Has anyone used products from AEA/John *****?

Question

Which ones? Have you seen results? What regenerative practices or products have actually worked for you and made you money?

Answer

Yes, but not to the prolific degree as the inoculated areas.

That said, any product will fail or fall short if the root cause of the deficiency is not addressed. You can coat seeds with Mycorrhizae but if you spray a funguside or over till you'll be back to square 1.

You can apply trace minerals, but if you spray certain pesticides/herbicides they will chelate and become useless, even if they are already in the plant. Similar issues with bacteria and Roundup.

You can't add salads to your diet and expect to loose weight if you don't reduce the cookies as well..

This is a very interesting podcast episode that talks about some of these issues, and possible solutions.
http://regenerativeagriculturepodcast.com/disease-resistance-and-regenerating-soil-with-michael-mcneill

Answer

We put some BioCoat Gold, mychorrizal seed coat on this spring. We'll see if it makes a yield difference, but digging around I see a lot of white fungus eating through the crop residue.

My assumption, like all concepts of working in sync with nature, is that it may take more than 1 year to see a return on the investment, but it will also depend on what your soil health is starting out. For the seed coat, it's only about 1$/ac on soybeans, so it doesn't take much to see a return. For other products, other than the BioGenesis and Biodigester, I would want to have a sap test, or at least soil test to know what is needed before adding nutrients. I think we'll start working with more products in our dairy pasture where we have the greatest opportunity to capture profit, and a couple other high value crops where a little improvement pays big.

We've been doing diverse cover crops for a few years now, and will start grazing heifers on some cover crops planted after wheat. I like what I'm seeing so far in terms of soil tilth and infiltration improvements. Even basic crop rotation seems to make a huge difference. Hard to argue with the basic regenerative, nature based tenants of 1. living roots year round, 2. minimize tillage (sometimes challenging in our Organic system), 3. increase diversity, 4. integrate livestock if possible.

Love ****'s podcast and youtube videos, and looking forward to reading his book when it gets here. Even if I don't use his products he has a lot of connections to other knowledgeable people and ideas that can lead to improvements on their own.

Call (844) 200-FARM

Get 0% Financing All Season Long. T&C Apply.

Has anyone used products from AEA/John *****?

Join Our Community!

This comment section is reserved for FBN members only.