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Are Your Microbes Dead? Free Lab Testing for Regenerative Farmers · Cereal Killers

• 0:00
  Hello there and welcome back to Serial Killers, the podcast all about the pest,
• 0:05
  diseases, weeds and other challenges of growing arable crops. I'm your host, Dr.
• 0:10
  Russell Sharp of Utrema Limited and we make novel fertilizers,
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  biostimulants and biopesticides.
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  However, one of the things we do not manufacture or sell is microbial products.
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  And I used to sell microbial products
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  in the past and there are a few reasons why
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  i don't currently or we don't currently i'll
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  explain those i'll also explain the main reason i'm
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  on this podcast is i'm going to offer a free new service
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  to all regenerative farmers so stay tuned for that so the
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  reason we don't sell microbial products is because they are always dying so
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  like all living things that always dying so they when i buy them i get anxiety
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  that i've purchased several thousand pounds worth of raw material that is just
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  going to die there on my shelves and if i don't sell it quickly then i potentially
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  either have to get rid of it or i have to trick farmers
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  into buying dead product which i don't want to do once i
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  had a customer who insisted on me selling a product i'd come into a company
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  they were selling this anti-nematode bacteria from america a guy called john
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  john lbs his name was he was supplying it and i said it's out of date it's been
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  been on the shelves for several years it's going to be dead.
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  And the customer said, I don't care. I need it. And he got really upset.
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  So I sold it to him on the understanding that the product was dead.
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  And then I went on holiday for two weeks, cycled from Land's End to John O'Groats
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  and the CEO of the company and.
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  Phoned me up and said, I've given that customer a refund because he said the
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  product didn't work and you promised it it would.
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  I said, I did not, but thanks for giving the refund. We're now,
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  you know, tens of thousands of pounds out of pocket because.
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  You know, the product died.
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  And that's one of the things, the reasons I don't sell microbial products.
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  The other reason is that we don't have a fermenter.
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  We don't have the production facilities to do it. So what we would be doing
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  is buying in and then blending.
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  And that's what a lot of microbial companies do. they buy
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  from other people and the problem is that the supply chain can get extended
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  and get diluted but like hard drugs they
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  can get cut at every step of the
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  supply chain so i always suggest if people
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  come in and say they want a microbial biostimulant then i will suggest people who
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  i have seen their fermenters i've seen where they make
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  the their bioreactors where they they produce
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  them there are a few in the uk and other people they
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  say they do this but actually when you go to their site all
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  they have is warehouse racking and nothing else no mixers
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  or anything so always very cautious i wouldn't buy
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  any biostimates unless i'd seen the actual manufacturing facility
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  and this comes on to my next point there's a lot of bad
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  players and so if you have
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  you can produce the best microbial product in the
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  world but you're always up against people just
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  selling dirty water and they muddy the waters
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  they muddy the market and they give it a bad name people say snake oil and things
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  like this and so and we've had this where we've got a fantastic biofungicide
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  called chitosan but some of our best customers have stopped using it because
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  somebody's promised them that
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  this microbial product just five grams per hectare will work far better so.
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  I want to improve the biostimulant sector.
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  And the one way we do that is not through regulations and DEFRA's current move
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  to register all biostimulants because that's nonsense. What I'm going to do
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  is I'm going to offer a free service to all regenerative farmers and growers.
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  And you can send in any microbial product you've purchased in the last, say, year.
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  And we will stick it under a microscope. We'll stain it.
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  We'll look for viability. we'll look we'll identify the
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  microbes we'll to some extent quantify them also on
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  agar plates and culture them see if they're culturable and this
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  will tell you whether you've been you have purchased a bacterial product a fungal
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  product as it states and whether it's alive and whether it is the one that you
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  said it was was it a if it was a bacillus it should be bacillus shaped for example
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  it should stain in the way that bacillus bacteria do.
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  So this is free to any farmer, not just current and past customers of Eutrema.
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  We would love all regenerative farmers to use our fantastic biofungicides,
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  our fantastic fertilizers and biopesticides, biostimulants, but we understand
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  that this is not going to be the case. But if we can improve.
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  The standard across the board then that's
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  got to be a good thing so i'm going to offer this free of
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  charge i'm going to be working in conjunction with the natural northampton natural
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  history society and their experts in microbial staining
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  and things like this so hopefully we will we'll
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  clean up the industry in that respect and when people say
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  oh it's just bugs in a jug you can say well actually i got the full
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  report back from you treatment they said that this product contains bacillus
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  they said it was a highly concentrated source example here
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  are the pictures of my microbes under the microscope aren't
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  they fantastic here's a picture of them a video of
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  them wriggling around and and doing their
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  thing and you can have far more confidence that the significant
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  amount of money you spent on them wasn't wasted this all
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  spurred on by a customer james tarry of vt farms
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  in kettering he bought something from biostimulants.com some
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  microbial products and i've never heard of them before based in
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  london which is not traditionally a big area for
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  biostimulants and he's got he sent he's brought
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  along a few samples when he was buying some potassium silicate from us and and
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  said could you analyze these for us and i said yeah i can do
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  but that spurred me on to think well actually this is a service we can
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  offer to all regenerative farmers and growers not just even arable.
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  Farmers sports turf hydroponics anyone
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  who's selling microbial products be warned your products may
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  be analyzed by us and we may call you out and
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  as you'll know if you know anything from me i'm all
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  for calling out bad players like icl
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  when they sell white phosphorus for military use or and sponsor battalions of
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  the israeli army that burned down greenhouses and things like that so yeah i'm
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  not afraid of a fight i'm not afraid to call out bad players but i'm also not
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  afraid to recommend competitors products when they are good.
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  A microbial product we've always recommended is Biomex Starter from Omex. And.
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  We've also recommended legume technology in nottingham
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  for their microbials rhizobia for like nitrogen fixing
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  peas and beans so yeah we're
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  both sides really and hopefully to raise the
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  standard of the fertilizer industry across the board so hopefully
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  this is something you'll get behind and you've got some samples send them into utreema send
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  them to our new address in Lutterworth don't send them to our old
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  address in Daventry and yeah hopefully we
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  can get some really exciting results and share them with the wider
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  community in the regenerative space okay hope
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  this is of interest and any questions comments or corrections then let me know
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  i'm always happy to change things and and address comments thank you very much
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  for listening and check out utreema.co.uk for all those fantastic products i
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  said that we are the primary manufacturer of rather than just a reseller reformulator
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  or re-botler thank you very much goodbye.