00:00 We're talking about soil health, we're talking about a soil health tour conducted by Holganix. 00:03 We're doing this from Temple Road where the field day 2024 just concluded. Kind of some cool stuff was shared. 00:08 Lots of lessons we're sitting in one of the tents. There were six of them. Uh, lots of attendees. Bear says, you know what I'd like to talk about, I like 00:14 to talk about the Soil Health tour because that's really kinda how your relationship got going and something you did here. 00:17 So once the Soil Health tour. Yeah. So at organics, we wanna be a partner in soil health to the farmer. 00:23 Mm-Hmm. And one of the ways we do that is we get 'em to use our, our microbial technology, put it down at planting. 00:29 We come out mid-season and we, as part of our soil health tours, we go through the whole area and we take soil health measurements. 00:35 We look at things like microbial activity. We look at macro micronutrients. We look at CEC, bulk density, and we can take measurements 00:42 and show our customers that we actually are indeed improving soil health. And then they can make better decisions about what nutrients 00:49 to apply, when to apply them based on what we show them on the improvement in soil health. You Went to how many farmers and do this? 00:54 Uh, so we, we went to, uh, a couple hundred farms that were involved in this summer soil health tour. Okay. Tell me what your experience was. 01:02 We've been hear a lot about soil health the last several years. We even talk about it 50 years ago, 01:05 20 years ago, 10 years ago. Now it's soil. Yeah. So what, and this guy says, we're doing soil health 01:09 tour. And you say, great. I'm In. And I'm like, I don't even know what you're talking about. What? So they, they send out their team. 01:14 They come out there with no, with numerous tools. We take in a sample, a soil sample that day, real time data that day. 01:22 They're taking it that day. They're taking leaf, um, leaf tissue samples that day. We're getting the results back immediately. 01:30 So what we saw on our end, um, we do realize that sometimes they, they might not look that different, but for us, you know, when we go, they had this tool 01:41 where they were drilling holes in the ground Yeah. And we could find to the row. And I had those guys go out and they were, 01:47 and I was, I was questioning whether it's real. Right. Right. Because we're skeptical. So they got this drill on a, on aqua drill in here going 01:56 and drilling across the field. I know where it was applied at, up. And all of a sudden they get to where it was applied 02:02 And we didn't know where it was applied. You didn't tell us. They didn't know. I wouldn't tell 'em. So were, 02:06 You were testing, testing. I was being skeptical. I wanted to know, like I knew where the line was. 02:10 They're telling me that it's gonna make my ground more mellow. I should be able to hear it. 02:14 And that drill yelling ran as it's going through the ground. And sure enough, they got to a park 02:20 and Brian Schrider was like, is this it? And I pulled it up on my map and I was like, and we were standing on the spot where it changed. Barrick. 02:29 One of the things that I, you know, we talk about being skeptical. I've been around ag and I was, you know, 02:33 from FFA soil judging on these guys, pick on about it. But You how many times he burn? 02:38 So up. So lemme tell you that. Well, you, you hear these claims and when this whole thing about we increased 02:44 soil health, we increased soil health. And so last year at, uh, Kelly Ys farm with your guys, I said, show me. 02:52 Alright. It's what? Cool. How about we increase soil? Like okay, demonstrate it. And you guys have actually figured out a way 02:59 to give some quantifiable basis and, and, and, and findings to say, yes, this actually improves soil. That's right. And that's why we do the Soil health tour, 03:08 because two reasons. One is frankly, we wanna show our customers that indeed we are adding value to their soil health. 03:14 And we can point to metrics that prove to them that that soil is, is at a higher functionality because we've added those microbes. 03:20 Two is we wanna work with the farmer and help them make decisions around their agronomics to help make more money, uh, by reducing their inputs 03:28 and improving their yield. Across The couple hundred acres, uh, that you did a couple hundred farms you did this on, 03:33 what do you think the state is of soil health is in the United States of America? I would say that, uh, in, 03:39 in modern conventional agriculture, the things we've done over the last 20 to 40 years has come with the expense of the microbial life in the soil. 03:46 And, and we're seeing it in things like, uh, the amount of organic matter, the CEC, the bulk density, the nutrient availability, the nutrients that are tied up. 03:54 And so the way we've been overcoming that as, as commercial farmers is we just keep putting down more fertilizer to get bigger results. 04:01 But it That's a vicious cycle. Yeah. Because this, it's like we talked about in a previous video that it becomes almost like the antibiotic thing. 04:07 You a bigger, harder doses of antibiotics to taking care of stuff because we're building a resistance. 04:11 So it's not quite the same thing, but it's a very, it's, it's, it's, it's, it correlates. It's a similar cost. If we 04:15 Get to a point where we've got healthy soil, we can start cutting back on some of this fertility. As he said, our only solution was dumping more 04:24 and facilitate it. Fixing a problem, fixing a problem. Once we get to a point where the soil is healthy, we're gonna make every ounce count. 04:32 That's how many times did we talk about this? Especially in Our area? Ty, you were 04:35 proven, uh, you were skeptical, you were proven that this thing, there's some truth to it. What is another one 04:40 or two big takeaways, big ahas about the, so health food, I hate you participated in it for the first time this 04:44 Year. I hate to say this, but we did the sole health thing, um, and then I had did the NDVI, I was checking my NDVI 04:51 and I sent ryer last week. And I'm like, is it me or am I seeing it on NDVI? And you really actually can see 05:00 the line on NDVI. Okay. For somebody like me that doesn't know what NDVI means saying what that means. 05:05 So it's basically is a satellite imagery that's looking at the health, the health of the plant. Okay. So health of the soil. 05:12 So NDDI, uh, analysis is already showing that by improving soil health, you think you're gonna see it. You can see it from space. 05:19 I think that we actually showed that space. Tell me about the Soil Health Tour. Where does it go for 2025? 05:24 Well, basically we take a place, we have a concentration of customers. We set up a soil health tour. 05:28 So we'll be doing it in the Mid-Atlantic. We'll be doing it in the Midwest, North Dakota, all the way down to Missouri. 05:32 Yeah. Uh, into Tennessee and Kentucky. You're doing it Again. Oh, yeah. And, and you are convinced that you're, 05:37 you're saw enough findings from this and you didn't pay anything to participate. I, I'm convinced that there's another level out there 05:43 that we can without having health soil. So if somebody wants to be a part of this, as long as you've got some other business going on 05:49 there, you'll, you'll do the soil health. You'll put their farm in It. Yeah. In fact, what we 05:52 do is we go into where we have concentrations of customers and we tell our customers, look, 05:56 we can't do unlimited soil tests for everybody in town. Right. But bring one friend and, and, and we'll help them understand what they've got in the soil 06:02 and we'll consult with them about how maybe we could help them if they wanna give us, And it's not just looking at NPK and Z consult. We can't 06:08 Figure any this out without education. Just looking at what bear trying, look at a whole bunch of it's looking. He's 06:12 Looking at educating the farms on what we really have out there. We haven't had had that ability so far. 06:17 Soil Health Tour was done here at Temple Roads Farm in 2024. He is gonna do it again in 2025. 06:21 Barrett ick sitting here from Hogans. If you wanna learn more, you can probably go and learn more about the Soil Health Tour at your website. 06:26 Yeah. organics.com Got it. Till next time, Dan Mason coming at you, the Field Day, a great one just concluded you missed it. 06:33 But you know what, you can check out some footage from this. We're bringing stuff like this to you 06:36 so you can up your farming gate, go to Extreme Ag Farm.