cover crops over multiple seasons. If you have 10 years to have this system regenerate, great. You probably, you know, just put on one application or put on an application every other year and allow the time to do it. So I would actually probably, I would suggest that, that you were. Your first question should be how fast do I want to get to where I'm going?

Yep, good. Thank you. David. David, there are questions around using our products or using these products in horticultural systems with fumigation and underneath plastic are our Products effective. Do we have experience using our products with chemical fumigation and underneath plastic strawberries. Strawberries. Strawberries.

Well, I will say that yes, we have experience. I will say that there are a lot of things that are covered up with insecticides, fungicides and soluble fertilizers that we don't know about until we really start looking at this system. So there's lots of bandages being used in these, if I may, hydroponic type scenarios where when you introduce biology and you have a non permeable plastic and you stimulate all of this biology, where before it was a completely sterile system or mostly sterile system that was being fed by soluble simple ion fertilizers, there's a very significant difference and we do not know at this point. It's actually something that we are looking at doing a lot more study of is what's an effective way to produce large scale commercial fruits and vegetables with a biological system and manage those weeds if that plastic system isn't working. So we're having great results. But there's a couple things that have us really scratching our heads and saying, okay, it seems like we're not going to the next level as quickly as we expected. And when you think about a plant photosynthesizing, enhancing photosynthesis and having a very active biological system under a non permeable plastic and not being able to have that CO2 rise back up and cycle that carbon. Yeah.

Wow.

There's a lot more questions than answers, John.

Yeah. Question from John. I'm imagining organic growers use plenty of copper products for bacterial control and fungal control. Do you see any of these applications hurting soil biology and if so, how much? My experience has been that yes, they do have a negative impact on soil biology, particularly when levels in soil. Let me say it this way, when copper levels in soil exceed 15 parts per million, you start having a significant negative effect on biology. And at 30 parts per million, biology largely shuts down.

I'm sorry, go ahead, John.

And if you're just putting on applications during the season, and that's the levels that I'm talking about are an accumulation challenge of accumulation over a course of a decade or more. But in the short term, yes, there are seasonal effects as well from putting on lots of copper applications.

Yeah, I totally agree with that. And I would just suggest that a lot of the organic that used to be an organic go to. And as we understand plant physiology and the whole insect communication better, I see a definite shift towards instead of just spraying a copper to kill the insect, looking at why Is the insect there? Why is this plant even a food source for this insect? And so the strategy of just spraying copper is, is definitely shifting from my experience. And that's probably because you're promoting a lot of that. John. I see a definite shift in people understanding why insects are there and addressing it. Addressing the root cause rather than just the symptom by spraying copper on it.

There's a question here from Zach. Have you been successful treating peach leaf curl with nutrition without fungus at applications? Of course. And the answer to that is yes, on a small to medium scale. I'm not aware that we've looked. Actually, we have worked with large acre stone fruit and the key is not just nutrition, but also the microbiome on the leaf surface. And so in these types of foliage disease challenges, foliar applications with micro 5000 become critical. They're critical and they can very effectively out compete those organisms on the leaf surface. There's a question from Victor. Have you encountered any problems with biofilm formation using your products in a fertigation system.

Meaning issues with, with the drip tape or.

Yeah, forming a biofilm on the inside of the pipes? I haven't, I haven't heard of any of those happening at all.

Only if they're not properly flushed.

Yeah. And when you say properly flushed, you're talking about clean water after fertigation, you're not talking about chemical flush or anything like that?

No, just enough clean water to clear the lines out. We have hundreds of acres, thousands of thousands of acres in drip and permanent drip using these products.

So we're going to close with one last question. There's a number that we haven't gotten to and we'll have to follow up with all of you by email for those that we missed. But I want to be considerate of everyone's time. Question here from Dwight. I raise cotton in rotation with cotton. Well, maybe that should be where this question ends, Dwight, because that's not a rotation. Is it possible to improve soil microbes and soil health using GMO seeds and the chemicals that's required to control weeds? So your question is, is it possible to improve? Well, it depends on how dead your soil is already. If it's at zero, then yeah, it's probably possible to improve. But I think the question that you should be asking is how can you shift management to not require GMO seeds in the chemicals? And yes, we work with cotton growers and I know that the challenges of getting non GMO seeds are significant, but I think that's the longer term question that we should be asking, but in the short term, the answer to your question is yes, it is possible to dramatically improve soil biology with the GMOs and with the chemicals. David, you have lots of experience working with cotton growers. What would your response be?

Yes, it's definitely. Definitely. You can have lots of positive responses. I would look at your rotation and see if there's any way that you can interject an actual or a different crop where you actually have a bit of a rotation. You know, doing a cover crop, spreading some seeds before you defoliate. Again, not knowing what your situation is. The short answer is yes, it's very possible to, to improve, but to get to level three and four of the plant health pyramid. So seeing some of the insect resistance and disease resistance that John talks about will be a lot more challenging. And you're going to have to put in a lot more from your side to make up that difference.

Yeah. So I want to say thank you to all of you who've stayed here with us well past the hour, 20 minutes after. If you have any questions for us that we didn't get to or anything that you. Any questions you would have liked to ask, please call us. Call our team, 800-495-6603. We're always happy to take your phone call to have a conversation. We enjoy having these types of conversations and we'd love to hear from you. So thank you all for being here. I hope you found the information valuable and useful. And we'll be back here again next month with another webinar. Happy growing.

Thank you all. Be well.