Why growers need to have vibrant soil microbial communities | Regenerative Agriculture | John Kempf

Hi, friends. Welcome to our webinar. I'm really happy to be here this afternoon and to be having one of these conversations once more. The topic for today's discussion is antimicrobial agriculture. We will be talking about soil compaction and some of the challenges that we have in agriculture. The discussion today is going to be, I think, fairly brief. And then I want to open it up for Q and A for any questions that you might have. All right. Why would I choose to speak about antimicrobial agriculture? And after all, isn't the very idea of an antimicrobial the exact antithesis of what we want to talk about? When we want to speak about regenerative agriculture? We use the words regenerative agriculture to describe, for me, the definition of regenerative agriculture is an agriculture that produces plants which are so healthy, they are completely resistant to diseases and insects, and they transfer that immunity to the people who consume them as food. We can have a legitimate conversation about growing food as medicine. And thirdly, they regenerate soil health. They sequester carbon, build organic matter, and develop soil microbial populations while we are growing a crop. This is the definition. This is my definition and the place that I come from when I'm speaking about regenerative agriculture and other people have used other words. There's been conversations about sustainable agriculture and ecological agriculture. Some companies speak about a biological agriculture. I think to some degree, varying degrees, all of these ideas speak to the idea that we need to have vibrant soil microbial communities. This is certainly a fairly common conversation. There's a lot of discussion around the idea of using cover crops, crop rotations, and using conjures tillage, all to regenerate soil biology. But I've realized and learned over the last three or four months, visiting with farms across the countryside, across the Midwest and on the west coast, that there are a few foundational, fundamental challenges that we still have not overcome in our thinking about developing a regenerative agriculture? And so I want to speak to those today and kind of provide a bit of an earthquake, perhaps, in the regenerative agriculture space to say that we cannot have microbially active soils, we cannot have a truly regenerative agriculture until we fix some of these fundamental problems. And I think this is an important conversation because occasionally there are some who would have, who have an ideological resistance to resolving these problems, saying that we don't want to till our soils to remove compaction, as being one example of that. And the reality is that our soils today are so microbially challenged and have become so damaged that we have to consider all tools as being viable options to fix the problem. We have to be willing to do whatever it takes to get where we want to go. And so that is really the genesis for this conversation and the cause for titling this presentation. Antimicrobial Agriculture There are some things that we are doing today, many things in fact, but a few in particular, that have a pronounced antimicrobial effect, which should be the exact opposite of what we want to have as regenerative fruit and vegetable producers and growers and farmers. So in the podcast, I enjoy asking guests different questions. One of the questions that I've asked on several occasions has been if there were a magic wand that you could wave and change one thing about agriculture, what would that be? Gary Zimmer gave me a great answer, in fact such a good answer that I've adopted it as my own. And Gary's answer was that if he could wave a magic wand, the one thing he would do would be to eliminate all synthetic hydrogen applications and make it impossible for people to apply synthetic hydrogen. Just have it disappear completely. And I think this is such a powerful idea. And it's a very powerful idea because the synthesis of nitrogen from the air and the capacity to add that to soils and get such a tremendous crop response was at the foundation of the green revolution and it allowed us to cover up many of the damages that we were doing to soil and it became a replacement for healthy soil management. The reason this is such a powerful idea is that if you were to eliminate all synthetic nitrogen applications, it would mean that we would be required to have a biology centric plant nutrition. We know that biology can absorb, sequester and fix from the air 100% of all the nitrogen that a crop requires. We can grow high yielding 300 plus bushel per acre corn crops with no applied nitrogen other than that nitrogen which comes from COVID crops and from biology, and we would have a vibrant healthy agriculture ecosystem if we didn't have any synthetic nitrogen in place at all. But this conversation is not really a conversation. This discussion afternoon is not really a conversation about nitrogen, but about other management practices or mismanagement practices that have an equally damaging effect to soil biology as synthetic nitrogen applications have had over the long term. The reality is that regenerative farmers and growers need to manage their microbial activity in the soil like a lab technician, which means very simply, we need to do everything we can to have an optimal soil environment to grow as abundant biology as possible. There is this conversation that has occurred by very famous and influential microbiologists such as Dr. Elaine Ingham. And there's others that I could mention as well who described that soil biology has the capacity to sequester, to release minerals that are locked up in the soil mineral matrix and make them available for plants that we need to apply no fertilizers at all. I've had this conversation with Gabe Brown and with Chris Nichols and there is a growing consensus by leading regenerative growers and what we have observed in our work at AEA as well is that it is possible to regenerate soil biology to such a degree that we can supply 100% of a crop's nutritional requirements, depending of course on what whether that soil has all the mineral and nutrients necessary in the geological profile. Obviously if we have very sandy soils or soils that simply don't have nutrients present in the geological profile, and that is not going to happen. But those soils are the exception and not the standard. A technician in a laboratory will do everything he can to keep microbes in the optimum environment. And there are many consultants today who will say, and even I have said in the past, that the idea that we can have microbial activity supply 100% of appliance requirements might work in the laboratory, but it doesn't work very well in the field. And the reason it doesn't work very well in the field is simply because we as farm managers do too many things to damage soil biology. We damage biological activity. And it is our responsibility and our fault that soil biology isn't capable of supplying 100% of crops nutritional requirements. So I want to talk about two particular pieces that we need to shift in order to have this type of microbial activity in the field on scale. We need to think about managing our soils the same way that a laboratory technician would manage a petri dish. We need to have a to develop a perfect microbial environment or as perfect as possible given the constraints that we have with climactic constraints, environmental constraints, etc. There are three things that biology really needs to thrive very well. They need optimum temperature and good gas exchange and water. Not a new conversation, but I think I'll offer some new perspectives that you may not have considered before. The first is temperature. So the enzymes that are present in all living systems and that are produced by biology are denatured at 105 degrees Fahrenheit. And if you have soil that is bare and the sun is shining on it during the summer throughout much of the Great Plains and the high plains, bare Soil can reach as much as 150 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface, and it can be 110 degrees Fahrenheit 3 inches deep. So you will have no biological activity happening in the top three inches of your soil profile when that happens, which means that you do not have any nitrogen sequestration. You don't have any microbial release of nutrients to be made available to plants in that top couple inches of the soil profile. The second piece is that we need good gas exchange. There's this conversation which keeps recurring, that plant roots need oxygen and soil biology needs oxygen. And it's true that they do need oxygen, but that is really not the best characteristic, the best way to characterize what is actually happening and what's going on. Because in reality, the soil is inhaling and exhaling constantly. There's a peak curve that happens once every 24 hours. But there's also constant inhaling and exhaling and gas exchange occurring throughout the entire day. When air is inhaled into the soil, we get nitrogen in the form of N2 gas and oxygen as O2 going down into the soil that is rapidly consumed by biology. And the biology then exhales and releases carbon dioxide back into the soil environment. And the reality is that if you were to measure the oxygen content of the soil itself, that oxygen content usually is very, very low. It's much smaller than what is present in the air because the biology rapidly consumes it. So what soils really need more than just oxygen is they need good gas exchange. They need to be able to breathe. You need to be able to have nitrogen and oxygen flowing into the soil and carbon dioxide flowing out of the soil for plants to absorb for the most effective and most rapid photosynthesis. CO2 is one of the biggest limiting factors for most plants in increasing photosynthesis and increasing yields. And, of course, in order to have good gas exchange, this is an indirect way of saying that soils cannot be compacted because you can't have good gas exchange when you have compacted soils. So let's. There are far too many growers and farmers that I've observed just in the last few months that have severe compaction layers perhaps as shallow as 4 to 6 inches deep. Growers that have been no till for, in some cases, decades, and believe that the answer to the challenges they're facing on their farms can be best addressed by no till. No till is a very valuable, useful, and necessary tool. But when no till as it's managed or implemented on some farms results in a compaction zone, that compaction layer needs to be removed. So if you have a compaction layer that is 4 inches deep and you have the majority of your crop residue from the surface has been, is gone and is decomposed because you've had a lot of rainfall this last spring or whatever the case might be. What happens in some of the farms that I've been on, we have soil surface temperatures that are pushing 150 degrees Fahrenheit and they're in the 140 to 150 range really consistently. So I know that if the surface is 150, we're at 110 inches. We're at 110 degrees, so several inches deep. So now you've just removed the top 2 to 3 inches from effective microbial populations releasing nutrients. And now you have the compaction layer that let's say for the sake of discussion, is five inches deep. So you've removed the top three inches. You have removed biology's capacity to function below those 5 inches. That means you only have a 2 inch layer where biology is capable of functioning. Do you think that 2 inches of biology is capable of supplying a crops nutritional requirements? The answer is absolutely not. So of course we need to manage our soils to create an environment where biology can thrive throughout the entire soil profile. And once we get to that point, and only at that point can we have a conversation about supplying 100% of a crops nutritional requirements. With biology, it is absolutely possible to do this. There are many farmers that are doing this on scale. But we have to address compaction, we have to address good gas exchange, and we have to make certain that soils are covered so that we don't have these very high soil temperatures. These are some of the foundational fundamental rules. And then of course biology needs to have adequate water, just like in a petri dish soil microbial populations for abundant functioning. Soil biology is fundamentally a subaquatic environment. We need to have water contained within the soil aggregates and surrounding the soil aggregates, because biology needs water to function, to thrive. And they can survive with less water than plants, but they will not thrive until you have abundant water. And the key to accomplishing this is to make sure that you have good soil aggregate structure. So what I'm considering, what I'm describing as the evils of antimicrobial farming. What is antimicrobial farming is when you have bare soils that have high temperatures with no enzyme and no biological functioning in the top several inches and then you have a compaction layer down below. We have to resolve these two issues. If we want to have a conversation about truly regenerative agriculture ecosystems. So I discovered in a conversation that I had with Michael McNeil and Jerry Hatfield a few weekends ago, I was really intrigued how they described that when no till agriculture was first introduced and the initial testing was being done, it was being widely advocated across the midwest. There were a few fundamental rules that were considered to be absolutely critical. The first rule was that you had to remove all the compaction. It was widely described that if you wanted to be successful using no till, you had to remove the compaction layer with iron, with equipment. You had to go out there with a subsoiler. However, you had to identify how deep your compaction layer was and get rid of it so that you had good gas exchange throughout the entire soil profile. The second rule was that you needed to avoid recreating that compaction layer and limit the traffic that you had across the field. And the third rule was that you need needed to keep soils covered at all times. I'm not sure this no till agriculture and no till farm management and crop management was introduced before I was around. So I didn't personally experience and observe this history. But I do know for certain that there are many growers and many farms today who describe themselves as being no till farmers. And they are biological farmers because they're not tilling anymore. And that therefore is going to solve all of their soil's microbial problems that have not addressed these issues. And it's not working on their farms. And this is why they don't have the biological activity. They're not able to supply all the plants nutritional requirements because they still have soil compaction. And in some cases because of high temperature, high rainfall, whatever the context might be, they also still have bare soils. So if we want to remove soil compaction, I believe that it is imperative we have to take physical action, physical steps to remove it using iron. There are a lot of conversations today about using cover crops, using roots, not iron to remove compaction. And that can be possible in some cases, can be very effective in some cases. But it takes time if we want to be effective. If we have deep compaction zones, as in thick compaction zones, several inches thick, and they are shallow, less than 12 inches deep, I believe it is imperative that we fix that compaction using equipment and develop a deep enough zone that we can have good biological activity and good gas exchange and good air and water flow through that soil profile. And then once we've removed that compaction, we can use plant roots, cover crops, and crop roots and biologicals biostimulants to keep that compaction zone from reforming and to form very strong soil aggregates to prevent soil compaction from reoccurring. The farms that have been the most successful no till farms for the long term are farms that are using that are minimizing their wheel traffic using controlled traffic farming where you have wheel tracks in the exact same location matching up with the harvesters, planters, cultivators, whatever equipment crosses that field is all following the exact same tracks and then by also including diverse cover crops, keeping your soils covered at all times. This is. Many of you already know this very well. I don't need to repeat myself. And then using biologicals and biostimulants to increase soil aggregation, point number three is a point that I think has not been appreciated enough. We've observed in dry land farming in southwest Kansas and Nebraska that it is possible to supply all of the benefits of a cover crop using only biologicals and biostimulants. And that's a really big claim. But we've been able to get the exact same volume and quantity of nutrient release, exact same type of soil aggregation, the exact same type of removing compaction simply by using biological and biosimilars, particularly the rejuvenate spectrum seashield fall primer application. When that is applied in the fall and consistently, we've found that with as little as two applications 24 months apart from being in the least application that we've observed this successfully on, you can supply 100% of a corn crops nutrient requirements even without a cover crop being grown at any point in those 24 months and only having the soil covered with crop residues. This is because in dry land of course we have limited moisture, we need to have summer fallows, etc. So it is possible to supply all of a crops nutrient requirements and manage compaction, reduce compaction and produce stable soil aggregates. Simply with biologicals and biostimulants, the food source can come from places other than from COVID crops. Particularly in dry land environment where we may not have enough water to grow a cover crop. Obviously cover crops are still best and still a strong advocate for those. But in those situations where we can't grow cover crops, I believe we need to use these biologicals and biostimulants more than we have been in the past. I'm going to open it up for Q and A. If you have any questions, you can type them into the question box at the bottom. I do really enjoy the questions and answer and the exchange because it's fine. There's a lot of good information that comes through from that. So I'm looking forward to your questions. All right, we've got one question coming through. First question is, what is the best technique to identify a compaction layer and to determine how bad it really is? This is a good question. And there are two tools that I've used personally that I really like. The one that I think many are familiar with is a penetrometer. Using a penetrometer to identify compact layers from the top down. But there's actually a second tool which I prefer and I think is perhaps even more effective than a penetrometer, and that is to first dig a hole with a shovel or a post hole digger down, let's say 2ft deep or 18 inches deep. And then take a pocket knife and insert the pocket knife into the side of the hole with your hand. Just poke it into the soil, about 2 or 3 inches deep, the length of the blade, and then pull upward, pull up toward the soil surface towards you. And this is a very effective tool for measuring the bottom of the compaction layer rather than the top and identifying how deep it really is. And that's the question you really want to know. The penetrometer is best at identifying where the top of the compaction layer is, but the knife is the most effective at determining where the bottom of the layer is and how deep you really need to go. So as you pull that knife up towards you through the soil, all of a sudden you will get into this substantially harder layer. You can feel it instantly because with your arm, your hand, you're very closely connected to it, and you move up to the soil very easily, and all of a sudden, bang, there you are. It's a very. Generally, for most soils, you come up against it very hard, and you feel it right then and right there. So then to the second part of your question. To determine how bad the compaction layer is. I would say that generally, when we want to evaluate how difficult a compaction layer is, the key question is how difficult is it for roots to penetrate and for water to penetrate and get through it. And it varies, of course, based on soil type, clay versus sand versus silt particles. But in general, this is a broad generalization. But in general, the primary concern that you want to identify is thickness. So if you have a compaction layer that's 1 inch thick and 12 inches deep, that is something that I would consider being able to effectively remediate simply with root systems. If you grow cover crops with penetrating Root systems, they should be able to get down through that and start breaking that up. And the reason that I'm saying 12 inches deep is because that means that even until you've resolved that compaction layer, you still have water being able to flow 12 inches deep. You still are able to have that microbial population, the top 12 inches of soil profile. If that 1 inch layer is only 4 inches deep, that is not deep enough to sustain a strong microbial population. And now I would suggest we need to use steel to get rid of it. If you are 12 inches deep, but your layer is 4 inches thick, then I would again probably use steel to get rid of it because it will take a lot longer for multiple successive cover crops to successfully penetrate that and break through it. Michael Grove asked the question, how do you. Hi Michael, how do you measure the wetness of the soil at various depths to know when it has enough water? Are there references for how much water to apply each week? And Michael, the answer is that yes, there are some great resources that the NRCS has available to measure water to do just kind of physical measurements of the soil's water holding capacity. And so I would look up, I think there's a, there's an iPhone or an Android phone app, app available for all smartphones called Land Pe, which helps you identify for your soil type how the soil will behave, will it ribbon or crumble at which stages of moisture. And you can kind of develop a feel method for just using hand feel to evaluate moisture content. And there are also moisture probes that you can just insert into the soil to evaluate how much water is there. And the interesting part, of course, is that for clay soils, clay soils can be at 70% of field capacity and appear dusty dry, and the crop is not able to access any water. Olivier Tassel asked the question, is there a best period during the year to remove compaction with hard iron? Olivier, this is an awesome question. And the answer is yes, the best time is when the soil is dry. When the soil is dry, obviously the equipment is going to pull harder, but the entire soil profile will fracture a lot better. So it will fracture and you will get much better aeration down deep and provide a much better environment for the biology to thrive. So it's better to do it when the soil is drier and on the dry side. And that of course, depending on where you are, that can be generally in the fall, but it can be at any time of the year as long as it is on the dry side. Joel asked the question, how do we address the effects of silt migration from surface layers to deeper layers, especially when your Average rainfall is 60 plus inches. Joel, you ask challenging questions. So I don't have a good answer for that question. Right off the top of my mind I would say that we know that the most effective soil circulation and soil plowing comes from earthworms. And I have read in several different places actually, where earthworms will move soil particles that will tend to migrate down, back up, particularly silt, because they actually use silt as grit for their gizzard. So they can certainly help move them around. But I don't know if that is enough to answer your question. So you ask a challenging question and I don't have a good answer for you. I'm sorry that I don't have a better one. Anthony asked the question. Anthony Granatelli. Hi Anthony, glad to see you. With compacted soil, how often can rejuvenate and spectrum and sea shield be applied before you reach the point of diminishing return? Is a fall application enough? Anthony? On really compacted soils on higher value crops, we have had a few growers. These were the exception, obviously not the general rule, but we've had a few growers that applied this combination of these biologics once every three weeks for a total of four applications over a three month period, 12 week period. And with those successive applications for applications were able to produce soil porosity on that soil, on that farm to a depth of 16 inches, where we removed all the compaction to a depth of 16 inches. Can that happen again?