Soil Biology and Biological Products: What Sets Them Apart

0:00 We are going to kick things off here. As always, we're just going to go over some of the ground rules for those who have not been a part of our webinars before. You are all muted except for our panelists. Keith's video is off, but he will answer any questions you guys have during the webinar. You can ask those either in the Q&A or as a message in the chat. Then we will also open it up to questions for the audience at about 6:15, so you guys can begin thinking about some of the questions that you have while Travis is presenting here. Hopefully we'll have Armand as well.

0:40 I'm going to start off by introducing Travis. He grew up in the metropolis of Gridley, Kansas, where there was just over 250 people. He graduated from Kansas State in 2011 with a bachelor's degree in rangeland management and conservation sciences with a minor in animal science. He was married in 2012 to Alicia, and they have three crazy and wonderful children. They currently live in Wamego, Kansas, just outside of Manhattan. He has worked in the ag industry his entire professional career, working in animal production, feed production, and quality assurance.

1:20 He was granted the opportunity to work for a start-up, and that experience propelled him to learn more about what growers need to be successful and the troubles and situations they face on a daily basis. With that experience, he is honored to be working with Elevate AG, a company that is centered on the mission of improving soil health, plant health, and ensuring that as an industry they can utilize products and services that are better for our planet and those who inhabit it, increasing grower profitability and production while decreasing the need for high-priced chemical and synthetic inputs.

1:57 Travis, I will let you kind of start your presentation, but if you want to give a quick elevator speech for what Elevate AG is and what you guys do.

2:11 Well, thank you, thank you Noah, and thank you Green Cover Seed for allowing us to be a part of this webinar series number four. We're very honored to be working with everybody within this industry, and we're really excited about what's to come. There is a lot of doubts right now in this industry just based on the current happenings in our world, and this is just a really good time for all of us to take a step back and understand what we can do as individuals and professionals within this industry to really propel ourselves to the next level and really be successful.

2:49 With that, Elevate AG is a farmer-owned research and biological-based company. We have five partners throughout the state of Kansas and others within Nebraska, like Green Cover Seed, and we work with biologicals to improve soil health, plant health, decrease inputs, as well as look at the backend nutrient density side of those crops you're growing as well. With the situations that we have right now as far as what's going on in our world, this is a good time to start looking at those things differently. And as our slogan says, 'Farm Different.' That's exactly how we want it to be approached, and we want to challenge you to think outside the box and understand a little bit more about the intricacies of the soil biology and plant biology and really bring those things to light and use your ability to open yourself up to be more successful.

3:51 It looks like we just had our man join. I want to welcome Armand. I just gave a really quick elevator speech for Elevate. Do you want to jump back into your bio real quick, Noah, or do we want to introduce our second panelist? I'll go ahead and introduce our second panelist, Armand Miller. He has ranch and farm on the Yellowstone River in eastern Montana. Prior to receiving his animal nutrition and business degree from Kansas State, he resides currently in Manhattan, Kansas as a member and owner of Elevate AG. Over the years, he has worked as a beef nutritionist and environmental consultant for large CAFOs, which has enabled the opportunity to learn and understand the biology of manures and other nutrients that have a positive interaction with the soil and plants.

4:42 Ability to produce. He's very excited to be a part of the team that believes in regenerating the soil to a land of milk and honey.

4:50 So with that Armen, I guess what is your elevator speech for Elevate AG? What drove you to start this business?

5:02 Well, I worked through the feedlot industry, large CAFOs, and seen this waste management. It was always an opportunity out there but it seemed like it was always conflicting with the cost to get it to the field, to get it into production. And what we learned was that there's multiple different ways we can stimulate the soil and the plant. And when I started seeing the positive effects on the plant and the production, we could increase production and decrease the other costs, whether they're synthetic or chemicals, and get better production. We, it really made me excited of new things to come. That's how I got involved with it.

5:57 Very good. Travis, I believe you have kind of prepared some PowerPoints working for you to share a little bit about the products that you guys have and the importance of biologicals.

6:09 Yep, I do. Finally got that figured out. I don't know, twenty minutes ago it was really bothering me. That's pretty much all I did for the last year, make PowerPoints and I could not figure out why it was so... it works until you need it to work.

6:32 Hold on a second. Let me change something and I will share my screen and then we will move forward.

6:39 And I mentioned this to all the attendees before, but for those who are just tuning in and watching us on Facebook, Keith's video is hidden but he is going to answer any questions that you guys have in the chat box. And if you guys have any questions, you can also put those in the Q&A. And then as soon as Travis is done with his presentation, I have a couple of pre-made questions for him. But we will also open it up to the audience at about 6:15, so we will definitely give you guys a chance to ask those.

7:10 Okay, Noah, can you see my screen?

7:28 All right, very good. So what we're going to do today is we're going to run through Elevate as a company, what we're doing right now, go in-depth on one of our main products that we are working with, and give you the background of why we are so successful and so important to what we as a company and as an industry are doing. And really kind of ground ourselves in the total understanding of what microbial diversity needs for soil health, plant health, and a thriving environment.

8:04 So with that, we will jump into this deal. So, you know, one to kind of ground ourselves here, there is an issue of soil health and decreasing profitability. And we all know this, but these are serious issues affecting our farmers today. And we want to be able to help provide the building blocks to regenerate soil and do so by the biodiversity and a thriving operation. So very short, sweet, and simple. That's kind of your elevator pitch, but that's why we're here. We're here to help.

8:36 You know, just dart this office is the structure. You know, a good point is Dr. Christine Jones. She mentioned that a teaspoon of soil contains more microbes than all the humans on planet Earth. And when it comes to making choices like this... hold on a second. I'm sorry, something's not working here correctly.

9:00 All right, let's try this again.

9:10 Here we go. So let's start this over. How about we, you know, I love a lot of videos. All right, so here we go. What we're going to do today... all right, so where we are, who we are, what we're doing, what our products are. As mentioned, microbial diversity and then what to come, you know, what are we dealing with today? And then where does this lead us in the future?

9:32 As mentioned, we are owner-operated, five partners founded, and these are the locations that we are currently in. Greencover Seed of Onieda, Nebraska, and the newly opened location in Iowa, Kansas. Tiffany Cattle Company in Harrington, Kansas. Chris Saner out in Goodland.

9:48 Kansas Clint Cox with Long Island farms at in Long Island Kansas and then obviously Armin Miller who's on the phone with us in God's country at Manhattan Kansas so this is we feel this is a really good representation of the areas that we want to be in and the growers that we want to impact and you know having a good spread out piece of this is that we feel we're most effective.

10:15 So moving on from there, you know back to the slide I was on is you know it is amazing to think about the amount of microbes that we have in our soil and the small amount that it takes to fill up a petri dish. But as Dr. Christine Jones says, this is the we need to understand the role of these microbes and play to work with not against them. So the understanding of giving the microbes the ability to be diverse and giving a diverse food system to that environment creates a symbiotic relationship and understanding that structure is crucial to reinvigorating a thriving environment.

10:54 So we want the healthy soil to work for you. Retention of water, soil erosion, decreased fertility are all negative factors that can dramatically decrease the effectiveness of any other program that you're doing and implementing right now. So we want to ask ourselves is how can we do this differently. You know we're filled with so many instructions and pieces of information. And the funny thing is this has become such a simple yet complex setup that to take a step back and look at these things as a holistic approach, it's really interesting to see how small the changes are that we can make to truly bring back some of these things that have been degraded over time.

11:41 So what are the issues that we're facing today right? So hey Travis this is Keith. I'm just going to jump in. I don't think we're seeing the same screen that you think we're seeing. We're not seeing their slides advance. We're seeing just all of your basically the outline of your PowerPoint. What can you see now? There you go. Now we see slide 6. Great, okay, awesome.

12:10 So back to our, thank you Keith, what are the issues facing growers today? Obviously the top one is COVID-19 that's affecting more than just one thing. That's affecting the world economy and the world economy affects everything that we're doing. So moving down from that, you know, high input cost which we mentioned already, low selling opportunities or options, weather unpredictability, you know, and then the fear of what's coming next. You know, we live this business on a day-to-day basis and without knowing what's coming next, it's hard to plan. So if we can put things in place, practices in place, use products that we feel are going to propel ourselves to the next year to the next year, then that's what gives us the security. You know, and this year is a perfect example of nobody would have ever expected COVID-19 and the habit that it could have ran on every single industry that we could think of.

13:07 So how do we challenge ourselves and how do we think differently and how do we bring ourselves to the point where we can be successful year over year and start to offset these costs? So something to think about is microbes. This is Clint Cox, one of our partners out in Long Island. He mentions that microbes function like fertilizer factors by increasing the topsoil fertility. We can slowly become less dependent upon synthetic fertilizers. We can decrease our carbon footprint growing and in the soil where it belongs and to have a proactive voice in the climate change conversation. Now this is something we've been hearing in fact for having many years about climate change of what we need to be doing as an industry to start working towards this. Well, I feel like this is a perfect opportunity for us to really push the envelope on this and start to understand that we as an industry can have a massive impact on what the world views of what we're doing on a daily basis and how we treat our land and how we grow.

14:13 The next level and no Coke in nineteen is not a great thing by any stretch of the imagination but I think it provides an avenue for us to be but it's to the forefront of understanding what we can do better as an industry and do that in a more proactive way. So we know as farmers and ranchers our primary passion is the love of the land and obviously the stewardship of its resources.

14:40 The current AG system is broken and we believe that and leaving more on the table when the day but we believe that leaving more on the table when the day is done and we believe that it's time to farm different. So you're going to hear that phrase a lot: farm different, but that is what this is really built upon.

14:56 So the question I want to ask you is what will it cost not to change? That's a powerful question to think about and it goes deeper than just those few words but it's something we truly have to sit back and think about and really look at ourselves and look at our operations and understand where we can be different. But Elevate is here to help with that.

15:24 To move past that piece there we want to get into the product that we are working very closely with right now. We have multiple products but the Hyper Grow product is what we're really really really excited about and what we feel is really going to push the envelope of what we're doing on a day-to-day basis and give us the most success here in the near term and in the long term.

15:46 The Hyper Grow product focuses on three main items: plant health, soil health, and the nutrient density of the crops that we're growing. So very short, very short, sweet and simple, but it covers all the different bases that we feel are important.

16:05 So give you an idea, here is the Hyper Grow product label and there's a lot of words on this left and we're going to go through them one by one, not one by one but close, but there's so much packed into this product that we are very excited about how the diversity of microbes, how everything is going to work in sync here and create a really unique environment around that root structure and in that plant structure as well.

16:31 So the three questions on the right are what I want you to be thinking about: What is microbial diversity and why do we need it? What's Nestlé's review? Back to what Christine Jones, Christine Jones says, is how many microbes are in a teaspoon, right? And then are they all needing the same nutrients to survive and thrive? So just keep those things in the back of your mind as we walk through this piece of this product.

16:56 So the shout out number one here, you know, we have a compost tea within our product which is a combination of a dairy and beef mixed compost. By blending those two together and extracting the microbes out, the increase in the diversity is something that can be measured and create activity in most soil environments. So we all know that even within a quarter-mile stretch if you have a field you can have two different soil types in the same field. So we believe that this piece here gives us the adaptability between any kind of soil environment we could throw this thing at, which is super exciting.

17:31 The next piece is the chitin. The chitin is one of the least well-known but it is one of the up-and-coming pieces of how we feel this industry will thrive and take to the next level. Chitin is a natural form of chitin which is a compound or metabolite derived directly from crustacean shells and it allows the plant to strengthen the cell wall. It increases the plant's ability to fight off insects and then mitigate the risk of stalk damage due to weather events. You get out west where the wind blows every single day, that is a real thing. So if you have a natural-born opportunity to strengthen that stealth of that cell wall and that stalk, you're going to put yourself in the upper echelon of mitigating some of that risk.

18:26 You know, there's data out there that shows that plants do this amazing thing automatically when chitin or chitosan is input into the pores of a plant. It automatically secretes chitinase and chitinase is a natural deterrent for pests and actually if a plant comes, a great bug comes by and invites on stalk of a plant or the leaf of a plant it

18:50 Will actually that metabolite chitin ace will start to dissolve that point that that bugs exoskeleton so it is a super powerful tool and it's something the plane does automatically. I mean it is a natural-born defense mechanism which is fascinating and also the overall structure of it it really works with all the nutrients that we have in this product and it holds them all together so when it hits the soil and it starts like a conversion process that plant is immediately able to take up those nutrients that do it in a fashion where you are where it's efficient and you're not leaching or wasting anything as well.

19:25 Next one would be the seaweed the sea kelp. You know this is products that have been used for a very long time and good seaweed good sea kelp comes from an area that is a mixture of saltwater and freshwater and within that seaweed there is three distinct hormones. I'm not going to try to pronounce them for you because I would do it incorrectly but these hormones are crucial to seed germination roots eyes as the plant matures so the list of what sea we could do for a plant there's like sixty seven different things that you can see through seaweed. It is a super hero for a plant and you put you're starting to see here as these first three things that we've done you're like this is a lot of stuff I plan to take in but go back to what that plant needs to survive and thrive it's giving it everything it needs so it can't doesn't have to work on the back and to try to go out and find it so we're super excited about seaweed it's it's it's proving just be a massive contributor.

20:29 The next pieces is the humic acid. You know this is obviously assisting and holding on to the nutrients in soil and it creates an environment for increase in seed germination the plant soil health while also increase in soil moisture and so much for infiltration and retention. You know water is crucial and understanding how to retain more water and give that soil of the ability to be more porous and soak in more water and hold that water for times that we don't have the rain. You know out west they're looking for a rain bath and this is something that guys have tried in the past but maybe hadn't done you know over over a year over year period and just kind of you know didn't didn't go down in go down that path anymore to but to give you an idea the shelf-life of humic acid is like two to three thousand years. I mean it stays around for a long time but it is is it is very key in in that nutrient holding and then breakdown of those nutrients once you get it into the soil.

21:26 And then you know the the good old worm poop. You know we love our worm poop and worm poop is some of the most dense nutrient available products out there. It is it is truly the most complete nutrient dense organic fertilizer known to man and you know just a very small amount of worm castings I mean you can read the numbers there but it's 5x the available nitrogen 7 next available potash and 1.5 X more calcium found than the top 12 inches of topsoil. I mean it's that dance so thinking about all these things you've got the chitin you've got the humic acid you've got you've got the compost now you're throwing in worm castings in the seaweed. I mean you're putting a massive diverse amount of microbials in this product and you're you're giving it you're given that plant a lot of opportunity to be successful.

22:21 So this kind of the thousand foot view of this product but it is so much more dense than you know just the five shoutouts that we've done here so far. I mean there is there's so many things going on here that the that it's there's we could talk about it for an hour and a half which I know we don't have that but you know that's that's why we feel that you might think we're throwing the kitchen sink at the plant but this is truly why it is because of the diversity between so to move past this just a little bit and show you you know what we've seen in the field is you know here are two pieces of very very simple straightforward data. You know this is this is a Tiffany cattle company down in Harrington Kansas and then Long Island Kansas out and or long on cattle out long on Kansas so Tiffany did a direct study of two side by side fields the fields name were lower and to Mack and to show you the.

23:14 Power of what we did here is he put down 50 pounds of nitrogen and a 3x rate of a gallon and a half a hyper growth so in furrow and then two shots of foliar on this Lowther side and then for his control he did double the amount of nitrogen and then in for a rate of a cow and a half hyper grow and the results speak for themselves on the right hand side for low there he was able to see a twenty six bushel increase to the acre by increasing that amount of diversity in the soil and then also doing more of a foliar application at very critical points in that group by clamp plants growth period.

23:49 To go back to that you only have a short period of time to grow this plant your growing season is only so long so the more times that you can stimulate that plan and stimulate the biology and stimulate the microbes the better you are to maintain a healthy plant and it shows in the second piece of data there as well. You know he went this was Clint Cox down in Long Island he did a 94 pounds across the whole thing hyper grow on one side no hyper grow on the other install seventy bushel to the acre increased verses of control and that was on a dry land piece of ground. I mean it is it's pretty amazing to see some of these results.

24:25 Now are you gonna see a twenty six bushel to the acre every single time no probably not but that is that is the power of what if you have the right situations and the right management practices you put things together you could see some really unique really unique results.

24:43 So Armen anything you want to add to this point here before we move on? I'm good it was explained well we just see increases in a variety of different environmental situations we see we've done tests with wheat at k-state and that year drought it out but we still seen a protein difference even though we didn't see a production difference so what we're learning is is that it it it tries to make the best of the worst situation at all times on there.

25:19 So yeah so here's give me an idea of what we're gonna be using and I prefer roll on in 2020 I mean the list is long but we feel like it could be longer obviously the top four or top three or three big one you know corn beans wheat but barley triticale triticale alfalfa pop corn sorghum Milo buckwheat cover crops and then also we're going to do some trials on some native range ground and also go back around here in Flint Hills of Kansas.

25:51 You know you think it's the kitchen sink of microbes well that kitchen sink of microbes can affect just about everything and there's there's not a there's not a situation that we don't feel that we could see a response on that's why we want to do as much as we can right now to understand what's what it's gonna affect what microbes are really pinpointed and all these things were put in there and what kind of you know overall the impact it can have on the full operation.

26:19 So to kind of you know bring this to a you know a lasting impression is is we believe that with healthier soil you have a healthier plant with a healthier plant you have a healthier crop in a healthier crop you have a nutrient dense situation okay that nutrient dense situation can go a lot further than just you know feeding cat or feed palms or feeding chickens it comes back to us.

26:39 So understanding the delicate balance and the relationship between if we healthier food we're going to be healthier therein the end as well and if we can start that from the beginning and start to improve that time after time or a year over a year no there's no reason that somewhere down the road we can't eat and eat vegetables and fruits and grains to help with different sicknesses and different diseases because these things were developed naturally and you know this is a good time to be started thinking about that again we don't want to get down that rabbit hole just yet but that's how elevate is thinking about this.

27:14 To do that we have we we have a little teaser here and we can't give you all the information just quite yet but this is how we want to to push this needle forward and we want to make sure that you know as a individual and a producer and an end user you have the ability to step out and go okay I did this differently how is it affecting me and how can I do how can I gain a premium in.

27:38 The market or how can I understand what's going on out there, you know, just by using something and, you know, I could set in my hand. So to kind of go to that, I'll come back to this screen here, but I want to tease you just a little bit with a video.

28:39 Okay, awesome. So yeah, that's just a little teaser. So I hope that gathered just a little bit of interest. And what I can tell you is if you want to see more about this piece of analytical equipment and nutrient-dense grain quality equipment, we are going to be having a producer meeting here in a couple weeks on May 5th. Place and time to be determined. But if you want to be involved with something like this, go to our website, sign up, and you'll receive a personal invitation to where it's going to be, when it's going to be. It'll be a live event. So stay tuned for more updates on this here itself.

29:16 But no, and with that I want to go back to you, Noah, and open it up for whatever questions you may have and go from there.

29:28 Yeah, well, thanks first of all for kind of presenting that. I guess my first question that I hear a lot and I'm sure you get a lot is how is this different than a bug in a jug product? I mean, you talked about throwing in the kitchen sink. So what kind of separates this from a lot of the other competing products out there?

29:47 It's a good question. The biggest difference here is the products that we have paired together. You know, you can put a bug in a jug, right, but you're not getting the diversity of the worm castings to start with. You're not getting the diversity of the kite. Those are two big things right there that you aren't seeing in other products. You'll see products with humic acids in them, different introphytes, you're seeing different types of mycorrhizae, different things like that, but you're not seeing the true, you know, pushing the envelope of a plant datura, seeing the insect deterrent and then the organic matter and the natural nitrogen and different products that come from the worm castings. I think that's one of the biggest differences that we have over the competition.

30:41 Anything there? I mean, no part of it is that with the humates that we're utilizing, with that also we are able to hold on to it because of the charge it has and also the diversity in there for the different micronutrients we need for the microbes and there, all the biology that goes along with producing more microbes. But we also need the ability to hold on to other nutrients that we supply to the soil. And that's where the humates come into this thing. And there's a lot of bugs and jugs that provides you with the biology, but it's the holding onto the nutrients so the biology can stay alive longer on there or at least go into a dormancy stage so they can be worked back up again once they hit a carbon source.

31:37 And that okay, can you guys explain if treated corn being or wheat seed works as effectively with your guys's products versus a non-treated seed? Does that seed treatment counteract the good elements of your biology?

31:55 No, I would say no, they do not counteract us. We've done some tests at K-State on some wheat seeds and we done it with just a straight wheat seed along with one that's been treated. And we did not see any differential. But we did see a differential in the germination rate. We seen that we increased in basically 66 hours, we increase the germination by about 12 to 15%, but we did not see with seeded trade or not on yourself.

32:37 Another thing to throw in there, Noah, is you know, even though you may have a seed treatment on there, if you're able to put that in an in-furrow basis, you are jump-starting that biology, whatever you have, and the solos can be that much more efficient. So that first root or that endosperm that pops out of that seed, it's going to be the first one to start taking advantage of that. So what you have in there is going to be really beneficial.

33:02 Okay, so arm, and you touched on some of the trials with K-State. What kind of trials are you guys doing both on a farm and university level to continue getting some data on these?

38:20 Distinct points: one when it's starting to just come out of dormancy, and then second right before it hits that reproductive stage. So timing that plant during the most important times—corn you're looking at B3 before then, also right before soaking.

38:44 Can you guys speak on the importance of root exudates? Obviously with biology, what kind of role does this product play with the root exudates themselves?

38:53 When you do this on a foliar basis, what it basically is doing is stimulating that plant. It absorbs it through the leaf and it stimulates down into the roots, which causes it to kick out—be like giving it to us as a stimulant, like a Red Bull. It gives us a—it wakes us up, and that's about what this is doing to the plant in order to stimulate root exudates. You give sugars out in order to feed those microbes, and then in turn we just cycle that back. So what we're doing is building that biology and building it to a greater level by stimulating that plant to do that more often. So we're just actually causing it to kick out more exudates at that period of time, which then causes that plant to pull up more sugars and be healthier and ward off more insects and that kind of stuff in that period of time.

39:54 At this point we will open it up to audience questions. If you guys have your questions, go ahead and start typing those in, put them in the Q&A. We've got a couple here that we can start with. We've got two questions from Tucker and Alice that both asking about the shelf life—is this something that you have to apply as soon as it's received?

40:20 You do not. The shelf life is great as long as you don't let it freeze. That's the biggest piece. As well as, you know, if you've got a tote, you want to make sure it has aeration—it can breathe—because you've got living organisms inside that tote. So if you do have a sealed tote, that's gonna go anaerobic on you because there won't be any oxygen exchanged with those living microbes.

40:43 Basically with it being some live microbes in there, yes, it is best in order to apply it as soon as we can. We have seen it where we've kept it around for up to four or five months and re-inoculated it again and we've seen a result from it. I can imagine and guarantee that it's not as strong as it would be right up front just because of the biology and consuming the carbon that's in there and that kind of stuff, but we do see results.

41:23 I've actually had it frozen and they use it the next year and we still seen about a 12 to 15 bushel differential in corn. The microbes that were there, according to the research people there at Colorado State—Wallenstein—he says basically what happened over the winter is they didn't die off, they just slowed down. And in that process of slowing down, once you re-added water to it and we did add some sugars to it, he says basically you grew some of it back, but most of the mainstay nutrients stayed in there like the humates and that kind of stuff—they did not leave. Sunlight does do the worst damage to it of all the above, but as Travis mentioned, it does last a long time. So we do get some shelf life out of it.

42:22 The question from Dawn: how does this affect the bacteria to fungi ratio in our soils? Right up front, it's gonna increase your bacterial count because of the sugars that the plant is kicking out. But after that, the fungal will come back or come in line because we need the bacterial first before we get the fungal out of the deal. If we got a plant in there, that's when we can start with the mycorrhizae of fungal—it needs a root in order to contact. So they will readjust as we get going, but right up front we're gonna see a little bump in the bacterial count, which in turn is helping stimulate because there's a digestion process that's stimulating the CO2, which is one of the limiting factors to grow on a crop—is the amount of CO2 that we're producing. So if we don't have a biologically active soil, we're not producing much CO2, which in turn that becomes our hindrance to our growth for the day, and without a large part of that CO2 being released by microbes, that's a we—

43:39 Mike McDonald is asking can you guys talk about the process from beginning to end on how you guys develop hyper grow and what are the key steps to develop the cheatings and other key elements that Travis was talking about. And Mike, I'll answer that by saying we're not gonna give away all our secrets quite just yet but go ahead guys and kind of talk about what that process is like.

44:07 This process started as I said earlier. I come out of the feedlot industry. I had a waste burner product that I was trying to deal with economically getting it to the field. So as we've learned and keep on learning, this is an ongoing process. We've learned that we could create a compost tea and then we learned that we could extract it, meaning that we would really wake up the microbes very far and we brought a lot of nutrients out of it. Then we learned that we could add different things to it in order to hold on to some of those humates. So in this process we've learned different things of how much humates to add because we found out more wasn't better even though they do a lot of things. We also found out that more in the microbe field isn't bad either or good if you don't have the food and you don't have the nutrients.

45:08 So we've been a trial and error of trying different things, doing a lot of testing and putting it on farms and seeing how it works at different types of seasons. One thing we have learned: if we could make it economical enough in farming, the more times we can spray it, every say every 10 to 14 days, we would get a boost every time. Unfortunately economics do not allow us to run a spray rig or something out there. Now compost tea works fairly well and we have done some of that in order to stimulate that plant. As far as making the product, there's a formula and a time that we aerate it and how we move it and all that kind of stuff on there. So like I said, we're not giving away everything here.

46:04 So kind of speaking on giving away, Keith, if you are still with us, if you want to talk about what Green Cover Seed is doing with these products and I think now would be a good time to kind of talk about that and what the future looks like as far as the cover crop seed that we are obviously selling right.

46:24 Thanks Noah. Yes, I've been lurking here, listening and learning just with everybody else. So what we're going to be doing here at Green Cover Seed since we're a partial owner of the company, obviously we're gonna be offering these products for sale but our emphasis is going to be on the application of the hyper grow products specifically on the cover crop seed. So what we're going to be doing is be able to put this on as a seed treatment when you order cover crop seed. We can apply it right on the cover crop seed.

47:02 We are going to be looking, one of the projects that Travis and Armen are going to be working on this year is trying to figure out how high we can push some of these levels, particularly with some of the chitin and the seaweed. Can we go to higher levels of this for a seed treatment product? Because even though those products are very expensive, the minute amounts that we're using as a seed treatment, we think that we can still have a very affordable product and have higher levels of some of these real valuable products, particularly the chitin and the seaweed extract.

47:34 So we're still kind of working on that right now. We're just using the regular hyper grow that Travis described but we are looking at kind of creating, if you will, a higher concentrate seed treatment version. So if you're ordering seed from Green Cover Seed you can request hyper grow put on it. We're going to, as we learn more about this, we're going to have the salesman kind of suggest that because it is going to be a relatively low cost option to get some additional biology on there. We can set you up also for shipping seed out to you. We're hoping to very soon have a pretty good inventory or supply of the hyper grow in the liquid shuttles like Travis talked about so that if you are getting some seed and want to try a shuttle of the hyper grow product, we can do that as well.

48:21 Or we could line up tanker loads as well. We may not necessarily have that on site here but we can definitely get that lined up to be shipped directly out to you. So we pretty much have all of the products and if you're just interested in hearing acids, we do Elevate AG and Drink Ever Seed both will be selling just the humic acid products by themselves as well. I didn't touch a lot on that but we certainly have that as an option.

48:50 One of the reasons that we decided to invest in Elevate AG as a company, the thing that really is attractive to us about it is that it's a small company. There's a relatively small number of owners and we feel like it's a company that as we learn new things, as new discoveries are made, as new products come available, we can change very quickly the formulation of what we're doing or add new products to the arsenal of what we have available. So we think it's going to be a very responsive, receptive company to change. And one thing I know about this biological world with the rate of information that we're learning, it's going to change a lot. So that's one of the reasons I'm really excited about being part of Elevate AG is that we think that we can change our product formulations and offerings with the best knowledge and technology that's available at the time.

49:45 Yeah, so you just kind of mentioned the humic acid. I've heard talk about humates and those kinds of things. Does Elevate AG sell all of those products direct or how does that work? And what are the benefits of those if you want to kind of touch on that?

50:13 Okay, so there's an out of the humic acid. You have three parts of it. It's the humin, the humic acid, and the fulvic acid. The humin side is more of the solid side or the structure side. When you put this into a liquid form, you reduce that amount of humin that's in there, so it's basically a humic acid with a fulvic. Now the fulvic acid in a molecule size is a lot smaller than the humic acid size, so that means that the leaf can absorb it. But what we've seen is anything past about three to four percent of the total liquid humic acid, we seem to be negating or not seeing much of a benefit from it. So you want part of it to be a humic acid and part of it to be a fulvic acid, which that's what we're getting with that. This stuff looks like black crude oil and you can dilute it down with water very well. It does have a pH of about 12, so you want to watch and do a jar test as you're mixing with things and that kind of stuff on there so you don't get it to tie up. But as for the holding capacity, it does a beautiful job of holding on to your nitrates, whether it comes in an ammonia form or in a 32a form or whatever. Just want to make sure we got plenty of carbon with it, that would be like a molasses, a nap in, also all-in with it.

51:45 So are there shortcomings? Shorty Fleas is asking here, are their negatives to too much humic acid? No, you just ate. Your just spent. The negative is you spent money on something to you. You're getting a benefit right away from down the road. It helps like, say you're going to put out for calcium in order to correct your pH in your soil. One thing limestone likes to do is go down in the soil. It's heavier. The humic acid will help hold it up and it only takes on a dry basis. You can get this stuff in a dry about 12 pounds per ton of the calcium or limestone that you put down will help hold that in the area for the plant that kind of stuff. So there's a lot of different things that it may do, but more won't hurt it. But it's, you're just wasting money.

52:45 I'm kind of going backwards here a little bit, but you guys had touched on like farm trials and university. Can you guys talk about why you're leaning more towards the farm trials and not university-based research? And that's a good way to phrase that. The ability to study the different diverse situations through farmer research is a really good opportunity for us to showcase what the products can do in very different soil types, very different situations, different geographies, different things.

53:21 Like that and the ability to measure on a more complete analysis. The university sign doesn't give us the overall view of what that ROI looks like for a producer or for elevates. So using that direct farmer ability to direct from research, it is coming right from the source. We feel that is super powerful information. And nothing that is anything wrong with the university based researches. The even the farmer research speaks volumes, it really does. And having that real time information is very critical.

54:04 When I worked with K-State and other universities, they wanted to test anything in and see one thing. Unfortunately, mother nature doesn't respond like that. So really when it all comes down to it, we were just wanting to make sure that one, we were improving soil health, we were increasing what we were producing, we were making it more nutrient-dense whatever we were producing. So we wanted bushels, we want nutrient density and also increase the soil health and that was real hard for the universities.

54:52 I think to piggyback on that it was hard for the universities to try to pare that down and a total view method. We lost the last 15 seconds to internet issues nowadays.

55:15 Question from LST odor: will your products have similar yield results regardless of how healthy the soil is already? So basically will a yield boost come on 4% organic matter the same as it would on 2%? Well, this is what we've seen in farming large farming operations where we've seen some organic matter in out to one. When we did the Haney test on the biological activity, there was real low. And then we've tested some that has been in the threes and the biological activity was real low there also. We didn't see as much of the advantages if it was one. If the biological from a Haney test showed that it was really active, we seen that at Clint Cox's this last year when he had liquid hog manure on to the field which caused the bacteria to just thrive. And what happened was we kicked out more CO2 and he ended out showing higher bushels even though it was six inches shorter at the start of the season and that kind of stuff.

56:26 So really it pertains more to the biology phase of the Haney test than it does to acquainting it to the soil organic matter. Now soil organic matter has some play with it. It's just the more biological activity, meaning more microbes that are moving around and converting, that really is the key to this and making this really work on there. That's where you'll see the product work more than the other. Now it'll help out the other but it's just not going to be as strong.

57:06 There was a question earlier on where you guys are sourcing some of these products, specifically on the believers, the humates in North Dakota. Where are these products all coming from and can you explain the significance of that, not all just coming from one place?

57:38 The question was where are you getting the humates from, where are those being mined at? Armando, it's up in the northern part of the United States, up and out of North Dakota is where they're coming. They're not coming out of Canada that would be nice, but the freight alone adds too much cost to this in order to add into that. So that's where we've been pulling the humates out of.

58:07 With that, I think we're going to wrap up. Thank you guys for tuning in this week and answering or asking all of your questions. Hopefully we got them answered. If you do have any other questions or are interested in learning more about this product as well as the grower meeting that Travis kind of hinted at earlier, you guys can take a screenshot or we will share this contact information with you here. Go ahead and go like their Facebook, Instagram pages. It is Elevate AG and they will love to answer any questions that you guys have.

58:43 So with that we're going to wrap up. I'll be sending out an email here next week. We're going to have Gayle Strickler back on. He's going to kind of piggyback off of this and talk about some of the inoculants and mycorrhizae fungi that we have available and we will do that next week. So thank you, thank you again for tuning in and we'll see you all then. Thank you, thank you.