Unlocking the Potential Yield & Profit of Wheat Growing with AEA's David Miller

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the conversation we have on maximizing the potential of yield and profit in wheat growing. I'm going to have just a short presentation here and then we'll have a discussion at the end, questions and answers and also anything that you've learned in producing wheat. I would like for this to be a discussion where we all learn from each other because we have a very important mission as food producers to produce food that is high quality. Any questions or winning button at the bottom of the screen? Just put your questions in that Q and A section and we'll get to those at the end. We're going to get started because I believe you're as excited as I am to learn how we can unlock the potential of a world champion racehorse. Let's think about it. We need to have high quality feed. We need to have a trainer and a caretaker that exercises the horse daily and that watches that horse carefully. And that needs to have a very specific protocol of how we care and develop this racehorse. But probably most importantly, above all, all the exercise, nutritional supplements, feed quality, the rations, all of that is the importance of the genetics. So I'd like to share with you the story of a colt that was born. The sire and the dam were top bloodline's world champion class horses. And it was his goal and do whatever it takes to allow these genetics to express themselves. Unfortunately, this owner was in a very bad accident, had to sell all the horses and completely give up his vision of developing the next world champion racehorse. The owner that bought this colt understood the value or the potential of the genetics that this colt possessed and he was going to develop that world champion. But he didn't have that first level of interest. Like he was a bit more distracted than the other. The feed quality dropped. There wasn't enough money to buy really good hay and so they snuck some moldy hay into it. The exercise, well, there wasn't hardly time for it because he had to be working harder. Long story short is that this colt did not receive the optimum care and environment. And this horse, instead of being a world class horse, a world class racehorse, winning the championship, ended up being just a horse. Yes, we look into some wheat discussion here in a bit. But the point that I want to make here, and I want to make it very, very clear is that environment determines the ability for genetics to express themselves. What are the yields that you are harvesting today and how does that compare with the potential that that wheat actually has? Remember that colt, the potential it had when it was first born, all the Genetics were there. Whether it was going to be a champion or not be a champion depended what happened to that colt from that day. That shows genetic potential of wheat is 1000 or 500 or 600 or 200 bushels per acre. As in a laboratory research where we have controlled environment like we do with corn, where people have actually produced and seen the genetic potential of corn at 1100 bushels. What we do know is that a yeast 258 bushels per acre, as is recorded by the world records. So we know that wheat has at least the genetic potential of 258 bulls or acre. And what if the yield potential is even greater? And we've just not realized that. Which is where I want to go next. And what I really mean to say is that you can increase the yield potential, but it will take a couple generations of selection of nutritional and environmental finesse and really focus on increasing the genetic potential that's within that wheat seed. But the point I really want for you to take home here is that when you apply fertilizer, when you apply fungicide, insecticide, foil your sprays, biological inoculation, whatever you do, and you harvest a higher yield, let's say you have a treatment and a control and on the treatment you put out, you know, abcd, you have the protocol, you follow it with the yield increase is when we apply the products, we do not increase the yield. We simply keep the yield from being lost. Or are we increasing yield? It's maybe subtle, but I think it's very significant in how we think about increasing yield or increasing the number of bushels that we harvest per acre. And here's the reason why. The yield potential is at its greatest when we plant that seed. And if we have a lower yield, it's not because we increased the yield on one, but because we kept the yield from being lost. So when we apply whatever we apply, we need to start thinking about is this going to help yield from being lost or is this because it's not increasing the yield? So where are the points where we can be losing yield? We can lose yield at planting. If we don't create an environment where that young seedling is able to express the genetic potential that it needs at that point. It would be similar if at if in that colt, first few days it were forced to stand in a rainstorm or go through a hurricane for a young colt, that would be devastating. So at planting, a lot of yield can be lost. We can also lose yield at the boot stage. So we plant and the number of seedlings that germinate and how well they germinate. And the environment we create is going to determine how well it's going to tiller out and how many stems or stalks we have per acre. And then at the boot stage, we're determining how many potential wheat berries that we're going to have, how many kernels are going to be in each head. At the flowering stage, we can no longer determine how many plants we have per acre. We can no longer affect the number of flowers or potential berries that we're going to have. But what we can affect here, how many of those flowers are going to pollinate. And if at this point we have a stress factor, we will lose more yield. And at grain fill, the number of plants, the number of kernels per head, and the number of pollinated kernels per head are all determined. The only thing we can affect now is how well they fill out. So where we want to focus on today, because I believe this is the most important and has the greatest effect on reducing the plant's ability to express its genetic potential, is planting. If we go back to that analogy of the cult, it would be like we're buying that potential world champion colt. What environment will we put that colt in? Let's just use some hypothetical numbers, and let's say maybe I'm not even so interested in horses, but my son or my daughter is very interested in this horse that has the potential to be a world champion. And the price is like $130,000 for this world champion bloodline horse. And he's, you know, let's say maybe he's weaned and he's, you know, he's ready to be away from his mom and you're bringing him home. What's the environment that you will bring this quality and level of a course to? Are you going to bring him to an environment like this? And if you do, what is the chances that he's going to thrive in an environment like this? I would expect that you would be much more likely to bring this colt into an environment like this. $100,000 world champion potential colt is not going to be an environment like this, but like this. So when we're talking about our crop, when we're putting that seed, at which point it has the highest potential, there's nothing's happened at this stage yet to reduce the plant's ability to express its full potential. So the environment that we put this seed into has huge repercussions on how much yield is going to be lost between the planting and the boot stage, as well as throughout the rest of this plant's life. So if you look at this picture, you see on the right there's a wheat plant and that has very good soil aggregation. Lots of roots. All of the roots are just covered and coated with soil aggregates. I use the terminology gluto, which is actually a microbial excretion, aglomelan. So these bacteria that this plant is farming, that this plant is supporting, that are in symbiotic relationship with the plant. These bacteria are affecting the. The soil structure, which means they are affecting the nutrient availability, which means the plant is therefore going to have a very different diet than the plant on the left. So let's just compare these two pictures and imagine that we get 4 inches of rain in two hours. Which of these soils, plants do you think are going to benefit the most from 4 inches of rain? Or let's say we have lots of heat, drought. Which of these plants do you think will survive best or have the greatest chance to go through a dry period where the soil dries out and there's plant stress? Which of these do you think is going to be able to maintain the highest level of genetic expression? So what we want to focus on here, and the point I really just want to put out here, and the focus for this conversation, is when plants start off right, they have a better chance to express their full genetic potential. And if a plant is started off wrong, you can't recover from that. If your yield potential. Let's take again, go back to the example of our colt. If this colt were put into a poor environment and it cut its tendon or something terrible like that happened because of the environment it was in. It doesn't matter how much you exercise that colt or how well you feed it. If a colt has a cut tendon or a hurt leg or whatever it might be, it. It will never be able to perform at the potential that it had before that happened. And in the same way, when plants, when the genetic potential or the plant's ability to express that potential has been reduced because of the environment that it's in, we can't regain that by just applying more and more and more material, whether that's fertilizer, insecticide, or fungicide, because we've dropped from, let's say 250 bushels to 100 bushels to 80 bushels, and regardless of what we apply, we won't be able to push it back up. So how do we do this and what are the steps to create that environment where that Seedling is able to express is genetic potential and where the least amount of genetic expression is suppressed. Here's what we do at advancing eco agriculture. We apply a microbial mycorrhizal fungi seed coat which is the biocoat gold. We apply a carbohydrate complex carbohydrate humic acid enzyme cofactor support package which is the rejuvenate. We apply nitrogen fixing bacteria along with other facultative anaerobes which is the spectrum, causes a reduced environment, fixes nitrogen, solubilizes phosphorus, etc. And then we support all that with seashield which is a combination of crab shell, shrimp shell and fish. And that's what happened on this, on the previous picture that I had showed you. That's the difference was that soil program was applied in the furrow. Actually this was even without the biocode gold. And we'll actually get to that slide here in a second. So here you can see the rates of each of those and here are some examples of how this works and what results we are getting from this. So you can see on the left picture you have the untreated and the treated. You can see the treated right, the untreated on the left, definitely a significant difference in the amount of berries and the size of the heads. And then also on the right side you can see the differences in the root. Just another shot of the differences in the roots. And then here's all the numbers where you can see how many more plants per square foot that we have, which is huge. So what we see is when we support these seedlings in the early stage, they're able to germinate more effectively and more of those seeds that we put out are going to survive, are going to come up and are going to produce at their full or at a greater height of their genetic potential. Here we are again. Just consider what is the environment. Consider the environment of both of these plants and how this environment is going to affect how well the these genetics will be able to express themselves. And here's a word from the grower that is growing these wheat plants. I'll just let him give you the details.

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