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For this episode of the No-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Bio Till Cover Crop Seed, listen in as Associate Editor Michaela Paukner chats with Jim about why micronutrients may be the best opportunity to boost your yields this year, what to look for when buying biologicals and more.
Micronutrients and humates are critical to soil fertility and plant nutrition, but their effects aren’t widely understood. That’s where independent soil health specialist Jim Hoorman comes in.
Jim teaches farmers how proper nutrient balance in crops fights disease and insect infestation, and how humates in the soil can increase efficiency of applied nutrients. He studies a lot of new and often overlooked ideas, recommending little changes that together result in exponential improvements to plant health that can boost your bottom line.
No-Till Farmer podcast series is brought to you by Bio Till Cover Crops.
Bio Till Cover Crops, a pioneer and leader in cover crop seed, represent a complete lineup of seeds suitable to a wide range of soils types and growing conditions. Bio Till Cover Crop vendors are committed to your success and provide local resources, education, guidance, and all the tips and tricks we know, to ensure your plantings have the correct foundations for success. The original producers of Bounty Annual Ryegrass, Bio Till Cover Crops continue to add new and improved cover crop and forage varieties, including Enricher Radish, Bayou Kale, Shield Broadleaf Mustard, African Forage Cabbage, and Mihi Persian Clover. With over 30 years of experience in production, processing, packaging, and shipping, you won’t be able to find a better fit for your farm anywhere else.
Full Transcript
Julia Gerlach:
Welcome to the No-Till Farmer Podcast, brought to you today by Bio Till Cover Crops seed. I'm Julia Gerlach, executive editor. I encourage you to subscribe to this series which is available on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, Stitcher radio, and TuneIn radio. Subscribing will allow you to receive an alert about new episodes when they're released. I'd like to take a moment to thank Bio Toll Cover Crops seed for sponsoring today's episode.
Julia Gerlach:
Bio Till Cover Crops, a pioneer and leader in cover crop seed, represents a complete lineup of seeds suitable to a wide range of soil types and growing conditions. Bio Till Cover Crop vendors are committed to your success and provide local resources, education, guidance, and tips and tricks to ensure your plantings have the correct foundations for success. The original producers of bounty annual ryegrass, Bio Till Cover Crops continues to add new and improved cover crop and forage varieties, including Enricher Radish, Bayou Kale, Shield Broadleaf Mustard, African Forage Cabbage, and Mihi Persian Clover. With over 30 years of experience in production, processing, packaging, and shipping, you won't be able to find a better fit for your farm anywhere else. Learn more@biotill.com. That's B-I-O-T-I-L-L.com.
Julia Gerlach:
Micronutrients and humates are critical to soil fertility and plant nutrition, but their effects aren't widely understood. That's where independent soil health specialist, Jim Hoorman, comes in. Jim teaches farmers how proper nutrient balance and crops fights disease and insect infestation, and how humates in the soil can increase efficiency of applied nutrients. He studies a lot of new and often overlooked ideas, recommending little changes that together result in exponential improvements to plant health that can boost your bottom line. Jim is presenting a pre-conference workshop on July 27th ahead of the 2022 National Strip-Tillage Conference. And for this episode of the No-till Farmer Podcast, brought to you by Biotech Cover Crops seed, he's giving us a preview of that presentation. Listen in as associate editor, Michaela Paukner, chats with Jim about why micronutrients may be the best opportunity to boost your yields this year, what to look for when buying biologicals, and more.
Jim Hoorman:
My name's Jim Hoorman and I have my own company called Hoorman Soil Health Services. But first, I worked as county extension educator for 24 years for Ohio State University. Worked mainly in no-till cover crops and water quality. I'd left extension and worked for USDA NRCS as a soil health specialist, a regional soil health specialist. I did that for three years, and in 2019, I started my own company, Hoorman Soil Health Services. So I'm working on a number of grants, and I have some clients that I work with, consult with, and also sell crimper rollers and do some things like that.
Michaela Paukner:
Okay. What are the soils like in your area of Ohio? And can you describe what people are growing and the precipitation?
Jim Hoorman:
In our area, we're pretty much heavy clay soils. That's predominant. Wee used to get about 36, now we're up to about 40 to 42 inches of rainfall per year, so it's a little higher rainfall.
Michaela Paukner:
So you're joining us to kick off the National Strip-Tillage Conference on Wednesday, July 27th with a pre-conference workshop presentation, it's called, Boosting the Bottom Line with Mineral Nutrition and Humates. What will be the focus of this workshop?
Jim Hoorman:
Well, let's start with the mineral nutrition. We've spent a lot of time talking about N, P, and K, nitrogen phosphorus and potassium, and those are very important, but we don't spend a lot of time, especially in looking at the biology, with maybe that other 1%, the micronutrients. And if you really want to boost your yields, maybe the best place right now, especially with high fertilizer costs, are to look at those micronutrients, because most of the micronutrients are the central element performing enzymes. And enzymes are what really increased biological activity in the plant, and that's going to boost your yield. So if you got any one of these micronutrients that's lacking, it kind of shuts a whole plant down and it really can't go too far. I mean, you can do a few things, but if you really want to boost yields, you're going to have to make sure you got enough micronutrients there. So going to spend quite a bit of time talking about the micronutrients in the soil.
Michaela Paukner:
Okay. What ways are you using to test the micronutrient levels?
Jim Hoorman:
Usually when we start testing, we're looking at soil test and also tissue test. The problem with some of the soil tests are they can give you wrong answers. For example, if you're looking at iron and manganese, they're going to measure total iron and total manganese. And really there's only a specific form of some of these elements that the plant can use, even though it will absorb some of these other elements into the plant, you can have very high levels on your soil tests or, especially on soil tests, not so much tissue tests, but they're not really helping the plant. They're just, they're taken up, but they're not utilized sometimes. So that's why it's important that you understand what the limitations of each one of those tests are.
Michaela Paukner:
Okay. And how do you tell if the soil test is giving you the wrong answer and how do you go about identifying those limitations?
Jim Hoorman:
Well, usually what I do is, is I look for plant deficiencies. So you can go out, corn is very easy, corn and sorghum, you can look for a lot of deficiencies on the plant. So for example, let's talk about calcium and boron. Boron is used to get calcium into the plant, so you really got to have both, but you look for the zipper effect on a leaf. So if you look on the edge of a leaf and you see these little dash lines, some people call them railroad tracks, some of them call them little zippers, that's an indication of boron deficiency. If you see some of the dash lines or the zipper effect in between the edge of the leaf and the mid rib, then that's indication of calcium deficiency. And calcium is just so critical, we have 146 enzymes that calcium activates, so it's really important that you have enough calcium in the plant.
Jim Hoorman:
Now, if you also look at the leaf and you see some white, especially on the mid rib or white streaks, that's an indication of zinc efficiency. If you look towards the tip and you see that it's kind of yellow, with all the Roundup that we're using, we're seeing an awful lot of manganese deficiency, because Roundup is really good at tying up manganese, and iron, and copper, and a lot of our other nutrients. Another thing you can look for is, if you look at your corn plant and you've got a tremendous amount of brace roots, that's generally an indication of copper deficiency. Now there's a caveat to this, certain corn varieties have more brace roots than others. I don't know if that's directly related to copper deficiency. Don't get too excited if you just see one set, but where you really want to be concerned is if you've got a thin stalk and you see several sets, several inner nodes, and you've got brace roots there, what's happening is those brace roots are kind of making, trying to make an [inaudible 00:08:25], almost like a heart bypass.
Jim Hoorman:
If you take that stock and you split it, you'll see a lot of brown discolored areas. And what copper's so important for is lignan formation. So a lot of our stock rots and our lodging comes from a lack of copper in the soil. Only about 5% of the copper that's in the soil is available, and a lot of times it's tied up in the residue and it can take two to five years for that to break down. You don't need a lot of copper, but if you don't have adequate copper, you can have some issues with stalk strings. So those are some of the things that we'll kind of discuss in our session.
Michaela Paukner:
Okay. In terms of those deficiencies and looking for the different signs, at what stage of plant growth will farmers see these deficiencies, or does it vary based on what it is?
Jim Hoorman:
It kind of varies, but you can start looking for them really fairly early. And then as the plant progresses, once you get a couple full leaves, it really becomes noticeable. But probably the thing that I think we're missing right now, is that a lot of times we don't start testing until, let's say on corn, until about B10. Well, think about when corn determines its maximum yield, we have the potential for 1100 bushels of corn. Now I don't know of anybody that's ever reached that, because environment and the nutrients just aren't there, but maybe we should be looking a little earlier because most of the corn determine its yield right around B6. So from about, even B2 to about B6 or B8, we really ought to be looking at our corn to see how it's doing, because that's when it's really determining a lot of its yield. That's when you got your biggest potential for yield loss.
Jim Hoorman:
And if you wait until B10, by then, you've already lost, if you haven't addressed it, you've probably have lost a lot. So I really think we probably need to be looking a little earlier. There's not a lot of literature on that, but this is an insight that I think we need to pay a little bit more attention to. And one of the big ones that I don't think I hardly hear anybody talking about is iron. We have quite a bit of iron in our soil, unfortunately it's just in the wrong form. Why is iron so important? Well, iron is used by the plant to form an enzyme that makes chlorophyll, and you got to have that chlorophyll molecule, the central element in chlorophyll is magnesium. And so if you don't have enough chlorophyll in your plant, you're not going to maximize your photosynthesis. Right now on average, we're probably only about 10 to 20% efficient at maximizing photosynthesis, okay?
Jim Hoorman:
One of the big reasons for that is we just don't have enough carbon in the soil. So the most limiting element is carbon. But then after that, you start getting into some of these other micronutrients that might be having [inaudible 00:11:50] effect, and iron and calcium are probably two of the biggest ones that I think that we're just not paying close enough attention to. So if you want to have a little fun, get some iron, some reduced iron, and apply that to your grass. And you could write somebody's name like in the lawn and that'll show up for just about all summer. You'll be able to see exactly where you did that. We're starting to do a little research with iron, applying iron to tomato plants. And Dr. Rafiq Islam at Ohio State put on, he had a control, he used some folic acid with some iron, and he got a 37% increase in yield on the tomatoes, just one element.
Jim Hoorman:
And where used nano iron, which is very, very small, very reduced iron, they got an 87% increase in yield. So I think if we start looking at some of these micronutrients, you'll start to see where you can get more, better yield. Now it's not just one. What they found is with the iron is they didn't have any more fruit, but they had bigger fruit and higher quality fruit. Well, as I look at that, I said, "Did you put on any calcium?" And calcium is so important, 80% of your calcium's taken up at pollination. And that determines a lot a lot of your yield. So if you want more fruit, more ears, more everything, you got to have adequate calcium in order to stimulate that. Calcium's also extremely important for germination and also fruit quality. So it's real important that you have enough calcium in the plant, so just a couple ideas.
Jim Hoorman:
And then the big thing now is with Roundup, it's very common now that we have to apply foliar or apply manganese to our soybeans because we've used so much Roundup. Roundup is a chelator and it's tying up a lot of these nutrients. We're getting what I would call adequate yields, maybe even for most of us, they sound pretty good, but it may be possible that we can greatly increase our yields if we just don't chelate or tie up all these elements. Or if we are going to use Roundup, maybe we just need to make sure that we have enough fertilizer out there at the right time. And a lot of times we can do this with some of the foliars if you get it small enough, it's got to be small enough and you got to use the right products in order to get it into the plant.
Jim Hoorman:
And that's part of what we'll talk about when we talk about some of the humates, and what's so important there. A lot of times what's happening on these micronutrients, and this is kind of important you understand this, is we've got the elements in the soil, they're just either not in the right form or the plant roots can't get to them. So almost all the major micronutrients that we need that are cations, which have a positive charge on it. Usually it's a two plus form, the oxidation form. If you're looking at those, what happens is they got to be reduced. And that's where some of the humates come in, especially folic acid, can reduce these elements down into a form that the plant then can absorb. And what happens is a folic acid will encapsulate it, strip it basically naked, and move it right into the plant.
Jim Hoorman:
The folic acid and everything moves into the plant and then it'll find a protein for that element to attach to, and then that protein becomes an enzyme. And what's so important about enzymes is they increase our metabolic activity by a hundred, a thousand, 10,000, a hundred thousand times in a second. Okay? So if you really want to increase yields, you got to have a lot of enzymes in your plants. And unfortunately, we may be limiting how many enzymes and how much production we can get out of them, simply because a lot of these elements are tied up. So here's the problem, reducing conditions are anaerobic, which means a lack of oxygen, and usually it's saturated. And I'll tell you what, for about a three month time period when I was studying some of this a year or two ago, that really confused me. Do you mean compacted soils? That's what we see under compacted soils.
Jim Hoorman:
And I really was in a funk for about three months just trying to figure this out. And then I ran across a reference that just cleared it all up for us. Dr. William Jackson wrote a great book. And he said, "You know, if you want to get reducing conditions, you first have to start with aerobic soils." And here's what he explained. He says, "Under aerobic conditions, the roots are going to form micro, you're going to have micro aggregates and macro aggregates." And I remember from college that it's those micro aggregates where you get those anaerobic conditions, and that's where these nutrients are going to be reduced. Okay? Well, when you have a macro aggregate in the soil, the roots can get down there, there's air, and there's water, and they can grow. They can't grow into compacted soil.
Jim Hoorman:
So what happens is these macro aggregates break open, reform, break open and reform, and when they do that, the roots can get in between the macro aggregates. And when they break open, those micro aggregate sites can remove some of these reduced elements to the plant. Plants don't grow in saturated soil, the roots don't grow, and they also cannot access a lot of those elements. What happens is a lot of those elements actually leach out of the soil, or they're just not plant available. So that was one of those things that was an, "Aha." Moment for me, realizing that you have to start with aerobic soils and then have the right biology in order to make these elements in a reduced form that the plant can use. So I think that's how we tie in the soil health to all this. This is all, it's all about biology, and both the micronutrients and the humates are going to help our biology.
Michaela Paukner:
What are some of the things that strip-tillers should be doing to promote those aerobic soils that they want to then access the nutrients?
Jim Hoorman:
One of the things you can do is, with a strip-tiller, you're only tilling just a small area, but it doesn't matter, almost any type of tool that we use, a planter, we're going to get a little compaction right around that root zone, where it's at. But you got the rest of that area that you can manage to, as the roots grow out into it, hopefully we're going to get better access. So I think with strip tilling, if we can grow cover crops or anything you can do to form more macro aggregates in the soil, that's going to be beneficial. So even though you're just strip-tilling, you can strip-till in with cover crops and that can really help you. The other thing is, we probably need to be looking a little bit more at the humates. Okay?
Jim Hoorman:
So when we're looking at organic matter, we have several different forms of organic matter. You've got the root exudates, and a lot of those are the non humate compounds. So those are just kind of the sugars and glues and things that are in the soil. But if I were to describe humates to you, it's almost, it's really, really hard, so I'm going to give you a little analogy. Imagine if you took a hundred different animals, let's assume they're dead, and you took a thousand different plants, and you kind of ground them all up together, and then you let them decompose in the soil. Okay? And then after several months, years, whatever, you try to describe what you have left, and it's almost impossible. We have almost a hundred thousand different organic compounds in the soil. And they're almost non distinguishable, but what we break them down into is folic acid, humic acid, and humin.
Jim Hoorman:
Okay, so the folic acid are kind of the lightweight ones, they have a little more oxygen in them and a little less carbon. And they're really important for moving a lot of the nutrients into the soil. They're the activators, so folic acid is really a great acid activator. They also tend to be a little more acid. When you get to the humic, the humic acids are a little bigger, quite a bit more dense, and that's where a lot of our micronutrients and even our nitrogen and everything's kind of tied up in that. Usually the humin's going to be kind of a brown to a dark brown, the folic acid's going to be kind of a yellow to a light brown, and then you're humins, those are the ones that are really, really dense, and those are going to be black. One of the key things that for water quality is that we ought to be looking at, trying to add a little more humin, that fraction in with our fertilizer, especially the negative charge nitrates and soluble reactive phosphorus because the humin has positive charges.
Jim Hoorman:
It has what we call a high anionic exchange capacity, and it can tie up those negative charged molecules for 60 to 90 days in the soil. Well, that's almost perfect for corn production because when we have pollination, that's when we really need to have a lot higher demand for nitrogen and phosphorus, and it keeps it in the soil and not in our waterways. You can also use the folic and the humic acid, but it's only going to tie it up for about 10 to maybe 20 days. They just don't have, only about maybe 10 to 15% of the sites, have this anionic exchange. Now there is a caveat to all this, of course, why aren't we doing it? Unfortunately, the way humin is manufactured is a lot of times we de-nature it and it just doesn't work as well as it should, if you can get the natural humin that is the most effective. So you got to really, really watch when you go to buy some of these humates, what you're getting. And they're probably not going to tell you those details. That's the problem.
Michaela Paukner:
What can somebody do in that case?
Jim Hoorman:
Well, I'm doing a little research into that. Hopefully I'll have a little bit better, more information for you at a little bit later date here, but there are a couple companies that are selling the natural humin products, and that's what you want to make sure you try to get, is you just got to ask an awful lot of questions. Let's talk just a little bit about folic acid, because folic acid, I'm finding out is, it's either a magician, or there's just so many things that folic acid does for us, that I think people should really understand. Probably the biggest thing is it just really increases the total metabolic activity in the plant. Just, it's just like it speeds it up a hundred to a thousand times. So if you've got adequate folic acid in your soils, it's soluble, it's a liquid, and it will increase plant growth by a factor of a hundred.
Jim Hoorman:
I don't know of any other product that can really do this. But again, there's a caveat, too much, it'll tie up those micronutrients, keep them tight. If you don't have enough, then you're not going to be able to get the nutrients. So it's all about balance. And unfortunately, it's also a water quality problem. A lot of these folic acids in the soil leach out of the soil and they get into our waterways. Well, what effect do you think that has on our harmful algae and the cyanobacteria? It increases their growth by a factor of a hundred. So we really want to keep these in the soil, if at all possible, that's what we're trying to do. But just some things that folic acid does, it really stimulates some of the growth hormones, it stimulates yield. It's a great one for kind of tying up some of the free radicals in the soils. Things that can be harmful to the plant.
Jim Hoorman:
It's very good at stimulating your RNA and your DNA. So a lot of the plant genes are not activated until you get certain chemicals and certain enzymes into the plant, and then they're activated. So that's one of the things that folic acid is very good at doing. It's also really good at buffering the soil. It buffers a pH. It helps to make some of the micronutrients more available by chemically weathering some of our soil particles. It increases rooting, and branching, and shoot growth, just all kinds of things like that. Probably the biggest thing though, if there's one thing that just really impresses me about folic acid, it's its ability, it has a really high affinity for iron. It will move iron into the plant, which we know if we get adequate iron in the plant, it will increase the chlorophyll content and it'll turn your plants dark green. And that's when you know you've got really good... I think we are mulled into thinking when we look at corn, a lot of times it's a little bit of a light green, and we think we're getting full photosynthesis. We're really not. You want it to be a dark, dark green. And when you see that, everybody knows when they see really healthy corn, how it looks. And that's the look that we're trying to get, and iron's a big part of that.
Julia Gerlach:
We'll get back to the podcast in a moment, but I want to take time once again, to thank our sponsor Bio Till Cover Crops seed for supporting today's episode. Bio Till Cover Crops, a pioneer and leader in cover crop seed, represents a complete lineup of seed suitable to a wide range of soil types and growing conditions. Bio Till Cover Crop vendors are committed to your success and provide local resources, education, guidance, and tips and tricks to ensure your plantings have the correct foundations for success. The original producers of Bounty Annual Ryegrass, Bio Till Cover Crops continues to add new and improved cover crop and forge varieties, including Enricher Radish, Bayou Kale, Shield Broadleaf Mustard, African Forage Cabbage, and Mihi Persian Clover. With over 30 years of experience in production, processing, packaging, and shipping, you won't be able to find a better fit for your farm anywhere else. Learn more at biotill.com. That's B-I-O-T-I-L-L.com. And now back to the podcast.
Michaela Paukner:
So for the folic acid, how do you ensure that it's staying in the soil and not running off?
Jim Hoorman:
Probably you want to start with what the rates are. And it really depends on the products. I mean, there's hundreds, thousands of different folic acids, things that are considered folic acid. But when we're talking about folic acid, we're talking about a fairly small amount. We're only looking at maybe a pint per acre, and in some cases, just ounces per acre. It's hard to believe, but we know that we have herbicides that we're putting on at very, very low rates and they're taking care of the weed. So that's kind of what folic acid is. You only need just a little bit, usually when you're looking at some of the other humates, you're looking at about a gallon per acre, now this is a very, very rough, and it just depends on the product, but just to kind of put it in perspective of about how much you need.
Jim Hoorman:
The other thing we need though, is along with the folic acid, is the humic acid. The biggest thing that humic acid does is it changes the soil, it increases your water holding capacity, just really makes your soil, buffers it. It just makes it a better place for the microbes. It supplies energy, but usually the humic acid works really well with the folic because it's kind of the storehouse. Whereas the folic acid is kind of the mover, and the activator, and the element or compound that really gets it into the plant. So that's how those two kind of work together. Now there's something we haven't talked about, and this is kind of a whole new topic that I'm also going to discuss just briefly. And it's the type of water we use. Now, we know that when we put on sprays that usually when we make the water a little more acid elements are a little bit more available, but there's a really good book out called Cells, Gels, and the Engines of Life. It's by Dr. Gerald Pollack.
Jim Hoorman:
And he talks about something called structured water, or another term for that is easy water and, or energized water. So what is energized water? Well in cells, there's almost a fourth stage of water. There's about 60 anomalies we just, science really hasn't been able to understand until just recently, and this could be a fourth stage of water. So you have your gas, your liquid, and your solids, and this is a different form of a liquid water. So water dissolves nutrients, and that's kind of like if you think of a freight train, these would be the carrier cars, okay? The cars that carry the nutrients. But now you need an engine, and the engine is this energized water. It's water that's been split so that it has more hydrogen and hydroxide in it.
Jim Hoorman:
So a typical water molecule might have four hydrogens around it, and it kind of acts almost like an electrical train, and it gives energy to the water to be able to pull it right into the plant. So imagine this, if you used energized water with folic acid, plus some of the micronutrients, now you can greatly increase how many nutrients that you can move through that plant. And the plants, and animals, and humans are so much more healthier. We all have energized water in our body, just a side note here, something as an anomaly that they couldn't understand, when a person dies, their heart stops yet the blood continues to flow for about five to 10 minutes. How's that possible? Well, it's due to energized water.
Jim Hoorman:
If your heart had to do all the work, think about how the blood goes through big vessels to small vessels, your capillaries back to the heart, it would have to be a million times stronger than what it is today. And the way it does this is through energized water. It's got this positive, negative, positive, negative charges, and it moves the salutes, moves this freight train of nutrients, that's ordinary water is storing, moves it through your body. And that's that internal energy that we have in that energized water. So we're using energized water with some of our micronutrients to get them into the plant. And if you do that, it's quite effective and it really reduces the amount that you need to use.
Michaela Paukner:
Okay. How do you energize the water?
Jim Hoorman:
Well, there's a couple different ways. Radiant energy, the red wave lengths will do it. For humans, walking on on grass will do it, saunas will do it, but how do we energize it, if we want to energize the water? Well, there's a company that's come up with a way. They found some minerals that what they do is, moving water tends to have more oxygen in it, and it tends to split the water molecule apart. So they take this water through some minerals, it's in a kind of a specialized valve, and they make it flow through there very, very quickly. And when it does it, it splits the water molecule into hydrogen and hydroxide, and that allows then that water to become energized.
Jim Hoorman:
The good news is it'll stay energized for about six months to a year, so you can put it in a spray mixture and add nutrients, you can use it with herbicides. If you're going to use it with herbicides though, be careful, some of the guys with high Roundup now are using energized water. And instead of, let's say, putting on, say 24 ounces of Roundup, now they have to reduce it down to about a one third of that, about 11 ounces, 10 to 11 ounces, otherwise they'll burn the plant. It absorbs so quickly and so fast by the plant that it kind of overtakes some of those, especially in our GMO corn and beans, it will overtake some of those barriers to that Roundup that's naturally, that we implanted into that plant. So you have to be careful. We're still figuring out how much we have to reduce it if you're going to use it with herbicides. I'm mainly using it with micronutrients is what we're trying to do. That's what we're doing.
Michaela Paukner:
Okay. So you're buying this water that's been passed through that valve, not like the valve itself to do it?
Jim Hoorman:
You, you can actually buy a unit. You can get one for like under your kitchen and drink energized water. It's kind of slippery. Well, when you drink it, a lot of people prefer it. I have a client of mine that his son likes a certain type of water, and he likes to play a little trick on him. He'll give him two glasses and one will be energized water and one will be his favorite water that he buys from the store, and every single time he'll pick the energized water. It's got a, it tastes better, it's got a little different taste, but it's better for the body. Somebody that has kidney stones or something like that, it really helps to kind of flush your body of a lot of, some of the things that we have in our body. It helps take out some of the wrong forms of calcium, the calcium oxides, and the iron oxides, and that form.
Jim Hoorman:
It's a healthy product, but the plants love it. A lot of greenhouses are now using energized water. You can buy a commercial outfit that will do it. And it, depending on your size, probably the smallest it's going to be for commercial is about 14,000, going on up on there. Some of these new things that we start, one by itself will give you a one, but you start adding another one, now you get some synergy and now you start adding three of these. So you start adding the micronutrients, with the humates, with the energized water, and all of a sudden now you're exponential, the increases and improvements that you can see in plant health. So that's what we're trying to do.
Michaela Paukner:
Yeah. It sounds like there's a ton of potential there.
Jim Hoorman:
There is, and I think we're just on the cusp, the very beginning of understanding, there's probably a tremendous amount of research that we need to look at. I was in extension, worked for Ohio State for 24 years. Foliar feeding was kind of a no, no, you just didn't do it. But let's move into the 21st century. We're not talking about massive amounts, we're talking very, very small amounts, and we're talking very, very reduced elements, almost naked elements that the plant needs. And when you think about it, it shouldn't surprise anybody that we can move some of these elements into the plant with foliar feeding, because we do it with herbicides. And think about how big that herbicide molecule is.
Jim Hoorman:
Just look up sometime what the Roundup molecule, how big of a molecule that is. And some of these elements that we're moving in are not near as big as what a Roundup is. So it is possible if you use the right combination of things, the energized water, some folic acid, the micronutrients, that we can move these elements into the plant, and I think we can have a big increase or a big improvement in yield and quality of the food that we're producing. The other side benefit of that is nutrient density, just increasing how many more nutrients we get into that seed can have a huge impact on human health, animal health, anything that we're going to feed these grains to. So I think it has a lot of potential.
Michaela Paukner:
For sure. Yeah. What else should we mention about your workshop that you'll be doing at the strip-till conference?
Jim Hoorman:
I'll probably touch a lot of different little topics that are kind of impacting, things that we've just learned maybe within the last three, four years. Here's interesting tidbit, and it has a direct impact on soil health. We now know that there's at least 16 different species of Pseudomonas bacteria that is in the atmosphere. Why is that important? Well, most of the rain actually comes from either dirt, but even more so, from the microbes that are in the atmosphere. What happens is the microbes attract the water and it'll freeze, and then it will come down to earth and it'll either turn into rain, or snow, or sleet, and that's how we get rainfall. Well, they were looking at the 1930s and they said during that time period, we destroyed a lot of our Prairie areas, we turned them under, and they're estimating that the drought actually was expanded by several years because we didn't have enough microbes in the atmosphere.
Jim Hoorman:
Well, what happens when you get all these, if you don't have a lot of microbes in the atmosphere for it to rain, you're going to get a tremendous concentration of water vapor. And then when it does come down, what happens? It comes down in 3, 4, 5, 7, 11 inch rains. Okay? So maybe a part of the reason that we're seeing increased rainfall in large events could be to the fact that we don't have enough microbes in the atmosphere. You got to have wide plants that are giving off these microbes that are on the leaves and they go up into the atmosphere, and that has an impact on how much it rains. Think about the tropics. When you go into the tropical areas just about every day from somewhere between 3:30 and let's say 4:30, I don't know the exact time, it rains about quarter inch to a half inch each day.
Jim Hoorman:
Why is that? Because as the sun comes up, we get evapotranspiration and it moves the microbes into the atmosphere. When they reach a certain concentration in the atmosphere, all the water, the vapor there, is going to collect around those microbes. And all of a sudden it just starts coming down as rain for maybe five or 10 minutes. And they get a quarter inch, maybe a half inch of rain, almost every single day, almost exactly at the same time. So there's this natural cycle that I think we've maybe disrupted as human beings by not keeping our land covered with green plants as much as possible year round. And we know that has a big impact on soil health, and water quality, and all these things are really related, I think, to each other.
Michaela Paukner:
It's really interesting. It sounds like there will be a lot of eye opening and little tidbits people can pick up on.
Jim Hoorman:
I think I will talk a little bit about some of the applications. I'll kind of give you the broad overview, but I'll be honest with you, there's a lot of products out there, you're going to have to go and just experiment. A lot of companies now are using microbes, they're using microbes and biologicals, they're using the humates, and they're using the micronutrients. The biggest problem with all this is there's really not a patent on anything, so the companies are very vague in the information that they give you. And that's what makes it difficult for a farmer. Sometimes I can read between the lines and get a pretty good idea of what they're doing, but even I struggle to know exactly what they are. If you go talk to the dealer, he says, "Well, I don't know. I'm just going by what they tell me."
Jim Hoorman:
So then you go talk to the agronomist. He'll tell you, "Well, I don't know." And he'll send you somewhere up higher in the company. Unfortunately, they aren't going to tell you their trade secrets. This is kind of a secret formulation, because just about anybody could do it. Okay? If you knew what the formula was, you could make your own. And so it's very difficult sometimes to evaluate some of this, you almost have to try some products and when you find one that works really well, why, then stick with it and try to figure it out. So it's little bit like the Wild Wild West right, unfortunately, trying to figure out what works and what doesn't work.
Michaela Paukner:
Outside of buying a bunch of different things and experimenting with it, is there anything that people should be looking for when they're trying to choose a biological product?
Jim Hoorman:
You really need to have a control, use, go out and do some strips, and do at least three strips, four would be better, do some with, some without, some with, some without, and kind of go across maybe a small field. And then with their yield monitors, just go back to evaluate. You almost have to do the evaluation on your own farm when you're trying these things out and see what will work best. I am starting to work with a company and we're trying to get some things around that takes care of some of the problems that I talked about, especially with the humates and getting the right concentration.
Jim Hoorman:
And we're going to be doing some research this summer and hopefully we'll have some good results by fall that we can see how some of these things are working. If you do it right, sometimes you can see really quick results. I mean, if you have a nutrient deficiency, I've done this on my own farm a little bit with some tomatoes, and in my own garden, just kind of experimenting a little bit. I can see changes sometimes within minutes to hours or a day, you can see a change in the plant health, so you know it's working or it's not working. It doesn't take a real long period of time to see some changes with some of these things.
Michaela Paukner:
Okay. And was there anything else you wanted to mention that we haven't talked about?
Jim Hoorman:
If there's one good thing about COVID, for me, it really hurt my business, I lost probably 20%, 30% of my business, because I do a lot of teaching, and we just didn't get to do very much teaching during that time period. But I did have some time to go back and I studied a lot on these micronutrients, and on the humate, and my next big project's going to be on some of the microbiology, trying to figure out what bacteria, what fungus, I know quite a few of the species of the Mycorrihizal fungus. I've already done some of that work, but just try to figure out what products are going to help us the best and do a little research into that. So that's my next goal, I guess.
Michaela Paukner:
Yeah, a lot to research.
Jim Hoorman:
Yeah. The amount of microbes we have is, in the soil, there's billions and billions, could be a trillion just in a couple grams of soil. And when you take that across 2000 pounds of soil in top six inches, that's where 96% of your microbes are in that top six inches of the soil. So that's really the area that we need to be concerned about. And some of the things that just doesn't make sense to me, especially on water quality, is we've got the wrong people in charge. Unfortunately, we keep hiring engineers to solve a biological problem and they talk like, "Well, we want to apply these nutrients and we want to put them deep in the soil." Well, that doesn't do any good because they're either going to leach out or you got to have them in the zone where the microbes are.
Jim Hoorman:
So I don't think people understand the biological significance of these, and we can make a heck of a lot more headway on water quality and things like that if we actually put a few more microbiologists or biologists in charge of this problem. But our suggestions aren't as highly touted as the engineers, for some reason, that's a pet peeve of mine. I've been working on water quality for several years. I worked with NRCS and they're very top heavy on engineers, and don't have enough of us soil health people, or biologists to help solve these problems. So this is just a side note, but I'll give you an example, right now, Kevin King has 32 paired watersheds. He may have 34 by now. So he's an engineer, and they're taking continuous data. I mean, these are like each one of these costs anywheres from a quarter of a million to a half million dollars.
Jim Hoorman:
He has one site that they just can't explain. We've got a site where there's a large dairy and he's doing no-till and cover crops. The phosphorus levels are fairly high, very high, actually, 150, and he's putting on about, let's say 8,000 gallons of liquid dairy manure every year on these plots. The amount of phosphorus coming off of those fields is one of the lowest anywhere around. They can't figure that out. Okay? Now you go across the road, across the ditch, on the other side, this is a paired part. You've got a conventional farmer who chisel plows every year, has 50 parts per million, one third the level that the other guy does, has one of the highest phosphorous losses anywhere in Northwest Ohio.
Jim Hoorman:
And I can tell you what's going on. It's it's quite simple. The guy has good soil health. He has good macro aggregates. He has all this, all these humates in the soil. He's got, 90% of the carbon is tied up in your humates, your folic, your humic, and your humin. Okay? And he just has really good macro aggregates, the water infiltrates. And as it goes down, he doesn't have compaction, it bays all the roots and his cover crops just always look really, really great. They're growing like crazy, they're absorbing the nutrients, keeping them tied up when the water gets down to where it finally reaches the tile, it's pretty much clear. There's not a lot of phosphorus in it. The other guy has compaction up the wazoo. Every time it rains, it just fills the ditch up with dirty brown water, which is folic acid, humic acid, probably some humin in there also, some black, and he's losing all his organic matter.
Jim Hoorman:
And he's got these compacted layers, so it's running off the surface. Or if it does go down through the tile line, it's going straight without any treatment. And there's no live roots there, so it all just goes out, goes out the end. And that's the problem we have, I think, in agriculture is we need to really minimize how much tillage we're doing. And I think strip-till is a great place, because here's the thing with strip-till, you're only tilling just a small area and it helps that corn get off to a fast start because it warms up the soil a little bit and it'll increase some microbes. And then you've got the rest of that zone, probably 80% of that zone, is going to be 75% to 80% of it's just going to be no-tilled. And that's going to give you a really good soil structure. And if you had the cover crops in there, I think that's a great place for getting more carbon into your soil, is with all that root turnover.
Jim Hoorman:
That's where no-till can be the way that guys can improve their soil. Once they get that soil in shape, maybe at some point in time, they can actually convert over to full no-till. But I think it just helps us with that three to seven year lag, at least, in getting our soils converted. That's what we see whenever we convert to no-till is it can take three to seven years for that soil to straighten itself out before it starts yielding back where it was. And I think the strip till is a great way for guys to kind of get over that, nobody wants to take a yield hit. They can reduce their yield hit, especially with prices being what they are.
Michaela Paukner:
Right. Yeah. So strip till is kind of the good in between there.
Jim Hoorman:
Exactly.
Julia Gerlach:
Thanks to Jim Hoorman of Hoorman Soil Health Services for sharing his wealth of knowledge with us today. Jim is hosting a two and a half hour workshop, July 27th, ahead of the 2022 National Strip-Tillage Conference in Iowa City, Iowa. This limited capacity workshop requires an RSVP, so sign up today to save your seat. His classroom at a previous national no-tillage conference to 200 people and we're anticipating another packed session. To listen to more podcasts about no-till topics and strategies, please visit notillfarmer.com/podcasts. Once again, we'd like to thank our sponsor Bio Till Cover Crop seed for helping to make this no-till podcast series possible. If you have any feedback on today's episode, please feel free to email me at jgerlach@lessitermedia.com or call me at (262) 777-2404. If you haven't done so already, you can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or Google Podcasts to get an alert as soon as future episodes are released. You can also keep up on the latest no-till farming news by registering online for our no-till insider daily and weekly email updates, and Dryland No-Tiller eNewsletter. And be sure to follow us on Twitter @notillfarmr, with farmer spelled F-A-R-M-R, and our No-till Farmer Facebook page. For our entire staff here at No-Till Farmer, I'm Julia Gerlach, thanks for tuning in.
