#316 | Parker Timmons; The Secrets of Soil Health

Parker Timmons [00:00:00] When we sit down and look at guy's book and we're like, Mr. Grower, this is a million dollar conversation. You follow our recommendations. Compared to what you're traditionally doing, you're talking a million dollars in one year.

Vance Crowe [00:00:16] I'm Christina Hudson Kohler, an egg processing manager living in Syracuse, New York, and you are listening to the Vance Crow podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today I sit down with soil scientist Parker Timmons. Parker is a soil scientist, heretic. He's gonna say things during this conversation that at least shocked me and maybe will shock you. His belief that the amount of potassium and other macronutrients that we're putting into the soil are way outta whack, and that we should think about this in a very different way. Parker has a unique understanding of the difference between soil and dirt, how roots work, and really how the industrial farming system is working. This is not just a normal person rallying against the way things have been done. He is looking at science in a very different way and coming up with some answers that you may or may not agree with. I think you're going to enjoy it. We're gonna get to that interview in just a moment. But earlier today, I was interviewed by Chris Bennett. Many of you know Chris through the podcast because we've done a bunch of interviews together, but Chris actually heard about what I was doing with Legacy Interviews and wanted to do a story about people preserving their family stories. Chris and I are longtime friends, and so it was interesting to talk with him as an interviewee. He was asking me about what my values were and why we were doing this, and an idea came out that I believe really deeply, but I've never really said before and I thought it'd be worth sharing with you.

Vance Crowe [00:01:52] One of the things that I talked about was that I believe that we are headed towards a sort of civilization mono cropp. People are given the same media. We live in much the same environments. We shop at the same stores and so much about what makes us unique and individuals, even the things about our families themselves that make us have all this diversity is somewhat going away. And that these Legacy Interviews allow families to know that rich history about the things that went on in their lives, the places that they ran away from to come to this country or Canada, and what they had to do in order to survive here. This information, I believe, is deeply important for the future. It's more than just the opportunity for your family to know their history. It's a way of remembering how things were and how they worked, and how people contributed their own efforts, and how they thought about the nature of family and how they fit into it. This is important work that I think goes beyond any one single interview, but the only way we do these interviews is if somebody like you realizes there's a loved one, that you wanna capture their stories. There's somebody that you know they had experiences that will never be done in the future, and that we have to capture them now so that the future can understand who they were, what they went through, and how it applies to today's lessons. So if you're interested in having me sit down with your loved one, go to Legacy Interviews dot com to find out more.

Vance Crowe [00:03:26] Alright, without further ado, let's go to the interview with Parker Timmons. Parker Timmons, welcome. Thank you to the podcast. I

Parker Timmons [00:03:33] Appreciate it. What

Vance Crowe [00:03:34] Is the difference between soil and dirt?

Parker Timmons [00:03:38] Dirt is something that has been misplaced, and soil is something that you can use to nurture and grow something. So whenever you're thinking of a building project, right, they move dirt or they move soil, which becomes dirt because now it's originally out of place to whereas if we're gonna use soil, we're using it for the properties in which God created it. To be able to raise a sustainable life with it, if we didn't have soil, us as humans today would not exist.

Vance Crowe [00:04:10] Oh, that is hilarious. I thought you were gonna give kind of like a trite answer. One time I gave a talk, I got a standing ovation at the end of this talk, and the very first like question wasn't a question at all. It was a, I just want to clarify that it's soil, not dirt. When I was talking about something to do with ag, and so I thought you were gonna give like a trite answer, but it is true, right? Like people do push dirt around with their big bulldozer and, and that does make it different. Can you move soil and have it be dirt and have it be then go back to being soil?

Parker Timmons [00:04:42] So they have in our part of the world called reclaim ground to where the coal mines at one point in time stripped the top soil off. They took and stored it, and then they would mine the coal below it, and then they're supposed to be able to put it back. But after seeing several thousand acres of this and being across it, it never comes back the same. We're always having to add different soil amendments to it to be able to try to get it back to the same production level it was once prior to it being moved.

Vance Crowe [00:05:14] No kidding. Because it seems like it's one of those things that's just like, oh, you know, there's some soil there or dirt there. You just move it. I put it in my, my my bed plant, my tomatoes in my raised bed garden and everything's fine. Yeah.

Parker Timmons [00:05:25] Whenever I work with my, my customers we're always, they're always talking, well, I gotta put the seed in the dirt. And I'm like, well, technically that's soil because you're, you're, it's never really been moved, you know? So we have a lot of fun with it that kind of, they call it dirt, we call it soil, right? It's a word that tries to elevate what it is of the importance of the factor. And that really comes down from the fact in college, I had a soils professor and she would get very frustrated with students use the word dirt in her class, because dirt is something, like I said, that's been misplaced and soils is something that sustains life. So there there's two different aspects there.

Vance Crowe [00:06:04] And so when you start talking about soil amendments and stuff, for somebody that doesn't understand anything at all about this, what does it take to grow a plant in soil?

Parker Timmons [00:06:14] So there's really 17 essential elements that it takes for that crop to grow. And if you pull one of those away, that that crop cannot sustain from life. So the big ones that we don't even supply from the soil standpoint is hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and oxygen. Those are the three main factors that you have to have to have a growing plan from there, the elements that the soil can produce through its organic matter are in between its clay. Layers are the other factors that you have to have. Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, which are the big three that a lot of people think of and consider whenever they're talking about growing crops, right? And that's what agriculture as a whole, that's been their main focus. But there's another, you know, 12 elements that we need to talk about. Nickel, cobalt, iron, copper, aluminum, manganese, things of that nature. These micronutrients, sulfur being a big aspect, especially as the coal power plants have used these scrubbers to reduce the amount of acid rain that gets leached off into the atmosphere. We're no longer getting the free sulfur that we got prior to these scrubbers being put on.

Vance Crowe [00:07:31] No kidding. So it used to be that we were getting that as a benefit. Eh,

Parker Timmons [00:07:35] The, the areas around the power plants would seed their sulfur readings on these soil analysis be raised without having to make the application because of the amount of coal that was being burned. The sulfur was going out in the fumes, and then it would get into the clouds when rainfall, it would bring the, bring the water and the sulfur down with it. And so they were getting it freely from that standpoint. But since the EPA is put on the, the scrubbers, which is where gypsum comes into play now, that sulfur's no longer going into the air. And so a lot of this early season cold wet soils we're seeing with yellow and corn is not necessarily a nitrogen deficiency. It's actually a sulfur deficiency that's showing up because the two will mimic each other very similarly. Now,

Vance Crowe [00:08:24] Why do you know this in such fine grain detail?

Parker Timmons [00:08:27] I've spent the last 10 to 15 years really studying and understanding how the soils function outta school. I actually started my master's degree at U of I and I'm being from southern Illinois. My thesis was sulfur and grass crops and how it would affect them or not. And so as we're going through this process, we knew in wheat that wheat was showing sulfur deficiencies post greenup. And that we were seeing a response not only to plant health, but nitrogen uptake as we were adding sulfur to the crops. And we were doing the same thing with corn. As we were adding sulfur into the mix, we were help utilizing the nitrogen use efficiency that, that the synthetic nitrogen that a grower was putting on was greatly increased. And so once I started getting into my thesis through U of i, it really become prevalent. The lower organic matter soils you have, the less sulfur releasing capacity the soil's gonna give you naturally. And that supplemental sulfur, it needs to be up there as an important factor as what the traditional phosphorus and potash or phosphorus and potassium has thought in the industry.

Vance Crowe [00:09:47] And so you mentioned other things that seem like, you know, metals you wouldn't necessarily need in soil copper, and you know, iron. Why do you need these things in soil? Because

Parker Timmons [00:09:57] They're essential for that plant. Every element has something that happens inside that plant as a mechanism for it to sustain life. And if you pull that element out of there, then that plant no longer has the ability to function with the mechanism inside it that that element is using for. And so if we take that away, that plant can no longer survive.

Vance Crowe [00:10:21] But then why can people do aquaponics? Right? I see all these things on, on, you know, YouTube or whatever, where it's just a bunch of water that they're growing there.

Parker Timmons [00:10:29] Well, they're, they're giving the water fertilizers, right? They're feeding that water a constant mix of nutrition that that plant's uptaking for it to do. Its processes of photosynthesis and, and sugar develop mentation after that.

Vance Crowe [00:10:45] And so when you're understanding these things, how do you know whether that needs more copper or more iron or zinc or,

Parker Timmons [00:10:53] So most of the industry doesn't really focus on those, those micronutrients or they're saying, Hey, borons, a big thing that we're reading in the ag news right now, you know, as a salesperson, we need to be trying to push bore on, right? Because it, it's something that we think that we're lacking in several years ago, zinc, right? Zinc was a big one that they knew corn needed to have as an uptake to be able to help establish the number of kernels that's on that ear. And so zinc and furrow are mixed with the phosphorus was a, was a big component that they were using several years ago. And it seems like every few years a new element comes up, right? And then there's new silver bullet product mentalities that can actually go out to, to try to sell these, to get the levels up, but they'll use soil test. And on ours particularly, we know that there's 17 properties that are on that report, and there's a hierarchy of important importance from top to bottom that we need to look at these things. And so if we can create a healthy soil, most of the time the soils are going to, to feed the plant what it needs. And then as the plants die and decay, that carbon turns back into nutrients. And so really you have a nutrient cycle that happens once the, once you raise a crop, it dies and decays. And I'm not necessarily talking about the material that's left above ground, but the material that's below ground that correlates a lot back into the carbon that's put back in that forms organic matter in the future.

Vance Crowe [00:12:33] So you have a company called Element Ag, correct? So you're one of these guys that like, I'll come out and test your soil. Is there always something wrong with somebody's soil?

Parker Timmons [00:12:43] You know, there's always something that we can focus on with the hierarchy. There's really five main factors that we're gonna look at. And, and understanding how to read that report in this manner is kind of proprietary. There's a few companies out there that understand it, but traditionally what you get back is PH, P and K, right? Maybe organic matters. So really there's only three or four things that a lot of people are used to seeing because that's what the industry focuses on. But when we give our reports back, we wanna make sure that we observe all 17 properties and the interrelationship workings between those to know what state of soil health that we have, pH being the big one, right? If your, if your pH is off, then we understand that different minerals inside the soil have the capability to either being suppressed because pH is too high or too low, or they flourish, which means there's an abundance of them that's released into the soil because the pH is too high or too low. And so having that ideal or optimum range for pH is crucial. The whole industry is not gonna debate that, right? You wanna see soils between six two and six eight for most row crop operations. And so that's that optimum range. And whenever we get phs that are closer to that six eight, you're not just gonna arbitrarily go out there and throw more lime on the field because you know the detrimental effects that it has of getting phs too high.

Parker Timmons [00:14:15] P and K should be no different. That whenever we're looking at the soil test value, there's optimum levels that each one of these components needs or elements needs to be in. And if we can find that proper balance, we know we're creating a good soil health. And based off of some research that was done where it, they actually took a soil sample and made the soil inert, right? So they took all the extractions stronger and stronger AC acids and said, Hey, you know, if you take that soil sample at six and two thirds inches and you create that plow layer, what's that 2 million pounds comprised of? And believe it or not, there's in a silty loam soil, there's 5,200 pounds of phosphorus and there's somewhere in the midst of 35 to 40,000 pounds of potassium of that 2 million pounds. But yet when we look at the numbers on a soil test, they're much, much more minute than that. Because there's actually three pools of nutrition that the soil actually functions with of you have this big pool that's in the mineral form that's like the rock in your driveway. You have a smaller form, which is the fixed or liable pool that has to be mineralized then to go to the smallest pool, which is the solution nutrition pool. And so when we actually do a soil test, we're, we're cutting away at the solution nutrition plus a little bit of what is gonna be easily be pulled off of that fixed pool through the mineralization process is what we're actually testing for in our lab.

Parker Timmons [00:15:53] And so we know that if we have in those optimum ranges, that that plant has what it needs for that year to be able to survive and grow. And that there's an abundance of it coming from the background as we grow things with the robust rooting structure, mineralization actually takes place. The roots die and decay and the microbes die and decay, and then they replenish that mineral pool for future reuse is how the soils will actually function with that. So

Vance Crowe [00:16:21] These all appear to be like giant network effects, right? Where like you pull on one string and it like impacts all the other strings. How, how strong of a grasp do we have on like how soil actually works?

Parker Timmons [00:16:37] That's a great question. For those that don't know very little. I like to think myself, I've taken a lot of time and a lot of effort and got a network of people behind me that have taught me a lot. But even then you, you're talking about several, several thousands and or if not millions of different microbial populations that are inside the soil that they're just now starting to understand that I do believe in the next 20 years you're gonna see advancements in fertilizer recommendations and in agriculture based off of grasping and understanding what these microbes actually do in their functioning properties. You know, they understand now that if you're talking about phosphorus, there's a whole microbial population that deals just in phosphorus. If you're talking about potassium, there's a whole microbial population that deals with just with potassium. If you're talking about molybdenum, there's a whole microbial population that deals just with molybdenum. But

Vance Crowe [00:17:39] What in the world is that?

Parker Timmons [00:17:40] What's that

Vance Crowe [00:17:41] Maum

Parker Timmons [00:17:42] Molybdenum. It's, it's an element that has, that's in the soil that this, the plants need to be able to function, right? And so if you would take meibum, for instance, Vance out of the equation, the corn plant would not survive, right? But yet, very rarely, unless you're working with some intense management people, are they ever gonna add meibum into their, to their fertility or their nutrient program? The guys that are traditional agriculture are definitely not, not having anything like that.

Vance Crowe [00:18:15] So how does soil testing work in today's day and age? Because if I, you know, if, if you don't know anything about farms, you think like, oh, you just walk out on a farm, I'm gonna take a little bit of soil and go back and test it. But it turns out like if you're walking across a field, the soil on one part of the field could be different than five yards later, let alone

Parker Timmons [00:18:34] Yep.

Vance Crowe [00:18:34] You know, a half a mile down that row.

Parker Timmons [00:18:36] So in the mid nineties, GPS technology came about. And so they thought that if we could take and put grids or squares onto these fields, and that's how we sampled it, right? That we could, we could take the lower end of things and get it all raised up to where it needed to be or to the higher end to where the, the field was uniformed. But that's not necessarily how soils, you know, I've got dark hair, green eyes, you've got dark hair, blue eyes. Our eyes are gonna act differently to the sunlight. You know, yours are more sensitive than mine if a brown-eyed person was in the room. Theirs are less sensitive than what ours are. And so what we want to do is we want to take the different soil types, which is just what you were describing, and we wanna understand the chemistry and the characteristics in which those soil types actually function in. And so we've got the software and the data now that we can pull in either NRCS soil type maps or various data or multi-year yield information to create management zones inside these fields. So as we're either doing it by yield or by soil type, which is the chemistry aspect of it, we can actually grid inside those soil types now to make management zones based off the chemistry of what the soil or the topography of what the soil offers in that field.

Vance Crowe [00:20:02] How big are those grids?

Parker Timmons [00:20:03] Usually they're gonna go from one to two and a half to three acres. We're not gonna go any smaller than one, but we're not gonna manage anything larger than three. So anywhere in between those is kind of what we kind of, what we run with.

Vance Crowe [00:20:18] And when somebody has their field sampled right now, and let's say they haven't gotten it, I, I don't know how often do people sample their fields? Normally

Parker Timmons [00:20:25] Traditional industries, about every once every four years.

Vance Crowe [00:20:27] Every four years. So

Parker Timmons [00:20:29] We're, we're more frequent than that just because we want to make sure the changes that need to be made are being made and they're following suit with what our recommendations are. But traditional is about every four years.

Vance Crowe [00:20:42] And so how much changes between 2018 and 2022?

Parker Timmons [00:20:47] A lot can, if you're adding the right amendments. So it, it, it seems today that agriculture as a whole, using lime for instance, we went through a period 60, 70 years ago where the line was very coarse. It was like road chat. It's taken a long time to break down in the soil and to adjust the pH. Then we went to a period where they started pulverizing it more and, and siping it out more to get the fines to where we could have a faster reaction time to making a alarming application to where now we're, we're migrating back more towards that course material. I don't know why, but the stuff that we're getting is, is a lot bigger. It is starting to resemble that road chat again. And so what we're not wanting to do is make an application today and then say, Hey, two years from now, we need to know what that liming adjustment was, right? Because if we just gonna go out and do it again in four years, if it hasn't adjusted, we need to figure out why it hasn't and what's the length of time it's taking to break this down. But the big one being gypsum applications, you can see an immediate effect as you apply gypsum to the field.

Vance Crowe [00:22:07] What is gypsum?

Parker Timmons [00:22:08] So it's a calcium sulfate. So that material we talked about at the power plants with the scrubbers, it, it's what a coal fire power plant will use to, to sift out the sulfur. So then there's a precipitate that falls to the ground and it makes calcium sulfate basically is what it is. And so for a long time the government didn't want, or maybe the EPA didn't want farmers using it for their field because they thought it'd have a negative environmental impact that it wasn't safe to use. The University of Purdue, Dr. Daryl Norton actually ran the erosion control lab there, who's a part of the network that I am associated with, got that style of gypsum coal plant gypsum available use for agriculture purposes to where they know that it increased water infiltration rate, we're getting available sulfur to the field, and that the calcium content actually drives oxygen into the soil, which can create porosity at that time. So it's got the soil health properties of it to where if we're looking at that report and there's a few key items that we're gonna look at that if they're elevated, we need to make this gypsum application to draw those elements down. That way we can take and have a better soil health.

Vance Crowe [00:23:38] So you think that soil that's been around for, you know, millions of years, why is it that we need to like, take care of it or add things to it or take things away?

Parker Timmons [00:23:48] Because that's what agriculture's told them, right? Agriculture has told them that if you don't apply these materials, that the soil would not give you the crop that you're looking for. When in reality, if they can focus on soil health and the aspects of it, we can reduce the amount of synthetic inputs that are needed by focusing on good air water balance, good calcium, magnesium ratios, getting the soil more f flod, more porosity in it compared to just tillage, tillage, tillage compaction and reducing the amount of water infiltrate infiltration rate that we have.

Vance Crowe [00:24:33] That's so I was expecting you to say like, oh, well, as we've added more crops, we've done more row crops, we've taken more off of there, so we have to add more back in. But you're saying

Parker Timmons [00:24:43] That's the traditional way of thinking

Vance Crowe [00:24:45] That you are almost proposing like exercise as health as opposed to like taking more pills?

Parker Timmons [00:24:51] Correct. Okay. Without a doubt. So the way that we view our network of people is that if you go to the doctor, right, they're gonna give you a, they're gonna draw blood. That blood panel is gonna kind of determine your soil health. They're gonna take your temperature and your blood pressure as well. Well, whenever we're looking at our soil report, we view it as the soil's blood panel there. There's something that's the temperature of the soil. There's something that the blood pressure of the soil is on that report. And then the other factors that we wanna see in optimum ranges, right? When you look at your blood, your doctor looks at your blood panel, there's an optimum range for everything that's on that report. They don't want it too high and they don't want it too low optimum range. If your blood pressure's fine or your cholesterol's fine, they're not gonna recommend you take blood pressure or cholesterol medicine. But they say, Hey, if you drop 10 pounds, maybe we don't have to put you on this medicine. Right? So there's your exercise, that analogy that if we can just get the soil to exercise for us, and cropping rotations have a lot to do with it. The more fibrous rooting structures, corn, wheat cover crops, manure, things like that, that we're, we're constantly putting to a field, the more carbon we're replacing in the soil. If a guy's going to run consistent beans soybean after soybean after soybean crop, it doesn't have the carbon return to the soil like those fibrous rooting structures have from a grass crop.

Parker Timmons [00:26:23] So that's where the soil becomes complacent or stagnant. It doesn't have that interaction with that rooting interface and the microbial population to get nutrients to flow the way that, the way that they want to.

Vance Crowe [00:26:39] I guess I didn't realize people did soy on soy. I mean, I know corn on corn. 'cause you can get, you know, during those good years, you could, you could build a legacy off of a couple good years of corn

Parker Timmons [00:26:48] In, in a poor soil conditions. There's a lot of people that will run several soybean on soybean years, especially the further south, you get into the non-ED piece of the world with low organic matters, you know, it doesn't have a lot of water holding capacity. They, they say it's not good corn ground, so they'll constantly raise beans in those fields.

Vance Crowe [00:27:13] I was always under the impression the reason people pla planted beans mostly was to get the nitrogen put back into the soil because they want those, those nodules. Yeah,

Parker Timmons [00:27:24] There, there's some component to that, but it's not as big of an impact as what was let has been led on. Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:27:34] Tell me more about this.

Parker Timmons [00:27:37] So there's a lot of new research that's actually come out that yes, you do get the nodules that, that create and fix the nitrogen, but it's not to the extent of having the leftover nitrogen there for the corn crop for the following year. So you don't, you don't get this big high input flush of nitrogen that's released at the proper time for that corn crop. But with that being said is, is that there's things that you can do with that corn crop to increase the nitrogen use efficiency of the synthetic material that you're putting down with timing and placement right there. And that's a whole different aspect of, of what we do besides just the soil lab.

Vance Crowe [00:28:23] What do you

Parker Timmons [00:28:24] Mean? So we work with a company that founded really the timing and placement of nutrition for, for crops. So if you think of planter attachments and setups, you know, a lot of times when people go to the field, the plant, the planters are bare. It's just a thing that implements, that puts the seed in the ground. They broadcast it dry fertilizer, maybe variable rated if they're a little bit more advanced and a lot of 'em maybe pre-plant their anhydrous for instance. But as technology has come along with the attachments on equipment, now you've got the ability to put something in furrow, right? So right with that seed, meaning

Vance Crowe [00:29:06] If you're, you're, you're cutting open the soil so that way you can drop the seed in and right as you're doing that, you're also putting in a bead of a fertilizer or a pesticide. Correct?

Parker Timmons [00:29:15] Yep. Okay. A bead a bead of fertilizer. That's right. We call it the starter grower finisher mentality. You know, everything's got a lifecycle that that's used. Humans, plants, animals, everything's has a lifecycle. And so when that corn plant or bean plant or wheat plant that are the main crops that we work with are young, we wanna make sure it has the proper nutrition it needs for early root growth and vegetative development. And so that's where that band of inferral nutrition comes into play. Then if you think about the next phase, which is the growing phase, or we call the teenage years of a corn plant to where it gets say V five to V six, to rapid growing phase, the vt, it needs a different set of nutrition. Well, if we take that same planter and at the time of planting, we band nitrogen and sulfur and maybe a little bit of p and k, if the soils are, are calling for it and a band, you get a much higher use efficiency rate out of that band than you do a broadcast application. And so that as that routing structure grows out to that band, whenever it goes into rapid growing phase, it's gonna tap into that band now and say, Hey, I've got the nutrition I need not to delay in growth. I can take off growing and I'm not gonna miss a bad day. Right? Because a lot, in a lot of, a lot of fields today, they're planting 32, 34, 30 6,000 population or corn plants per acre.

Parker Timmons [00:30:50] So what our goal is as stewards is to make sure that all 32, 34, 30 6,000 plants have the same access to nutrition in furrow. And next to the row fence, row to fence row, edge of the field, the edge of the field. If we are just broadcasting it or we're using pre-plan hydrus, then we're, we're just allowing the plant to search for whatever it is that it wants to find. Maybe it finds it, maybe it doesn't. And then that's where you get a lot of variability out in the field. This year you saw a lot of those anhydrous streaks 'cause the soils was cool and wet, then hydras didn't really break down and move very much. So you see these yellow, dark green streaks through the fields.

Vance Crowe [00:31:31] Yeah. So for somebody, that's not anything to do with farming. Occasionally you'll see a tractor out with a big tank. Yep. And they're going out and they're spraying it. And you imagine like, oh, this is just like when I go put Roundup on my bricks everywhere I hit it, you know, the, the thing is just gone. But nitrogen is like a very unusual chemical in this fact that it moves around. It can hold in place, it can even be bound to the soil and then not released when the plants need it. So how in the world do you get your arms around what that nitrogen is gonna do?

Parker Timmons [00:32:02] Depending upon the form in which you're applying, it goes through that nitrogen processing. Right? So a lot of people that have put ammonia on, which would be that NH three that they're talking about in those big white tanks, it's going to transform to ammonium, which is NH four, and then it's gonna convert to nitrate nitrogen as it breaks down then to nitrite, which is either leached or or volatilized out through, through the air. So depending upon the form in which you guys applying it in it, it does different things inside the soil. So

Vance Crowe [00:32:46] A long time ago, I remember somebody told me that when lightning and thunder happens, that that the lightning actually is scattering nitrogen all over the soil. Is this right?

Parker Timmons [00:32:55] Small amounts.

Vance Crowe [00:32:56] Small amounts, but not, not enough to make a difference?

Parker Timmons [00:33:00] Not necessarily, no. 'cause in snowfall when snow falls, it actually picks up some of the nitrogen outta the soil or out of the air, excuse me, and, and brings it to the ground. But it's not enough to really sustain, sustain much, really. It, it all has to do with everything below ground. The rooting structures, the interaction with those microbes and those roots is really the key component of how that plant survives, that rises sphere area. And so it, it's such a complex, such a complex event that happens that it really is hard unless you live and breathe it, to really grasp your arms around it and be able to, to understand what, what happens. Oh

Vance Crowe [00:33:50] Yeah. I mean I, I really am fascinated by trees, right? So I'm always planting 'em and I'm always listening to different things about trees. And somebody pointed out to me one time like, you know, that like we don't actually understand exactly how a tree moves water all the way from the roots way up, like in a giant oak, like a hundred feet up in the air. Because if you had a straw going that far, it doesn't matter what kind of pump you pull on that straw. Like you, you, you can't pull water that far up. Roots are wild, man.

Parker Timmons [00:34:20] They are.

Vance Crowe [00:34:20] What do you know about roots that you think is a fascinating thing that most people don't know?

Parker Timmons [00:34:27] That when we talk about carbon and carbon placement back into the soil, that the rooting structure is what the majority of the carbon gets put back in. Most people think that it's the fodder that's left on top.

Vance Crowe [00:34:43] Yeah. All the, all the cornstalks and all that stuff. What do you call the residue? Yeah, the

Parker Timmons [00:34:47] Residue, right? Most people think that that's where all the carbon gets put back into the soil. But that's actually called particle or organic matter. It has a really high lignin content, real high carbon to nitrogen ratio to where it takes a lot of time for that to break down. But if you're looking below ground, and it's called Mayo mineral associated organic matter, which is the dying decaying microbes, which is called Dres, and the rooting structures themselves, which actually puts a back about 80% of the carbon that's returned to the soil. And so it's not necess the bigger rooting structures we can create, the more we're putting back into the soil. So a 250 bushel corn crop has to have a bigger rooting structure than 150 bushel corn crop. But yet they say we pulled off more grain. Right? Well, in reality, we're actually creating more soil to root surface area to where we're putting back more nutrition than what we take off from a field with a bigger crop than what we do with a smaller crop. Because the 150 bushels doesn't have the biggest rooting structure. It's usually got a smaller rooting structure, smaller stock, smaller ear, right? To where if you got a 250 bushel crop, you got a large rooting structure, a large stock and a large ear to be able to do that. And

Vance Crowe [00:36:13] When you're describing this, I guess my initial conception is that the roots are built from the materials that are in the ground, that the plant is converting. But is it actually that it's grabbing these materials out of the air and putting them into the ground?

Parker Timmons [00:36:28] The rooting structures themself have an interaction with the soil. It's the photosynthesis process. Whenever the plant is taking that sunlight energy and creating photos ate, the majority of that is not actually put through to the green tissue. It's put through the rooting structures to feed the microbes to actually be able to allow mineralization to take place. And so the plants have to have calcium inside the soil for the new rooting structures to continue to grow. So if you take away the calcium and you have poor soil health and compacted soils, you have a much smaller rooting structure compared to if you have a nice calcium based soil, a lot of porosity, not a lot of compaction, right? It's that garden soil or that potting soil that we're talking about that allows the roots to constantly move forward and grow. So if you take away the calcium outta the soil, you're gonna take away life out of the plant.

Vance Crowe [00:37:32] Wow. And when you think about the root health that's going on underneath the, the ground, I mean like this may be something farmers are really familiar with, but I know virtually nothing at all about this. So take a corn plant, how deep are those root structures growing? Like if I look at a, you know, six or seven foot tall corn, how deep is that? Are the roots underneath it,

Parker Timmons [00:37:56] Depending upon the soil environment below? We've done root pits in south central Illinois. We, we found the rooting structures six, seven feet deep. Now, that's not the mass majority of 'em, you know, are probably within the top 24 inches. But they're definitely sending rooting structures, live, rooting structures down deep into that profile to find, to find nutrients and find water.

Vance Crowe [00:38:24] So when you talk about the nutrients and the, and the water that they're grabbing, you know, I always, my daughter is like, you know, talking about plants growing, she's two, right? So this is very rudimentary and I discover very quickly that I actually don't have not not a fifth grade level of understanding about this. Like I don't have a 2-year-old understanding of this. Because the materials that the plant is growing from, is it predominantly pulling those materials out of the soil? Or is it grabbing it from the air? I mean, I know that the energy both, both,

Parker Timmons [00:38:55] Both.

Vance Crowe [00:38:55] So tell me more.

Parker Timmons [00:38:58] So I think, you know, we kind of just touched over it and you mentioned the tree thing earlier. And so when we're talking to, to potential clients or our clients and we're going over their soil book with them, like a doctor would go over their, their blood report with you. We always look out the window and we say, what do you see out there? Well, we see the tree line, right? That's the biggest living plant that they have on their farms. But yet they don't back a fertilizer truck up to the tree line every year and put p and K on there. But yet that tree goes through a lifecycle, it puts on another ring. You can see all the green tissue that it's put out this year. And in fall the leaves will change colors, they'll fall off because that, that cycle has happened. But next year, springtime will happen. The trees will bloom, the leaves will come and, and then they continue that cycle, right? That's what we're talking about. So that tree that you gave that example to earlier is exactly what we're talking about. As the light hits the sun or the light hits the leaves and that photosynthesis process happens and it's sending that energy through the, through the xylem and flow em down to the rooting structures to actually create root exudates to feed the microbes, to allow the microbes to mineralize the nutrient that they need to mineralize to make available to that plant. So the plant can uptake that nutrient, send it back up through the, the xylem and flow to the green leaf tissue to create a new leaf to create a new tate on beans.

Parker Timmons [00:40:33] And then, and then that tate or leaf takes on sunlight, produces photosynth, sends it back down through the rooting structure. And this process just continuously happens.

Vance Crowe [00:40:45] So the way I hear you describing things fascinating by the way, like are, are what you're saying, is it heterodox? Is it just a little different than what everybody else is? Or are you saying mostly what most plant nutrition, soil health people are saying

Parker Timmons [00:41:03] It, if you specialize in the soils and plant nutrition and have an understanding of it, we all talk the same. If you're coming from a person, and I don't wanna pick on individuals in the industry that don't have the understanding, 'cause you don't know what you don't know. They, they don't understand that the, how the soils really function, right? They're, they're looking at the agronomy handbooks, they're looking at the university research that says, you know, if your soil test is this, you have to add this to build it up, then we need to make sure we're adding maintenance. And then you have to make sure you add some on for crop removal when that has been debunked. So if you don't know what you don't know, right? You've, you've only been taught traditional ways, then that's what they go to the marketplace. And that's what we're, that's what we challenge.

Vance Crowe [00:42:04] So if you're an agronomist sitting out in their truck right now about ready to go scout somebody's field and you're like hearing you talk about it, they're saying, what do you, what do you mean?

Parker Timmons [00:42:14] And you're not trained in this capacity and you're on traditional side of stuff, they may not know.

Vance Crowe [00:42:23] So tell me about the, the world of, of soil science then, or you giving advice that's different than what somebody's agronomist does and does that create conflict?

Parker Timmons [00:42:34] We are, and I think it's important to understand where I come from from this component. So after school, my life's always been science, right? In college, I was pre-med, let's say. And, and whenever I was getting ready to graduate, I wasn't a hundred percent sure what I wanted to do. I had went through several clinical hours and realized I didn't want to necessarily interact with humans and the capacity of what those people do, kudos to them. We have to have 'em in the world, right? So I wanted to pivot and go a different direction, but I knew I wanted to stay in the sciences. So I went into agriculture, not coming from it per se. It's really was kind of eye-opening to learn from, from a different perspective of always questioning why are we doing it the way that we're doing it, right? And so outta school, I actually went and worked for a co-op for a brief stint, constantly questioned what I was doing on a daily basis. Why are we feeding these plants broadcast material after I'm walking behind a spreader truck and it's counting, well, there's a pellet, there's a pellet, there's a pellet. Well how is that pellet ever gonna get over to that corn plant? 'cause it's the closest one if we know phosphorus doesn't move inside the soil profile, right? So it seemed like it was a real inefficient way to try to feed a crop. So I had this idea that I wanted to come up with a way to, to feed crop nutrition better.

Parker Timmons [00:44:05] My dad not coming from agriculture, didn't have a clue that there was companies already doing this. That there were planter attachments that guys could already put on the planters. 'cause we're talking 2010 timeframe whenever I graduated. So while at the co-op, I just, I started their precision ag program. We started variable rating based off the information that I had. Well, there was a gentleman that actually came into the office where I was working and I'm in the corner of the room working on mapping to, to write recommendations for customers. And he's talking to my boss at the time about this timing and placement of nutrients and how the soil is more than just dirt. And that we, if we treat it with respect, that it'll give back to us in a capacity that we don't necessarily understand. And that the company that he was working for, you know, this is going on 15 years ago now. Ha and they're still in business today and have been in business 25 years prior to that. That if, if we can treat the soil the way that they were understanding it at the time, that there is a better way for nutrient management. Right? In the back of my mind I'm thinking, well, this is exactly what we need to be doing. 'cause this makes sense, this is common sense at that point in time. And my boss is like, no, it's not what we're gonna do. Well, I knew if I wanted to get out of this and change the way agriculture was done in our area, that I needed a platform in which to do so.

Vance Crowe [00:45:35] But why would he have said no, we're not gonna do it this way. Because he is very traditional,

Parker Timmons [00:45:39] Right? You gotta remember you got the agronomy handbook that was wrote in the sixties that has made people successful for several years that they're following these recommendations and, and guys are making money. They're doing the things that they need to do. They're, they're successful at that point in time. So why rock the boat? Why change something when this has been tradition but yet doesn't make sense, right? Is there a better way to find efficiency? And so whenever I, I broke away from that first job. I decided I was gonna start the soil lab. A friend of mine at that time was a teacher. He had went to school for that, but had the same, the same science mine background that I did. And I knew I needed a lab director for whenever I started the soil lab. So he was a childhood friend of mine. And whenever we, I approached him about it, he was like, Hey, let's make a run at this. We'll either sink or swim, right? And so right out the gate we were learning things, we were getting the labs set up. We had picked up several local ag retailers at the time that we were doing business with. We were trading dollars, right? I was working with their customer base well, a few years into And

Vance Crowe [00:46:55] What were you selling when you first start? You say, I'm gonna, I

Parker Timmons [00:46:57] Wasn't selling them anything. We were just offering them the service of going out and pulling their soils, running through our lab, writing the recommendations for them to put in their spreader trucks to be able to go out and, and make the applications to the fields.

Vance Crowe [00:47:10] Okay?

Parker Timmons [00:47:11] We were kind of working with a few of their customers, but that's what most soil labs are. They're third party hands off. Don't necessarily work with, with individual growers where they will just interpret the results or they'll do the analysis and give the results to somebody else, a crop consultant, an ag retailer. Then they'll interpret the results and, and tell the grower what they need to do. Which, excuse me, tends to be the traditional way of thinking, right? Well you did 150 of dapping potash each last year and you raise good crops, you just wanna do that again this year. Well, you know, prices of p and K are down a little bit and corn prices shut. Why don't we just go ahead and do 200, 200 this year, Mr. Grower, that way we can take and make sure that we're not short in case it's another good crop. Yeah. Okay. Let's do that. Right.

Vance Crowe [00:48:02] 'cause the adage is, any, anytime you're under on the amount of fertilizer that you put, you're leaving money on the table. It's

Parker Timmons [00:48:08] Gonna be a limiting factor. Or the soil's a bank and it has the capability to hold what you put on it for, for future purposes, which isn't necessarily always accurate either. So a few years into having the lab and working with these ag retailers, our algorithms, as I'm learning about the soil health, I didn't know all this stuff coming out. It took me several years to learn my craft. As we're learning how soil health actually works and soils actually function, our algorithms were starting to change and the amount of material that we're applying to the fields are actually starting to reduce. And we're not meeting the ag retailer's business model at that point in time. And so they started to retract on business for, for, you're

Vance Crowe [00:48:56] Putting a lot of jargon in here. What you're saying is you were looking at these and you're saying, actually this year we don't need to put on as much as we put on last year. We're gonna bring that down. And if you do that for a little while, all of a sudden the retailer who's coming to you as a third party to say, Hey, give us the soil tests. 'cause we're gonna use these to bolster why we're selling what we're selling. Now all of a sudden, if they use your tests, they're selling less. Correct.

Parker Timmons [00:49:19] And

Vance Crowe [00:49:20] P and k.

Parker Timmons [00:49:20] Correct. And so they started to retract and they tried, they started pulling back from having us be there.

Vance Crowe [00:49:27] What are those conversations like? How did they even come and tell you that?

Parker Timmons [00:49:30] Well, they didn't, we just didn't get the, we didn't get the phone calls. They just stopped sending us saying, Hey, here's, you know, 500 acres here to pull, or here's 500 acres there to pull. So at that time, a few years into it, the same gentleman walks back through the lab doors and he's like, Hey Parker, I got this idea that if we can take your understanding of soils and we can marry it with nutrient management, and we go grower direct that, that we can do this and, and we can do it. So I hired him on as business development because I understood the science, but I didn't understand the messaging, right? I I was still barely 30 years old at this time.

Vance Crowe [00:50:18] You don't like people or you didn't wanna go out and talk with

Parker Timmons [00:50:20] 'em like that. I didn't necessarily ride, it wasn't my cup of

Vance Crowe [00:50:23] Tea

Parker Timmons [00:50:23] Because once again, I didn't come from agriculture. And so hire him on business development was the best thing that I ever did because he allowed, it allowed me to see how he interacted with people from a cold call standpoint, let's say. And then transition over to myself to explain the science of it all. And so being able to take the, the intense information that we have and then transfer it over to a way that a guy can understand it and make it usable on his operation is, is what's crucial. And so that's what we do. Now. We go out Andro work grower direct, I still have a few ag retail clients, but they understand what we're the, the goal is for the recommendations. They're on board with it. And they're looking at different ways to adjust their business model to, to service their customers, right? Because

Vance Crowe [00:51:20] They, everybody would benefit if it's not, Hey, I'm gonna benefit by selling you more of this product, but if I sell you the right amount of this product,

Parker Timmons [00:51:29] The right amount of product, and then looking at different avenues for their business. So this was probably five years ago that we went grower direct and it was the best thing that we ever did. 'cause we were at a point, you know, we, we had a serious come to Jesus meeting. We were, okay, our business is, is regressing. We're we're going backwards. What are we gonna do to pivot, to change to make sure that this thing continues to grow and to thrive And going out, getting off our butts, which is what most labs do. They just sit back, twiddle their thumbs, wait for the busy season to happen and take our message of soil health and nutrient management to these customers that we could make a sustainable business that would have the initial goal in mind that I wanted to, to change the way agriculture was done in our area to make things much more efficient, to put more money back in guys' pockets, which is what we do for all of our customers and why we've been so successful in the short amount of time that we've actually changed from one thing to the other.

Vance Crowe [00:52:38] So what type of farmer is willing to pay for somebody to come out and test their soils?

Parker Timmons [00:52:44] All of 'em should be,

Vance Crowe [00:52:46] Is it expensive?

Parker Timmons [00:52:48] It depends, right? So if you're going off of price, you pay for what you get. So if you are right, if you're, if you're wanting just organic matter, pH, p and k, it's pretty cheap to do that. But is that guy reading his right reports? You know, if, if you're wanting all 17 properties and somebody to sit down and go over a two hour consultation with you and actually explain each page of that book and the science behind it and why you're doing the things that you're doing and what they're recommending might be a little more costly. But I can tell you the guys that work with us, you know, at the beginning, if they don't know who we are, there's some skepticism. But once they understand it, and once they get a year or two under their belt, 'cause these operations are all big enough now, they all look at things, they all are searching, we can peak enough interest to, to get them to give us some of their tougher acres that, that just doesn't make sense on why they're not producing. And we can help them turn those fields around to where they are not as far as behind. And that's where we gain our trust.

Vance Crowe [00:54:06] And so tell me like, I mean not maybe all farmers should do this, but which farmers are doing this?

Parker Timmons [00:54:15] The ones that are a little more progressive, I kind of call it the granddad dad son mentality. You know, if the granddad's very traditional and he's still calling all the shots on the operation, that operation's probably not for us right now. If, if he's kind of, if the granddad's there, but the dad who's now in his sixties, let's say, is there and he's calling the shots, he's seen some changes and been a little bit more progressive, understands that there's more to than just traditional, then that guy's pretty much on board. He'll give us a few acres to take a look at. If you've got the sun that's in his thirties, right? We've been, we were raised with cell phones in our hands, computer laptops with emails, all the technology that we have, those guys are more adaptive. They're thinking outside the box, how can I become more efficient with what I've got to help me grow my business down the road? And we come in as a team. Never, never do we come in by ourselves. I usually have a business development guy, myself, the biologist, a territory manager supporting roles from some, some from some aspect. Because today agriculture's huge business, right? All of them are millionaires in their own, in their own right because of the asset basis that they have.

Vance Crowe [00:55:39] Yeah. It might not be liquid millionaires,

Parker Timmons [00:55:40] It might not be liquid millionaires, but they're all millionaires based off of their assets that they have. So it's huge business. You know, there's very few and they're still needed small family operations that are 3, 4, 500 acres in my area, right? A lot of them are 1500, 2000, 3000, 4,000, 10,000, 25,000 acre farmers or growers that are trying to find efficiencies around every corner that they can because of the size of the operation that they are. You know, and we sit down and look at guy's book and we're like, Mr. Grower, this is a million dollar conversation. You follow our recommendations compared to what you're traditionally doing, you're talking a million dollars in one year

Vance Crowe [00:56:31] Over how many acres is that conversation? A million dollars

Parker Timmons [00:56:34] That at, at where fertilizer prices were at last year, that's at about 10 to 11,000 acre grower.

Vance Crowe [00:56:41] And so, okay, well that's, you're talking about the top, you know, 1% at 10,000

Parker Timmons [00:56:46] Acres. Well we have, we have several of those in our part of the world, you know, southern Illinois, maybe south central Illinois, they have several large operations that they're, that are working in the area. You know, the farther north you get, the smaller the operations seem to be. You do have some large entities, but you have a lot of those 1500 to 2000 acre growers

Vance Crowe [00:57:11] And it's a million dollar conversation because you could cut down the amount they're spending on on certain chemistries and you could bring up the value of the amount of crop that they're growing.

Parker Timmons [00:57:23] It is really just on the first part of it. So really if you go back to what I said earlier on the optimum levels and we focus on that and not traditional, Hey, I gotta put on 200 pounds of dap and potash every year. And we look at those soil tests and say, Hey, you're in optimum ranges. Which philosophy are you gonna believe here? Right? Well, most people's big concern is, well I can do that for a year or two, right? But then I'm gonna deplete my soils and I have to put a bunch back on. But then it goes back to, well, are you focusing on soil health with the use of gypsum air water management, finding the right ratios on the soil test. And then it goes back to the composition of soils that we talked about prior to where you've got 5,200 pounds and 35,000 pounds of phosphorus and potassium in every six and two thirds inches or acre pile layer. But that acre pile layer doesn't stop at one or two or three or four, right? It can continues to go down until you get to bedrock. So now let's say it's two feet deep. Well now you've got four times that amount. So now you're talking over 10,000 pounds of phosphorus in that rooting zone that goes down to six feet. And now you've got over 120,000 pounds of potassium in that rooting zone. So

Vance Crowe [00:58:46] Let me see if I understand. You're saying I'm going to farmers and I'm telling them, hold up. I know this practice that you guys have had for decades is to go out and put nitrogen on the soil every year. Because if you don't,

Parker Timmons [00:59:00] Nitrogen's a different component.

Vance Crowe [00:59:02] Okay,

Parker Timmons [00:59:02] We're, I'm really talking more about phosphorus and potassium back and potash. Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:59:07] P and K, but

Parker Timmons [00:59:07] We can help with fine tuning nitrogen use efficiencies based upon the way that we implement it.

Vance Crowe [00:59:14] Okay. So you're saying we recommend that instead of you going out and putting this potash that you're doing every year or every few years, that you're putting a lot of it on there? I don't, I have no idea what this stuff costs. I know we can really only get it from Canada right now,

Parker Timmons [00:59:27] But right now you're probably, prices have come down. But in the height of last fall when people were buying it, it was almost $700 a ton. And

Vance Crowe [00:59:36] How many tons is somebody putting out there? Well,

Parker Timmons [00:59:39] A lot of people are putting on 200 pounds per acre. So you're talking 35, what would that be? Well, this is significant amount of money.

Vance Crowe [00:59:51] So thousands per acre is what you're saying?

Parker Timmons [00:59:53] Well, so on 10 acres it would be 700 pounds. So you're talking $70 an acre.

Vance Crowe [00:59:59] Okay.

Parker Timmons [00:59:59] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:00:00] And so then you're saying if you don't put that on, don't worry. Because those roots are gonna grow deeper. They're gonna go get what they need and just hold off. Don't put that on there. And by the way, when you do that, the root structure is gonna be bigger. And then you're gonna be absorbing more carbon. You're gonna have the, the titration that you talked about or being able to pull the, the soil out. So water gets in there deeper. So by not doing this practice that is standard, you're going to make a big change to your field for the better. Correct.

Parker Timmons [01:00:31] Based off of the soil reports that we get back from our lab. If the reports come and they're in that low range, right? Non optimum and they're on the low side, we're gonna make the recommendation to make the application. But it goes back to the blood pressure and cholesterol, right? Potassium and phosphorus is not number one and two on the hierarchy of importance. It's down the chain. I'm not gonna give it because it's kind of proprietary information and we just don't want a lot of people understanding that. But if we can have the first four in line and then you've got phosphorus and potassium, if the first four are outta whack, most likely your phosphorus and potassium's outta whack. But if you can get the first four in line, then you've got good soil health, water permeability, oxygen driving into the soil, then those pools of nutrition that I described earlier comes into function a lot faster to constantly release nutrition to the soil. And if you're creating those bigger roots, you're replenishing that pool of mineral nutrition. So it's a constant cycle as it goes around.

Vance Crowe [01:01:44] So your biggest, strongest, smartest critic is listening to you right now. What is their, what is their criticism back to you about, about, you know, the way you, your philosophy

Parker Timmons [01:01:57] That we're always gonna mine the soil that, that if we don't put it on, maybe not year one, maybe not year two, but if we don't put the p and k on, not nitrogen, 'cause we have to have that for a corn crop, we can be more efficient than what we are if guys aren't doing the things that we ask them to do. But really it's the p and k and that you're gonna mine your soils, but it goes back to not knowing what you don't know. Right? We can get into a lot more depth of information. Like I said, some of the stuff's proprietary, and I don't necessarily want to divulge that to let it be used against me from a competitive purpose. But I've got customers that have been with me for over 10 years that have reduced their p and k inputs by 80% every year as long as they're focusing on soil health and making the amendments that I ask them to make. They're raising better crops every year, year after year after year, their soils are becoming more forgiving and healthier. And we just went through a drought, right? The last four weeks. We haven't had much rain in our area. Well, yesterday or Sunday we got three tenths in some areas. Some areas got a half an inch. Would you rather have 80% of what the rainfall you got go into the soil profile and only 20% run off to the ditch? Or would you rather have 30% get into the profile and 70% run off to the ditch, right?

Parker Timmons [01:03:33] Coming out of this droughty timeframe, that's what soil health does, right? If we can fun focus on the properties that we know drives water and oxygen into the soil for that air water balance, then we know we've got better results whenever it comes to rainfall, then out of a stressful period of time.

Vance Crowe [01:03:53] So speaking of water, running off, one of my like pet theories out there in the world is that the amount of pattern tiling that we've done to our ground is, we're gonna look back on this and think that it had a lot more negative drawbacks than what we, what we originally thought. How does that idea strike you?

Parker Timmons [01:04:15] You know, we don't have a lot of pattern tiling in our part of the world. We are branching out, we're getting clients in Iowa and Wisconsin and Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri. So we're, we're branching out in, in quite a big way just in my network itself. So we're seeing it more and more. And I think if done improperly and people aren't using more of the sustainable practices of agriculture that they, they will, they will have some of that, right? Like fall,

Vance Crowe [01:04:52] Fall. Like I, you have to do that. There's so much water coming off of those fields so much faster than they ever did. And I say like, okay, you get into the fields two weeks earlier. I understand why you would want that. But there, there, this cannot be without cost this, but

Parker Timmons [01:05:06] It all has to do with timing and practices prior to that, right? So if I'm putting on fall applied anhydrous and I have a ab abnormal warm wet winter, then the likelihood of me leaching out nitrogen through those tile lines greatly increases, right? Phosphorus isn't gonna move that much in the soil. It's more of an erosion base control. So your hills and places like that where you can reduce the amount of erosion's, gonna keep phosphorous from getting into the streams. Potassium, it lives in and out of the clay layers. So really the soil is gonna absorb it and release it with, with moisture as it kind of goes. But you know, the big thing with, with with tiling is the nitrogen component of it, right? And so that's where if guys are have that pattern tile and they need to be focusing on the soil quality and the timing of nitrogen applications to, to try to reduce the amount of runoff that's coming through those tile lines as those big rain events happen and as soils warm up and they're trying to push the envelope, it makes, it just makes more sense to try to, to give it to the plant the closest you can go. You know? 'cause right now I think the industry standard's 1.1 or one pound of n per bushel produced, right? So if you want 200 bushel of corn, a guy needs to put on 200 pounds of end to do so. Well, if he, if he migrates over and does the timing and placement of nutrients, we can get down to six, maybe seven tenths of a unit, maybe even lower with guys that are focusing on soil health of a unit of end per bushel, per produce.

Parker Timmons [01:06:49] So instead of saying, I need a hundred or I need 200 pounds of end to do 200 bushels, I may only need 140 pounds of nitrogen to raise 200 bushel corn. Right? Plus the, the organic matter, you know, the more organic matter you have, the more nitrogen releasing power of those those soils have. So there's a lot of instances where guys will put on 200 pounds, but they'll raise 250 bushel corn. Right? Well, where's it at? Where's it coming from? It's coming from the soil and the nitro, the natural release of nitrogen through the organic matter. So,

Vance Crowe [01:07:24] So you're reading one of these blood panels, these soil tests and you know, if I'm going to my doctor, there's gonna be some stuff he's gonna tell me that I don't really want to hear. 'cause now I gotta, I gotta deal with a problem. What's the thing that you, you have to go, well we need to talk about this thing here. It's,

Parker Timmons [01:07:42] It's that gypsum application. That gypsum application is the big thing that, 'cause it's a, it's a pain. None of the co-ops wanna apply it. Very few I should say wanna wanna mess with it. It's a pain to spread. They, they release to where a guy can store it more frequently, but it's not like, it's not that coarse material that spreads easily. It's more like a talcum powder where it can bridge up if done wrong. But there's a lot of people out here that's successfully spreading it because they're investing in the equipment to do so. You know, and that is kind of the big component of what we have to get guys to buy into that you have to make these gypsum applications to follow these recommendations. If not, you're not focusing on your, your compaction problems. You're not focusing on your over application of potassium, which is also compounding with the amount of chloride that guys are putting on these fields, collapsing their clay layers. You might as well continue to farm traditionally, right? Because you're not focusing on soil health at that point in time. You're just trying to save dollars and eventually it could bite you in the rear end. So, so looking at that report and having that, that gypsum discussion and looking at those guys dead in the eyes and say, if you don't take anything out of this conversation today, take this, this has to be done for what you're trying to get accomplished to work.

Vance Crowe [01:09:14] And so like what kind of equipment do you have to have to put gypsum out there? The

Parker Timmons [01:09:18] Spreaders, you know, they make lime and gypsum spreaders. I don't know the company, there's several companies that make them, but they kind of look like a litter spreader. They got a, a wider gate on the back of 'em. They got wider change, they kind of rotate a little bit slower. The sides of the spreaders are steeper so it flows a little bit easier. But I've got clients have got ag leader or new leader beds and that are using it and they spread a thousand acres a year with it and have no problem. So it's just inconvenient. 'cause whenever you go to talking about putting on one to two tons of material compared to 200 pounds of material, right? It takes a lot longer to do that. So it's almost like a convenience factor. Well, I don't wanna do that. It's too hard at work. It takes too much time. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:10:11] Time and time is all you have, right?

Parker Timmons [01:10:13] But if, what's your time worth, right? Is it worth being able to reduce the amount of p and KA guy applies if the soil report says so and you get better water infiltration rate, which is gonna create bigger root masses, which is gonna give you more production at the end of the year for just a little bit of an inconvenience upfront. Or you just wanna continue to do what you do and collapse your soils. Because you know, most producers wanna pass their legacy on to the next generation, but if they continue to farm, traditionally they're compounding the problem for the next generation. So at some point in time that dynamic shift is gonna have to change. And you're gonna have to break that cycle of, well that's what my granddad did, that's what his dad did. That's what my dad did. So that's what I'm gonna do.

Vance Crowe [01:11:02] Well, in all my time in agriculture, I've never heard of anybody talking about spreading gypsum. How long until this becomes ubiquitous? Is it? And I'm just behind the times

Parker Timmons [01:11:12] It's in areas, right? So if you don't have those coal fire power plants, they do have mine gypsum, like how they mine lime. But with regulations and, and people trying to shut down coal power plants, like, it's really critical that guys get their soils in balance now because you know, if, if something calls for two tons of gypsum and you postpone it and eventually the problem compounds long enough that you have to drive four hours away to truck it, or like in our part of the world it's 45 minutes away with the power plant that's closest to us, aren't you better off getting it fixed Now knowing that down the road maybe only need a quarter of a ton compared to two tons. And so now the four hour trucking doesn't seem as bad because you're gonna cover more acres with that, with that load.

Vance Crowe [01:12:06] So you also test water too, right?

Parker Timmons [01:12:09] We, we got into water testing about 10 years ago. So we had a local state ran lab in our hometown that tested potable water for municipalities and rural water districts. The state shut it down about the same time that I was opening up the soil lab. And so we were fortunate enough to, to allow the state to come in and train us up as a new lab to where we test water for, for cities and municipalities and rural water districts for total coliform and e coli to make sure that the water that they're using outta their taps is, is safe.

Vance Crowe [01:12:50] So what do, what do you know about drinking water that most people don't know

Parker Timmons [01:12:56] That there's usually not bacteria in it? I mean,

Vance Crowe [01:13:00] That's not very confident. Yeah,

Parker Timmons [01:13:02] Well, you know, there's the occasion a lot of times the way that you have to remember that because they're taking out of a faucet or something like that, that if we do have a positive sample come through, it's usually due to the lack of cleaning that happens inside. But everybody in Illinois water gets tested at least every other week, if not more frequent for this. So their water's constantly being looked at to make sure that there's, there's not live bacteria inside it that can make 'em sick. So

Vance Crowe [01:13:36] You're doing bacterial testing, you're not doing the Detroit style lead testing.

Parker Timmons [01:13:40] Yeah. You know, that was a big thing that, that a lot of people kind of asked for, but there was a lot, a lot of regulations and, and red tape to jump through on that. Plus they only have to do it so often, which we didn't see there being a need for it in our a s so we're just doing bacterial testing in, in that lab.

Vance Crowe [01:14:01] And so you get to see a lot of like different municipalities, water treatment facilities, huh?

Parker Timmons [01:14:07] We don't, they bring them to us.

Vance Crowe [01:14:08] Oh,

Parker Timmons [01:14:09] They have a, they have a collector that brings them in. So they'll have to go through different stages of their distribution and pull samples from a state designated area. Like maybe it's the school and the firehouse and the police station, right? If they're not all next to each other, they'll use those, those areas to do it or,

Vance Crowe [01:14:34] And do they ever pop positive?

Parker Timmons [01:14:37] Very rarely. You know, if they put in, if they have a water main break and they gotta shut the, shut the line down, they'll do boil orders. You'll see 'em on the news or on the radio where it says, Hey, this block's on a boil order due to the water main break. And so then they'll bring us the sample, we'll run it through our lab, and then if it doesn't come up with any bacteria, the water's good to go. They can continue running. But if it, if it pops positive right, then you have the chance of getting sick. So that's why they, they give the boil order because the chlorine content that constantly runs through the lines, that's it. The little bit in the water keeps the bacteria from being alive inside of it. So,

Vance Crowe [01:15:27] So the other testing that you do is in the cannabis industry, what needs to get tested in cannabis? We're

Parker Timmons [01:15:33] Getting into that. So we're going through the lab build out right now and we're getting ready to go through validations here in the next few months. But in the state of Illinois, they're regulating six different things. You have to have the potency, mycotoxins, bacteria, terpenes, residual solvents, and heavy metals are the big thing that happens. And so once the, once they have harvested their crop, we get a sample brought in to the lab and then we'll analyze it for those things to make sure that there's no heavy metals or, or really bacteria, yeast, mold, stuff like that growing on the flour. Then it'll go to the processor and once the processor makes their materials out of it, we can receive those samples back to run them through the same panel to make sure that anything that happened during the processing timeframe didn't contaminate the, the medication or whatever the guy wants to call it. And then once we give them their certificate analysis, we kind of label checked it to make sure, yeah, it's got this terpene profile, it has no heavy metals, it's at this potency, then they can market it to the dispensaries for, for consumption. So really we're kind of playing FDAA little bit and we're just wanting to make sure the people that want to participate in that industry have a safe and pleasant experience in doing so.

Vance Crowe [01:17:03] What's harder about doing all this testing in cannabis than you originally thought?

Parker Timmons [01:17:07] Putting it together. I started this project about two years ago and so, you know, it, it's gotta be very clean. You can do renovations on facilities, but it's almost better to build one out new, in my opinion, the equipment. We run some of the same equipment in our soil lab. So the equipment company that we work with has been tremendous to, to kind of work through. And now the personnel finding qualified people to work inside the lab that you trust that is gonna do the job that you want to do.

Vance Crowe [01:17:47] And because testing's all about the details, right?

Parker Timmons [01:17:49] It's all about the details. You have to have very, very strenuous detailed oriented people and no matter what lab we're discussing, and the big thing is, is sample collection. If you, if you collect poor samples, not good quality and you send those to the lab, well you can expect those results to come back, mis misunderstood or misrepresented to the, what the sample is gonna be. But if you have good sample collection and protocols all the way through on every sample, and then the same expectation inside the lab, which we do, then the results that you're giving out are to the best ability that they have. So really focusing on those detailed oriented people and the people that care about their job and want the company as a whole to succeed. Right. Is is what you're looking for in any of the businesses that are in operation.

Vance Crowe [01:18:47] So as you oversee three separate businesses, do you enjoy being a, you know, the, the head of all, all, all three of these things?

Parker Timmons [01:18:56] I do. I like the challenge. You know, my wife jokes about, well, what's next for you? You know, you don't even have the cannabis lab up and going and you're already thinking about the next thing and what the future may hold. To me, it's about the challenge. I, I, I like puzzles, I like putting the pieces of things together, getting them operational and then allowing them to continue to operate with, with overseeing them, putting people into place and what their roles are is a lot of fun. To me it's, it's like playing a chess game, but just, I do enjoy it.

Vance Crowe [01:19:32] And how do you find the role? I mean, do people find you to be heretical in the ag space or you a, a target for ridicule or for controversy?

Parker Timmons [01:19:41] You know, we really have kind of flown under the radar for some time. This is really the first time in a public setting

Vance Crowe [01:19:50] Outside

Parker Timmons [01:19:50] Of

Vance Crowe [01:19:51] My

Parker Timmons [01:19:51] Group of people that I've really kind of put what we do out there. And so, you know, we, we've been kind of the silent killers for a, a long time that just pick people off one by one. And we're not for everybody. And we understand that and not everybody's gonna think the way that we think, but we're for the people that want to get better with what they have that can think outside the box and has a different, different idea of the way agriculture's supposed to be done. Right. People, that's how the world works. Everybody's got their own ideas and beliefs and what that guy does on his operation is what he's trying to get accomplished. You know, they've got a banker, they got a lawyer, they got an accountant, they've got a insurance agent. A lot of them don't have that soil and nutrient management guy. But yet we can, we can adjust the balance sheet from our decisions more than any of these other three or four people can.

Vance Crowe [01:20:50] That's a pretty bold statement.

Parker Timmons [01:20:51] It's true. It goes back to that million dollar conversation. If he listens to the ag retailer, he's gonna put a million more dollars in his crop this year than what I told him he needed to do. Which, which one of those other four can do that?

Vance Crowe [01:21:06] Yeah, no. Well, and if, if your attorney saying is telling you that, saying like, it's probably not a good decision,

Parker Timmons [01:21:10] It's probably not a good decision, right? And so we can, we can, with the recommendations that people make on the nutrient management and the fertilizer side of stuff can affect the crop. Now you got the chemistry guy, if he doesn't know what he's doing, can screw a crop up, up, but you got crop insurance for that right? To where this swings one way or the other. We're we're just as influential as as many of the other ones on the farm. So

Vance Crowe [01:21:36] If somebody heard this and they're either inflamed because they think you threw the agronomist under the bus or they're super excited about having their own soil sampling person, where where should they go to to contact you?

Parker Timmons [01:21:52] Google element ag on the internet. I think it's element ag.org is a great place to, to start out. I don't, don't quote me on that. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:22:02] We'll put that in the show notes.

Parker Timmons [01:22:03] Yeah, don't quote me on that 'cause I really don't know my own website, but That would be a great place to start to reach out for us. And, and it goes directly to my email and we can have conversations based off of that good or bad, right? Because we're all here as educators to learn and, and to move and maybe some guys experience something that's the total opposite of what I'm talking about that says, no, I did this and this is what we responded to, but then we can have that conversation, well did you think of it this way? Or did you actually do this with that? And it's a way to educate and, and move the ball with, with somebody else.

Vance Crowe [01:22:40] Yeah, man, that's the whole life, right? Yep. Like anybody that says like, I already know it's they're, they're gone. Right? But there's, it's great to have people criticize you and give you good feedback and Well, Parker man, thank you so much for coming by today.

Parker Timmons [01:22:54] I appreciate the opportunity this has, this has been a lot of fun.