How Soil Microbes Fix Nitrogen and Build Crop Resilience

0:00 Hey everybody, welcome to the Green Cover podcast where we have really interesting conversations with some of the top farmers and experts in the regenerative movement. Join us as we learn together how we can regenerate, steward, and share God's creation for future generations.

0:17 You know, one of the biggest things that people talk about right now in regenerative agriculture is biologicals and how do we get more biology into the soil and into our crops because we know that there's a huge amount of power in harnessing the power of biology for growing our crops and our livestock. And so I'm really excited in today's episode we're going to talk to one of the true pioneers of the biological movement. I want to welcome my friend David Olsen with Sustainable Growing Solutions out of Clarksburg, California. David has been kind of a partner with Green Cover and Elevate A. We'll talk a little bit about that as we are moving into putting biologicals not only on the cover crop seed that we sell but also providing that as other seed treatments and other foliar applications. So David, welcome to the Green Cover podcast.

1:11 Hi Keith. Thanks very much for having me.

1:13 Yeah, absolutely. So for our audience who's listening, go ahead and give just a little bit of your background, how you started Sustainable Growing Solutions, a little bit of the family history because I know your father was very much involved in this business as well. So just tell us a little bit about how you got to where you're at now.

1:35 Sure. Yeah. So my company is Sustainable Growing Solutions. We manufacture a series of micro inoculants for different crop objectives as well as micro food products and some specialty fertilizers that complement the biology. I'm a sixth generation farmer here out here in California. Our family farm is 175 years old this year. So grew up on the family farm doing all the different jobs you can do. At the age of probably starting about age 12 or so my dad started working with organic inputs. So of course, being 12 to 15 years old, I was the one who did all the inputs and measurements and all the trials out.

2:25 Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Just counting, you know, counting the flowers or counting the fruit or weighing the fruit out or so, you know, really hands-on great experience. So we started working with those organics, okay, 45 years ago. And one of the things we learned pretty quick was that these things were really useful although typically they worked better in combination than they did when they were just by themselves. And that's a lesson that we learned that kind of comes back in a very prominent way for us later on.

3:01 So then my dad actually was one of the people that helped fund and conduct the first work in integrated pest management. They actually hired a researcher away from UC Davis for several years cooperative with several other growers and they were doing some work trying to figure out why in our pest control program we kept having to spray more and more and yet got less and less control. So they actually did, it wasn't called IPM for several years after they finished what they were doing, but it literally was the first work in IPM. And not too long after that, my dad started working with some biological products. It was actually a spin-off product by a scientist that worked for NASA. So we used that for a little while, learned a few things. A few years after that, my dad developed his first biological.

3:56 And would this have been like in the 70s or 80s? What kind of time frame?

4:01 Yeah, that would have been about the early 80s.

4:04 Okay. Yeah.

4:05 So really a long way back. And what he did was he just looked at various microbes and what the functions were and so he selected about a dozen different species that were really high functioning ones. And so that was our first product for pretty close to a decade. We worked with that and we learned a tremendous amount from, you know, there's several products out in the marketplace that actually look a lot like his first product still and what we learned was sometimes we'd put it on spectacular results and other times I mean literally on the other side of the fence line nothing, you know, just didn't. It took us quite a while to just unravel as like why does it work so well sometimes and others, and of course being farmers we're pragmatists.

4:53 A product has to work every time you use it, not just some of the time. It just has to have a reliable outcome and a reliable return on investment.

5:04 After we really started working with a lot of different growers and looking closely at their production soils, what we realized was a healthy soil should have 600 to a thousand and up to a billion microbes per milliliter. And as we looked at these production soils, we realized just how profoundly they were impaired as an ecosystem because the soil biology functions on all these interdependencies and relationships, and that's how a soil is healthy and resilient—it has all these complimentary functions and overlap and ability to adapt.

5:44 Well, when you have a really depleted biology, bad things start to happen. You get these runaway diseases. But the other thing is if you take a product that only has a few species and try to inoculate a soil, first, the few species can't possibly fix the fundamental problem of that lack of diversity of population and function. Also, some species are good early colonizers like some bacteria—they can actually land in an impaired soil and typically colonize reasonably well. But there are other species that are really important to a high functioning and resilient healthy soil and plants that don't colonize until you actually have a more complete set of biology in the soil.

6:34 What we were seeing with our first product with a selected high functioning species is sometimes they'd land and they'd have a cohort of resident microbes that they could work with and they would colonize and they'd wake up and do their jobs. Other times they'd land and they just didn't have anybody to work with and they'd fail to colonize, therefore fail to perform.

6:56 Once we realized that was the core issue we were trying to address, we realized that our true mission was to restore all of the biology and all of the beneficial function in the soil, not just a handful. In order to do that, we really need to have maximum biological diversity. For any beneficial function, and we can list them all off and they're myriad because plants and microbes co-evolved in their amazingly intricate set of interdependencies. So we wanted to have not just one or two microbes that do each one of those functions, but literally dozens.

7:41 That's what led us to our philosophy of how we approach biological products, and our current product lines are now products that have thousands of different species and populations that are extremely high compared to most biologicals. We have populations of 1×10 to the 10th to 1×10 to the 12th—so if you're into exponents, that means 10 billion microbes per milliliter up to a trillion microbes per milliliter.

8:18 If you compare that to say a product that has 1×10 to the 7th, which is fairly common for a lot of biologicals, that means we have 10,000 times more microbes than a competitor product. It is kind of a numbers game when you're trying to get results.

8:34 And like you mentioned earlier, it's not just the quantity, but you've got this across thousands of different biological species as well.

8:45 That's another important thing that we learned was about micro fitness. Most microbes, if you look them up, can do more than one thing. And that has to do with whether or not they've activated a gene sequence—that's called epigenetic activation. So if you buy a product where the microbes are just grown in a lab, in a lab you grow as many microbes as fast as you can, and that's all you do. Those microbes technically have the genetic potential to do the beneficial function that you want them to do, but they're not actively doing it because they've never done it in the lab.

9:37 When that microbe from a lab culture lands on the ground, it has to actually find the conditions that encourage it to switch its metabolism, to turn on those gene sequences to do that function. So you buy a product that's supposed to do nitrogen fixing—well, those microbes might or might not choose to do nitrogen fixing.

10:01 If it's a tight soil and there's very little low gas exchange, so there's no air for them to fix nitrogen out of, it's like, well, they probably won't do it because there's not much nitrogen available, or if they do, they're not going to do it very well. If there's low carbon in your soil compared to the amount of nitrogen, and I'll tell you that that's most production soils, the microbes won't decide to fix nitrogen. They could, but there's no real benefit to them and the rest of the population of the microbes because life works on a ratio between carbon and nitrogen. So you have anywhere from 15 to 20 carbon for every nitrogen. That's what their tissues are made out of. So if you have more carbon than you do nitrogen, then a microbe that has the ability to fix nitrogen is really motivated to do it because it's a limiting factor not only to its growth and reproduction but also the rest of the community and they will even support those microbes because it benefits them all.

11:10 The big difference with our biology is that we grow the entire community together. So all of those thousands of species are actually grown together at once and we actually put them in a condition where they're forced to do the beneficial functions that we want. So they're not only capable of doing nitrogen fixing, but they've been forced to do it. So we've turned on that gene sequence so that when that microbe that has the capability of fixing nitrogen lands, it's already metabolically dedicated to that function. So we don't have to guess as to whether it's going to do it. It's already doing it. And that goes for phosphorus solubilizing, potassium solubilizing, all the cytofor functions which is the chelation of all the cat ions. We forced the microbes to do that. So that's a big differentiator in our approach compared to a lot of other products.

12:08 So maybe to use a bit of a sports analogy, you are recruiting athletes with your kind of your raw microbes and then you're putting different groups of them through different types of training and teaching them skills so that they can play different positions. But then when you send that out to the field, you're sending out the whole team and not just a bunch of quarterbacks or a bunch of defensive players. You're sending the whole team out because you've trained different groups to do different functions. Is that somewhat correct?

12:41 Yeah, right. It is training them, you know, it's directing them to do the job that you want them to do. So we call it directed biology here. We're very cognizant of training them to do their job. But you also bring up another point which is some really important beneficial functions that microbes do for soil condition and for the plants are actually not individual jobs. They're actually I would call them team sports. So as an example something like crop residue decomposition. So it's not just one transaction, it's actually a series of transactions. So it's not just one microbe, it's a series of interdependent microbes. So if you have say a decomposer inoculant and it's only got a handful of species, it's like, well, I'm going to guess you probably have selected microbes that can produce like cellulose enzyme so that they can break down cellulose. If it's a bacterial product, that's probably mostly what you're getting. But there's a dozen other enzymes that are involved for other tissues. So if you just stop at that one, you've really got very incomplete decomposition.

13:58 Then, when you get to other tissues like lignins, they're much harder to break down. And bacteria can produce lignins. But by far it's the fungi that do the heavy lifting on breaking down the lignins. So, yeah. When when we give that kind of team analogy, that's a really important one. It's like, nope, can't be just, you know, a handful of ones that do the one job. It's got to be a whole collaboration, a whole cohort of a consortium of microbes that fulfill that function.

14:35 Yeah, and and and really that was one of the things that really drew us to your products initially was your emphasis on diversity because that matches up so well to, you know, what we do at Green Cover, trying to provide as diverse of, you know, plants and plant families from the seed standpoint, but then being able to add a super diverse biologically rich inoculant, you know, seed treatment inoculant on top of it, you know, just really made sense.

15:05 We know that almost all of our soils are really lacking in the fungal component and many of your products are really rich in the fungal component compared to a lot of other products out there. How are you achieving that? Because the fungal is much more difficult to provide than the bacteria is my understanding. What have you kind of overcome that and have these fungally rich products?

15:34 A lot of it has to do with how you source your biology. We collect cultures literally from biomes all over the world, over 20 different ones so far, virgin habitats that have intact biomes. So we'll collect cultures from that. It goes all the way from the Arctic Circle to tropical rainforest and alpine meadow. We've collected all this biology. One is starting out with a good source of biology. Two is knowing what food rations and conditions can propagate those fungi. We've learned quite a bit about that. And then the final one is actually process. We produce our biology through a series of production steps. There's about five different steps. It actually takes about six months over the entire process. The active production process is just a couple weeks, but the pre-process is quite lengthy and it's critical to developing not only that diversity but also forcing them to adopt those functions that we talked about. And that's critical for us getting the population sizes that we do. Another thing that really differentiates our product especially compared to lab cultured stuff is that our product incorporates a tremendous amount of metabolites from the micro community because we're growing them with food over a protracted period of time. They have the ability to build up a reservoir of all these secondary metabolites that are bioactive compounds on the plant as well as the rest of the environment. That includes in some of our products very specific sets of enzymes. For the decomposer product, there's ligninase and cellulase and several other enzymes built up in that. In the case of the enzymes, there's also plant growth regulators and things that are also secondary metabolites that directly act on the plant. To give you an idea of how many of those there are, there's 7,000 different compounds that are micro metabolites that are antioxidant. It helps as an anti-stressor process in a plant, helps with all sorts of physiological efficiency and different processes of the plant. And then there's 23,000 other metabolites that are directly bioactive on the plant. We're talking about this really complex soup of things that really do optimize the function of the plant. Our advantage is those are built up in our product, and so when you apply it, you see a response immediately. Other biological products, those microbes will produce those metabolites over time, so the response is much slower because they have to do it kind of in pitch. That's a big advantage.

18:59 You're not only getting thousands of species of biology, you're getting tens of thousands of those metabolites or those signaling molecules. We've heard Christine Jones say that sometimes those metabolites or those signaling molecules are just as important, if not more important than the actual biology to the plant, especially right at first. The plant sees those signaling molecules and that indicates that there's biology there and biology coming, and that triggers some of that quorum sensing that really gets the plant functions going. Is that correct?

19:39 That's part of the elegance of the relationship of the biology and the plant. As I mentioned, they co-evolved. So these relationships are just really intricate and profound and really inspiring because if you think about all the physiological processes that a plant goes through, it's got cell initiations, cell division, cell differentiation, cell elongation. We've got all these fundamental processes. Those are all triggered by different plant growth regulators. But in every one of those processes, there's an initiating hormone and then there's a regulating hormone. So always at least two are involved.

20:24 If a plant's deficient in any of those and it does produce its own enzymes, the microbes produce a very complimentary and augmenting set of plant growth regulators. You see these physiological processes go much more efficiently. So when a plant shifts between a vegetative growth stage and a reproductive growth stage and in many of our plants they switch back and forth several times during their growth season, you have to appreciate how many profound physiological changes are going on in that plant. It's growing different tissues, different structures and it requires different nutrients in different ratios, being translocated to different parts of the plant. There's different amino acids and starches and proteins that are being developed and put into those materials. And nutrient translocation—there's all those things that the biology helps make the plant more efficient.

21:30 So when it goes through those processes, it's really physiologically dedicated to building a high quality structures and being really healthy and efficient in its processes. That's how we get photosynthetic efficiency so high that we see all these monstrous numbers in bricks. Instead of looking at a plant that's like four or five bricks, we're looking at one that has 10 or 12. Well, you get the efficiency of your photosynthesis up to that 10 or 12 range, and all of a sudden you're pretty bulletproof to almost any pest disease.

22:10 And so farming gets to be fun again, and you're letting the biology do the work for you. And that's, seeing as we kind of went down this track talking about the relationships between the microbes and the plant and everything that they do. So we just talked about these metabolites and what they do for the plant, but let's talk about what the plant actually does for the biology.

22:33 So we just talked about how we make the photosynthetic process more efficient. Well, what that allows the plant to do is produce more photosynthets than what it uses for its own processes. So it takes those excess sugars and translocates those down out through the roots as exudates. It's using those exudates to actually feed the microbes that are directly in that rhizosphere. So now it's building that population.

23:04 And so that's beneficial, right? Because now the plant has more biology working for it. But embedded in those in that food is also signal. So the plant saying, 'Hey, what I need from this community right now is I'm going to do this function. I'm going to need more phosphorus or more potassium or more manganese or whatever might be its limiting factor for what its peak demand is that's occurring then.' So if you think about it, it's really elegant. If we can reestablish this biology and this relationship and that virtuous cycle, that function, that cooperation between the plant and the biology, we're letting the plant now dictate its own fertility. We don't have to dictate to it as farmers—we're trying to nurture our crop, trying to put on what it needs when it needs it. But we're pretty imperfect in our execution.

24:06 As hard as we try and of course there's many subtleties and it's fast moving because there will be a window of time where manganese is super super important—whether or not it's going to split a zygote and have two fruit instead of one. That's a pivotal moment in the physiology of the plant and the potential yield of the crop. But two weeks after that window, mag is not that important. So just as an illustration, but if the plant gets to dictate that and we've made sure that the biology is there and functioning and has all the building blocks that it needs to deliver to the plant, you start seeing a plant that reaches levels of health and function that you don't ordinarily see.

24:54 And then that's when things get fun because all the pest and disease problems go away. Yeah, and I refer to this as the virtuous cycle because a healthy plant has more exudates to feed the biology. The biology gets bigger and more efficient and so therefore it does even a better job of feeding the plant. So the plant gets even healthier and

25:19 Gives more to the microbes. So you have this virtuous cycle that's self-reinforcing and it's just a beautiful thing when we can get there. That's actually when we do our crop programs, we're not only restoring the soil biology, but we're also doing foliar applications and utilizing these metabolites. That foliar application, which we oftentimes are combining with some targeted nutrients for particular crop growth stages, is designed to kickstart that virtuous cycle. Because those metabolites even in an only marginally healthy plant will elevate its photosynthetic efficiency for a short period of time. During that time it's going to push its first set of exudates. Well, that's kickstarting that virtuous cycle, and so that's one of the reasons why we integrate foliar application so often in our integrated biology and fertility programs.

26:17 And you know, you mentioned that that makes farming fun again, but it also makes it profitable, which makes it even funner, right?

26:25 Yeah, profitability is a cornerstone to fun.

26:31 Yeah. So when we can take advantage of all those natural functions and let the system work the way that, you know, God created it to. Yeah. It's a beautiful thing. I want to get back, David. You mentioned the manufacturing process, of how that's a six-month process, you know, from beginning to end, but the actual final process is a couple of weeks. I want to just be very transparent with our listeners here. So Green Cover owns a portion of a company called Elevate A based out of Kansas. We own that with some other Kansas farmers. And Elevated A is a distributor and a manufacturer of biological products, mostly using a lot of your ingredients, David. And just recently we're forming a partnership with you, a joint venture. So Elevate A and Sustainable Growing Solutions is forming a joint venture to where we're going to be manufacturing your products right here in Nebraska. So we're at Green Cover here. We're putting up a brand new building. We're starting to hire new staff. And so that joint venture between Elevate A and Sustainable Growing Solutions. The result of that is going to be we're going to be able to make these products that you're talking about. You're going to be providing the raw ingredients and all of the technology to help us do it, just like what you're doing in California, but we'll be able to make those here in Nebraska. So we'll have better access, we'll have less freight, and really good access to these high-quality products. So just wanted to explore that a little bit and talk about this new joint venture. We're calling it Ark Biome. You know, kind of the Noah's ark in the biome of all of these living creatures that are going to go out and repopulate our soils. We're very excited about it and I know you are too. And how do you see that being a benefit to, you know, because you're located in California, you're getting a lot of your products to the specialty crop California markets. How do you see this being a good way to extend your reach on this biology to, you know, the broadacre crops out here in the plains in the Midwest?

28:54 Sure. Well, of course, we've been working together with Elevate A as one of our distributors in the Midwest for probably at least five years now, I think. And there's so many reasons why we're doing this. One, it's been a super effective partnership. You know, we can produce great product, but you have to know how to use them, especially how to integrate it within the cultural practices and economics of the crops you're working with. So we're currently working with over 70 different crops and in 25 different states. So we have a lot of experience, but you have to have the people on the ground that have the day-to-day working relationship with the grower. That's just necessary for having the correct depth of knowledge about how to use the products, how to help the growers be successful. You know, walking them through the process, helping them measure success. So that's why our relationship with Elevate has gone so well, is because they have actually a very education-oriented approach to how they support their growers, and that's our approach.

30:16 Philosophy. And so that was the first thing that I think bounded together with the philosophy of creating a quality product but making sure that is applied that works for the grower. And so we really have an integration kind of approach and an education approach for our growers. Logistically, you know, there's some real advantages for us having this Midwest production.

30:40 As we said, you know, we have sales in 25 different states. So this gives us kind of a production hub that's closer to, you know, the heart of the country. And so it cuts down on some shipping costs. It cuts down on, you know, reaction time and logistics. You know, we used to get calls from people on the other coast and they're like, you know, how soon can you get stuff out here? You know, we want to apply it this week. And I'm like, I can only make the trucks go so fast.

31:10 So, I'm talking to you growers, give these guys some lead time, but now we have an ability to be much more responsive. And, you know, and have a good inventory of product there. And we are going to be producing almost all of our products in our product line actually out at the park biome facility.

31:31 So we have our Metagro 5X Plus product which is our concentrate and that's the one that we use probably the most in the Midwest. So one of the things that we learned early on and Elevate helped us learn this is you know we had our standard kind of foundation product is Metagrow STS. Got our most diverse population. So we went to the growers and we said, well, you know, our standard application for this kind of crop is 2 gallons per acre and didn't realize at first that we were getting push back that that quantity of material was actually going to cause some logistical problems and a requirement to recalibrate applicators and all sorts of things.

32:20 And so once I got better educated about what the resistance was, I said, 'Well, how about if we come up with a more concentrated product so we have the same number of microbes and species and diversity and function in a quart that we would have in or half gallon as we would have in two gallons.' And the response was a complete change of attitude. It's like, 'Oh, well that's not a problem at all. Just throw that in the tank and it's you know one of the advantages we have is we produce a shelf stable product.'

32:54 So the microbes are stasis and they can mix with synthetic fertilizer. So you know we do a lot of tank mixing and applications and things. So we discovered thanks to feedback from Elevate and their customers, it's like nope, the way to make this work, the way to integrate this into their production logistics is to have a more concentrated product. So we're going to do the 5x bus there, which is a great product for the Midwest.

33:22 We also will be producing our Metagross C, which is a set of biology that's been epigenetically activated to have a metabolism to Titan. So there's very specific objectives that we're accomplishing with that product. We have another product called Metagro G which is very similar in strategy to the Metagro C but instead of the Kitan based metabolism at the glucanbased metabolism again for some very specific sets of objectives we also have our Metagro decomposer.

33:52 So that's our crop residue decomposition product. So that's currently being shipped and applied all over the place in our post-harvest follow-ups. It's a great product. Would really recommend maybe another discussion about that. This is just there's such a long list of benefits to that product. And then the other thing the other biological that we'll be producing there with arc biome in Nebraska with you is our Metagro F product which is a fungal dominant product.

34:27 It still has a good bacterial and other biology balance, but it's a set of fungi that comes from a completely different trophic level of our other products, which are also fungally balanced, but it does a great job of bringing in and restoring the fungal population in the soil. And the reason why I specifically call that out for the Midwest is and again this is the advantage of having the relationships and the people on the ground.

34:59 So we started working with growers who've been involved in regenerative agriculture for 20 years. So you know many of Keith's customers have been growing cover crops for that long or and doing no till or minimum till for that long. So you know people

40:05 We're bringing the band all together when we're putting that on, so that we not only have the seed biology that's on board and in the seed from growing, but then we're boosting that and supplementing that with your products as well.

40:23 Yeah, well I love always hearing that feedback. You know, kind of harvest time is one of my favorite times of the year because I do get the calls and people sharing what their experiences have been. Sometimes some great insights and I think that feed inoculant is a really—it's a very powerful multiplier effect. So I think in terms of bang for your buck it may be one of your best possible opportunities because you really don't use a tremendous amount of product.

40:56 You're putting the microbes right exactly where you need them, and also they get to participate and support the plant from the very beginning.

41:06 You know, there's a lot of things that happen very quickly in a crop that determine its ultimate yield. So I always think of it as inside that seed, you know, there's an inherent genetic potential for what it's capable of. And any given moment through its entire growing cycle, anytime it doesn't have exactly what it needs, we're really eroding that potential or we're losing some of that potential. So you know, I always kind of cringe a little bit when people talk about making yield because that's already defined. That's baked in. So our job as growers is to screw that up as little as possible, to not lose yield. Yes. To just not lose it. So getting the biology going right at the beginning is critical because as we mentioned, the plants and the biology co-evolved. So those relationships are really intricate.

42:06 I'll just even kind of just give a quick overview of some of the things that the microbes do that participate in that seed germination and stand establishment process. So there's microbes that actually help and soften the seed coat. So when moisture first hits that seed, the seed actually starts to put out exudates. So we talked about root exudates, there's also seed exudates. Those exudates are an invitation from the seed to the microbes to come colonize me. And it's also saying I'm alive and come do your support functions because if it was a dead seed, it wouldn't have exudates and the microbes would actually have a sapritic metabolism. They'd start digesting it because it's just residue, right? But when it puts out that exudate says, 'Nope, I'm alive. Come help colonize me. I'll reward you. I'll feed you.' So the microbes soften that seed coat and help that moisture get penetrating, right?

43:08 That's part of speeding the activation of that seed. There's microbes that produce amylase enzyme which is actually taking part of that endosperm and converting it from starches into sugars. So that's part of starting the engine of that seed, unlocking that energy potential into active energy in the seed. Then when you do things like cell initiation, well that's indoleic acid. So that's plant growth regulator which the seed produces but the microbes also produce and support. And then it goes into cell division. That's different sets of hormones to trigger and also to moderate. And then there's cell differentiation and then cell elongation. So cell elongation can be things like gibberellic acid. Gibberellic acid is of course the plant growth regulator and it's also something that the microbes produce. So that cell elongation super important to stand establishment because the better that cell elongation is the stronger that coleoptile and stem can break through a crust in the soil. It's also pushing the roots harder. So now you get an expansion of the root system. So the expansion and branching of the root system of the seedling is driven by things like auxins and cytokinins, also plant growth regulators that the microbes produce.

44:49 So when you talk about getting a really good germination and stand establishment, you get a stronger germination, stronger emergence, a bigger, more robust root system. You get and faster and more uniform emergence. Those all equate to much more vigorous stand establishment. So and then so many important things are happening very very quickly with that.

45:17 That seed in the first couple true leaves, it's really still establishing, it's still building the chlorophyll. So when you see a first emergent little seedling, it tends to be a little chlorotic looking and it doesn't really truly green up until you know third or fourth true leaf. Well, the faster you can build that chlorophyll, the faster you build the brick in the tap of the plant and the more the higher the defense mechanisms of the plant.

45:51 So with the biology actively delivering the nutrients to the plant, all those photosynthetic related nutrients—so magnesium, magnesium, copper, iron, zinc—those are all cytochrome functions that the microbes are doing to chelate and deliver those cations and ions to the plant. You get that greening up faster and so you get a healthier plant that's faster growing. And so many plants decide quite a bit about what their potential yield is very, very early on. Like by fourth true leaf, the corn plants deciding whether it's going to have one ear or two.

46:34 So the better we can get it off to the start, the again, the less of that potential yield that we actually end up losing.

46:43 So super complicated processes. Thank God we don't have to manage each of those as humans because there's no way we would ever get the timing right or the rates right or the amounts right. So that's why this natural system if we set it up right we have the biology there to help regulate it. You know set up the system and then get out of the way. Right.

47:09 Actually, get out of the way is a good thing that we always say. Yes. Like make sure you know set the table, make sure that everything is there in and available in abundance. But otherwise get out of the way because so many of the production problems that we see are actually self-inflicted. You know that we, a good example would be, you know, and we do a lot of things for practical and pragmatic reasons in agriculture. You know just for logistics. So a grower might put on a whole season's worth, all of their phosphorus at planting. It's like, well, that was very efficient to your application, but very inefficient to the plant and to the biology because the plant won't let mycorrhiza colonize it if there's too much phosphorus available because part of the reward to the plant for letting the mycorrhiza colonize is the mycorrhiza will deliver phosphorus. It does a great job of that. But if we put a high environment of ionic phosphorus around the plant, that doesn't occur. So here we're doing something that kind of thwarts the process. So we need to make sure that those things are available as building blocks for the microbes to deliver, but we need to get the table set and then get out of the way.

48:36 Yeah, self-inflicted wounds. Yeah. That is a common occurrence and we just need to try to avoid those. So we're excited about being able to use the Metagrow F or the elevated fungi on all of our seed. And you mentioned that it's a good bang for the buck. I like to say it's a good bang for less than a buck because really that product, and honestly, when we put that on cover crop seed, it's generally less than a dollar an acre to add that. And so it's a no-brainer. And so we, that just kind of comes as a standard part of any of our mixes is going to get that type of a product.

49:17 The other product though, David, that I want to talk about a little bit because it's very timely right now—you mentioned it earlier—and that's going to be the decomposer, and that's because that typically is a product that is going to go on post-harvest and it's to really prepare the soil and the microbial population for next year's crop. So talk a little bit about that decomposer product and what that does.

49:42 Sure. Actually I would like to backtrack just for a second because you mentioned something that I wanted to touch on.

49:48 That feedback you got from your grower about the great germination and stand establishment that he got out of your seeds. Sure. You know we can take some credit for the biology we put on there as a seed treatment. The other part, let's not forget though, you know, you grow your seed crops using biology as well. Some of that biology actually ends up inside the seed and that's a really important set of biology.

50:18 As much as we're adding biology from the outside, if the way you grow your crops, you've actually got that endogenous population inside the seed. So what you're doing is you're creating a seed that has not only greater fitness and will result in that better germination and stand establishment but it's also conferring additional source of diversity into every field that you put it on.

50:45 So again, just another elegant way of how nature works, but also didn't want to miss the opportunity to give you credit for what you're doing in your growing process and making a healthier feed that not only germinates better, but it's also bringing beneficial biology to it even without the seed coat, but obviously those are complimentary things.

51:09 Yeah, I mean it's I think it's important and nobody ever talks about it, so just want to put that out there. Okay, so decomposer, yeah, it's a great bang for your buck opportunity. It takes very little material usually. So we've got our Metagrow decomposer product. We typically, you know, it depends on the type of crop residue. So if it's a light residue and it has a pretty good nitrogen to carbon ratio, then it really only takes about a gallon per acre of that. So something like soybean residue, you know, so that's a pretty friendly residue. Doesn't take a lot of biology to really get that going quickly. If you got something tougher like corn or straw, anything that's like a straw color and corn are going to be like 50 carbon to every nitrogen.

52:01 And remember I said that golden ratio is that 15 to 20 carbons to per nitrogen. So those things are to our advantage if we use them correctly. So remember I said there's a lot of nitrogen fixing microbes that will decide not to because in our native soil in the soil that we have in our production soils we have low carbon and high nitrogen typically. So oftentimes those guys that could fix nitrogen won't. But within the context of breaking down that crop residue that has a high carbon to nitrogen ratio, that's our best opportunity all year long to fix nitrogen and get free fertilizer. I was just doing an analysis of a field trial from this previous year and I think we ended up with 96 pounds of nitrogen out of that and I think it was about the same for phosphorus as well. So that was the pre-treatment versus the spring condition, but also that was net above the untreated. So the untreated did realize some gains, but that's what I just quoted was the amount of gain above the control.

53:18 So before you go on, I want to go back and make sure I understand this. You're saying that when you apply these products on a high carbon residue that the biology is actually it's not just releasing the nitrogen that's in the residue. It's actually converting atmospheric nitrogen to plant available nitrogen without even having a growing plant. We're just we're talking about dead residue, but we're still producing nitrogen. Is that what you're telling me?

53:52 Yep. Capturing it because they need it for their own purposes. They're also capturing other nutrients as well. So if you don't have biology and you have crop residue just kind of sitting on the soil, it does eventually disappear, but usually there those are typically kind of oxidative processes. So you're volatilizing carbon in the form of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, you're volatilizing sulfur in the form of sulfates and things like that. And you're volatilizing nitrogen in the form of ammonium. So you're losing all of that nutrient potential to volatilization when you don't have biology doing an active decomposition. And so instead, if we get the biology doing its job, it captures all of those nutrients. It incorporates them into their bodies. As those microbes die, of course, they take the carbon and that starts to form the humus in your soil. So that's raising your soil organic matter. That's raising your cation exchange capacity. So the ability to store more nutrients and but yet in a plant available form. And they're also of course have the sulfur there and so those things are now locked up in your soil. You're not going to leech them out. You're not going to have them go off and run off. They're not going to volatilize. They're right there, right where the plant needs it for the next season in the form that it needs. So it does just a tremendous amount of stuff.

55:25 In addition to the nutrient capture, we're also physically conditioning the soil in quite a number of different ways. So, of course, chunks of crop residue can foul planters the following season or screw up a seed's soil contact, you know, if it's rushing against, you know, the unbroken down residue. So just by improving the planter operation and seed soil contact, we see improvements in germination and stand uniformity. So things that are important. Of course, as we break down those tissues as well, those tissues are a classic place for pests and diseases to overwinter. So if you don't break that down that residue, then you automatically have a higher risk of more pest and disease pressure being, you know, present at the beginning of the season than if you'd broken that down and just deny them that overwintering habitat.

56:26 The other things I should mention is so I talked about earlier that microbes have the ability to do a bunch of different jobs, right? But they'll choose which job they do based off of what the conditions are. So if you have a plant that's dead, it's not feeding or interacting with the biology. So the microbes actually switched their metabolism to do different enzymes and things. They're saprophytic at that point. So meaning that they're decomposers and their job is to break down the residue. So you build up this really big population that's very, very active.

57:03 When that, you know, next crop gets planted and again that seed puts out that exudate that's inviting the microbes to colonize it. That's part of them going, 'Oh, now we're going to switch our metabolism from being saprophytic and break down processes. Now we're back to our metabolism where we're doing beneficial things for that growing plant.' So, you have this really active biology that's ready to step in and take care of the plant.

57:33 That's really cool. And you know to think about producing nitrogen without having a growing plant, you know, just because you know it's the biology that's doing it. So that shouldn't necessarily surprise us, but it just you know it's a different way of thinking. And so yeah, I would encourage folks to look at this decomposer product. I think through Elevate Ag, we're selling that as Hypercycle or adding some food sources to it to really even boost that even more. So if you want to produce nitrogen in the offseason and not even have a growing plant out there doing it, here's your opportunity. So you can contact Green Cover or Elevate Ag to learn more about that.

58:19 Well, David, I think that I feel like there's a whole another episode that we could talk about some of these other products, and I definitely want to invite you back on at a future podcast episode so we can talk about some of these other things because it's just fascinating to see how all of this works together. It's incredibly interesting to, you know, hear your perspectives on it because you've been in it for, you know, literally for 50 years. And we just appreciate you sharing your knowledge with us.

58:53 Maybe just in closing, for someone who has never tried any biological products, they've heard about it, you know, maybe they're ready to kind of dip their toe into that water, what advice would you give them of just a good safe place to get started using some biologicals?

59:14 Sure. Well, I guess I would emphasize that choose a product that has excellent diversity. Stay away from—you can have success with products that are just a couple different microbe species, but you know, it can be very hit and miss. It can be very frustrating. There can be all sorts of causes why those things might not be successful. Your chances of success are much, much greater if you choose a product to start with that has high diversity. The other thing I would say that's really, really important in getting started is to select an objective. Have something that you're trying to accomplish. A matter of fact later on today I'll be doing an hourlong presentation for a conference that the whole discussion is about how to select biological products. But just in short, select one that has diversity and have an objective. So if it's to save money on your fertilizer budget, that's a great, great objective. But right there, it tells you which product to select and then how to measure success.

1:00:23 I like that a lot. And yeah, maybe we'll have you back on for another episode because that sounds like a fascinating topic that you know, we all need to hear more about. So, again, David Olsen, Sustainable Growing Solutions, thank you so much for sharing your time and your expertise. And folks, thank you for listening to this episode of the Green Cover Podcast. We hope that you have a great regenerative day. Thank you.

1:00:49 Thanks everybody.