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Protecting Soil Biology on Regenerative Farms · Cereal Killers

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Music.
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Welcome back to serial killers the podcast all about
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the pests diseases and weeds of arable
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crops today's podcast is a
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recording of a talk i gave at lancaster university yesterday
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it was at their farming innovation forum and
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the title of my talk was protecting soil biology on
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regenerative farms which i think a lot of the people
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in agriculture who listen to this podcast will be interested in it's about
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50 minutes long and if you're interested in the slides they'll
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be on youtube so this recording you'll
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also find on youtube with the slides so if you've got any questions
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let me know it's a fairly controversial talk lots
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of controversial points in there so um not everyone's going
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to agree with me but hopefully it will spark debate thank you
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very much thank you very much so i got my doctorate from lancaster university
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and i worked here for a number of years and i've worked on ornamental plants
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however about three years ago moved more towards arable crops because it was
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much more of an open door.
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People were very receptive to new ideas. And so I started Utrema,
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which is Latin for wasabi, just because I like wasabi.
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That's why it's called me. And it sounds like an agrochemical company, doesn't it?
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We founded in 2020 in lockdown. So I was the only person who opened an office in lockdown.
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We're based in Daventry, which is the epicentre of black grass, which is a major weed.
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And we serve agriculture, horticulture hydroponics wastewater
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sectors and we focus on chemistry that
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involves getting things into solution that normally aren't aren't
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supposed to go into solution and then biologicals so
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chemicals and biologicals which is like the biological equivalent
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of chemicals and i say i own this
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company i've worked in biologicals for a number of
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years and regenerative farming
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is a major growth area not to be
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confused with organic farming which is just not using synthetic
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pesticides it's a lot more receptive to
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scientific principles than organic farming and the
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certain core key principles in regenerative
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farming and some people treat these as the law
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others think that you know you depends on your
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local situation which ones you use but then the ones that
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affect soil health focus on minimizing soil
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disturbance so things like no-till mintil
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and direct drilling use of biologicals before or instead of chemicals so maybe
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like integrated nutrient management integrated pest management i'm going to
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talk about the quality of the advice that are given to farmers which is very
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important cover crops and increasing soil organic matter content.
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So minimising soil disturbance, the perfect structure for a soil is a crumb
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structure like a biscuit.
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And so you want to be avoiding things like pans, where when you cultivate the
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soil to a certain depth, you get a pan and then that pan impedes drainage.
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Whether you impedes drainage, you're going to get flooding. And flooding is
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normally deleterious to soil biology, the lack of oxygen.
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And not only does that result in anaerobic microbes that are not necessarily beneficial to the crop,
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it's a change in the whole microbial and biological community that happens when
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that occurs so you want to avoid flooding where possible you also want to reduce erosion,
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protect biological networks so you can imagine if you're plowing a field up
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all those fungal networks that are developed just are destroyed instantly but
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there are other networks other than fungal networks there's biofilms and things
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that we don't know about or know much about obviously if you're reducing diesel usage there's a carbon,
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impact there and there are pros and cons from a pest and disease perspective so.
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For every benefit of of of
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no-till or mintil from a pest and
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disease perspective there's always a you know there's always a disadvantage for
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another pest and disease that's the thing in farming for
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every you know for you'll say like you know delay your drilling because
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of this problem and then there's another problem that appears from delay
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delaying your drilling some crops it's not possible to
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use things like mint hill no-till or direct drilling
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so there was a project a couple of years ago looking at no-till potatoes and
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they just and funnily enough it didn't work because potatoes you need you need
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the to build up the soil around the plant and you also at the end of the day
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you need to get those potatoes out of the ground and that's not easy if you haven't plowed the soil,
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So there's a lot of area and research needs to be done by agricultural engineers still on that area.
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So it says the use of biologic instead of chemicals is always going to be a benefit.
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I can't imagine a situation where putting more chemicals is going to help soil
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biology, but unless it's carbon...
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Biologicals fall into three main areas there's biostimulants biopesticides
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and biofertilizers biostimulants are things
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that you add of biological origin that improve the
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crop's growth not through nutrition
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and not through having a pesticidal effect
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so there's somewhere in separate biopesticides obviously
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have an effect on a pest or a disease and biofertilizers are
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adding nutrition and then these three
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three categories can the actual
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compounds or things can be the living
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organisms fall into different areas so there's obviously the microbials
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the fungi the bacteria nematodes beneficial nematodes
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compost teas which are like a a
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brew of lots of different microorganisms protozoas
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anthrax whatever you want in
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that tea can be put in there whatever you don't want can get
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in there so and you can seed them with different microbes
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so those are microbials and
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chitosan that's an area where at utrema we specialize in but there's also things
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like carbohydrates molasses plant extracts is a major area so things like knotweed
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extract is a major biopesticide used in america yucca extract is something that
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we use as a wetting agent for soils.
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There's fish hydrolysates, which are a fertiliser, humic acids,
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which are a biostimulant, and seaweed extracts, which are biostimulants and biopesticides.
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And it's another area where Utremo works on and does a lot of research on.
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So if we look at chitosan, chitosan is the soluble form of chitin that's in
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all fungal cells and all insects.
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So plants have evolved to detect it as non-self. It's not in plants. And...
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Induces plant defense mechanisms so they've evolved
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it so that when a fungus tries to attack it detects the chitin or the chitosan
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however fungi are then evolved on top of that to turn off those defense mechanisms
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so they produce enzymes and carbohydrates and metalloenzymes that,
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silence the plant's ability to detect it so what
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we do is we go on and spray chitosan everywhere and turn on
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those plant defences again and overcome those fungal mechanisms
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it also feeds beneficial microbes it flocculates
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the spores it stops the spores from being spread from the
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disease and it forms a physical layer
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over over the plant so like a micro layer
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so that's very different to the biocidal
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fungicides that you would be putting onto a crop and you imagine they may go
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onto the foliage they might go into the soil and now i'll have a dramatic impact
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on the biology of the soil and the life of the soil and it's an EU basic substance
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this is one of the fantastic examples where EU regulations has made my life easier,
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there are not many and that is one of them so I'm very thankful to that.
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The other area where we work on is blackgrass pathogen spores.
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And this is a massive area of research for us.
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And we developed it over the last few years. And it's culturing a type of powdery
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mildew and a type of rust that attacks blackgrass, which is a weed that causes
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billions of pounds worth of damage to arable crops in England.
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And we seed the fields early on in the spring with the spores.
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And they hopefully develop a disease and then the cereal will overtake them
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and you'll be eradicated from our blackgrass, which has massive potential.
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It's got potential to reuse herbicide use on arable land and obviously make
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these situations economical.
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In some areas, blackgrass could destroy the profitability of a farm. It's that stark.
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And where we're based in Daventry, this is a field here just had.
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To spray their whole crop off with
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glyphosate and destroy it and then hopefully
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to control the black grass they then planted barley the
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next year and that field was completely
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black grass the next year so this didn't work and
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it was 99.9 percent black grass the next year so
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that will that will probably go either into
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pasture or probably wind farms as
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well you can see there's wind farms over there and that's that's
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an issue and then this is in the this is this
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is in a catchment area water catchment area where
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they're having massive problems with the herbicide
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propizomide which they cannot get out of the
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of the water and this is
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this was a another issue with slug pellets so
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they used to have a compound called metaldehyde in slug pellets which
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was really good at killing slugs but also you couldn't get out
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of the water it was also ridiculously toxic and so
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the water companies were a driving force in getting that banned
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and there'll be a driving force in trying to get propizomide banned
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and so anything we can do to reduce the
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use of herbicides can would be good for farming
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and and potentially soil health
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and and water quality so these
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are the two diseases we're looking at that this is
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mildew on the left and rust on the right and these
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only attack black grass so we chose two diseases that
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we knew wouldn't affect cereal crops because if we started spraying spores.
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Onto cereal crops that killed cereals.
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Then you know i'd go bankrupt with the the compensation
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so we had to choose ones that we definitely knew we're not going to do that
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and black grass is very unrelated to to cereals so that was good so we got lots
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of farms to send in samples and we isolated them and we now culture the spores
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and we use techniques that weren't available until about 2016.
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Normally you can't culture these pathogens and we send them out,
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Test tubes, bigger than these Eppendorfs here, full of spores.
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And I joke that they're more expensive per gram than cocaine, so don't sniff it.
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And also, you know, if you get caught with these test tubes full of powder, it's a big problem.
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And I've currently got an issue because there's a French grower that wants to use it.
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And I was like, do I take them over on the ferry or do I post them? Or what do I do?
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They're non-hazardous as well. there's a lot of fungal diseases that attack
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black grass that are also highly poisonous like ergot which is hallucinogenic
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and it will give you stomach cramps and make you very ill but you always have
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to be careful with any spores,
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even compost and things like that because if you inhale spores you get something
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called farmer's lung which is a debilitating disease and then because they're not,
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culturable on agar you have to stain them to check they're still alive and so
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you can see here there's five spores that are alive and one that's dead.
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You also have to make sure they go through the filter for the farmers.
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This guy here has got a biological weapon, and this is called a rust bomb.
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And this was developed by the Americans in the late 1950s to go over the Soviet
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Union, blow up in the upper atmosphere and rain down spores over Soviet wheat
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and starve the Russians to death.
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And it wouldn't attack german wheat
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or british wheat or american wheat because it was so because
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they knew it was species specific so all the research on biological weapons
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has helped me develop my biological weapon for for for wheat and black grass
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and interestingly stan hussein had a had a he had a a wheat.
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Smut bomb it was going to go over to iran and kill and starve the iranians and
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that was in Tony Blair's dodgy dossier and he said Saddam Hussein's got biological
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weapons and anthrax is a biological weapon,
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He didn't say that he's got a wheat smut one. But what they also found was that
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it was also being illegal against the Convention on Biological Weapons.
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The spores didn't last very long, so they had to be continually produced.
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And so it was a very expensive bomb to have compared to a nuclear bomb in the
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long term. And so they just decided to focus on nuclear bombs.
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And so that's informed us that we have to continually produce our rust spores,
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again and again to keep them viable.
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And then this is a trial by one of our partner distributors agravista and this
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was really interesting because it there was really clear differences between the two plots.
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It was almost like i had gone in there and hand weeded the
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side with with the spores but i hadn't i was i
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contemplated it but i never did it and um and
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you could see there was a clear difference i was really impressed and but what they
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did show certain strips got they missed
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the conventional herbicide and there there was no difference
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between the two on the amount of black grass
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on either side and so it was not an alternative to
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herbicides it was potentially reduce the amount of herbicide
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or complement it but it was not a like-for-like
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replacement but we've been uh we're working on the the technology to improve
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the amounts of spores we can deliver last year i don't know last year was very
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very wet and so all our spores had to go on very close to when a fungicide was
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going on, and that was an issue.
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That's enough about that. Other things when it comes to soil biology and regenerative farms.
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Copper fertilisers, if you've seen
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me on Twitter, I bang on about copper fertilisers because I hate them.
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Copper pesticides are banned on every crop apart from grapes in the UK.
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I don't know why they're still allowed on grapes, but they are sold as copper
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fertilizer and this annoys me because there's no copper deficiency in UK soils
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and so why should they be selling copper fertilizers?
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It's to get around this and especially diseases like,
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Pythium and oomycetes, like Phytophora. I say oomycetes because it's a double
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O, and I like saying oomycetes.
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And so copper is a heavy metal. It's residual.
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It will be killing the soil biology and also the biology on the plant.
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You may get a yield bump from applying them, but that's because often when plants
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are infected with a disease, they don't show symptoms, and so you're killing
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a disease and increasing your yield.
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So that's a big bugbear of mine when it comes to soil biology.
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Cobalt and nickel fertilizers that's another book bear
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of mine they're promoted by a number of high-profile regen
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gurus with little to no scientific training and they're
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purported to improve nutrient use efficiency especially nitrogen
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however there's no soil deficiency in copper cobalt and
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nickel these are the contaminant heavy metals that are required in
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extremely small amounts it's never
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been scientifically demonstrated that they're an essential nutrient and
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copper sulfate and nickel sulfate is carcinogenic when
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you buy it as a powder it's also carcinogenic still
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classed as carcinogenic when it's diluted and it's
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being sprayed on the field and so the farmer is
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inhaling that the person walking their dog is inhaling that
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and it will be extremely poisonous to soil biology and it also annoys me the
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same gurus that claim that farmers shouldn't use nitrates because they're carcinogenic
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which they're not are saying that they should use cobalt and nickel and i think
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this is somewhere where the scientific community needs to come together and
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call out unscientific claims when it comes to regenerative farming.
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There is some good advice, and there are magazines that farmers can get access
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to when it comes to soil biology, and there are exciting trade shows and conferences.
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There's a whole Regen conference in November this year in York, which should be good.
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Just before that, I should have a slide about the conventional agrochemical
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industry, and they've got some other issues that affect soil biology.
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So applying phosphorus to soil will harm mycorrhizae because mycorrhizae fungi,
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their main job is solubilising phosphorus and giving it to the plant.
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If you dump a load of phosphorus on a crop,
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the plants will turn off their mycorrhizal connections and not feed the sugars
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into the mycorrhizal because they've got adequate phosphorus.
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So that's a massive impact on soil biology.
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Urea now has to be supplied with urease inhibitors in it at certain times of
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the year, is that correct, guys?
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And urease inhibitors will have a direct impact on soil biology because they're toxic chemicals.
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Some of them impede the growth and development of young-born children and stuff
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like that, if you look into them.
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They're quite nasty chemicals. and because they're not a pesticide they
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don't have to go through all the safety regulations the pesticides do
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glyphosates everyone's favorite weed killer
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it binds manganese in
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the soil and if you look at.
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Manganese sales globally loads of manganese goes out to
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brazil and america because they've got glyphosate resistant
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crops so they're spraying glyphosate over their crops and
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the manganese has been bound into the soil and the and the
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the plants and the bacteria can't anxious manganese
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so plants need manganese but especially bacteria need
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manganese and and you're not going to get a functioning soil biology
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if you're putting a lot of glyphosate on the soil and then
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i didn't mention other positive things like biosolids anaerobic
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digestates guano you know
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bat poo and things like
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ben's been talking about today where you're adding soil carbon these are
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fantastic for adding bioavailable carbon
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to the soil which will not only is carbon sequestration a
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good a good thing but feeding soil biology
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the the more to a point as long
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as you're not getting anaerobic adding more carbon so
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that the soil so the saprophytes the the the
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organisms are breaking down dead and decaying matter
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will have a positive effect on the
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on the soil biology then i
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also work in sports turf which is not regenerative agriculture
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and there it's even worse where they're putting iron and zinc pesticides they're
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trying to kill worms all the time in sports turf and so if you think it's bad
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in in agriculture you should look at sports turf and that's that's even worse
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so um but yeah so there's there's plenty of positives.
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Some negatives and if anyone wants to
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discuss any aspects of my whistle stop tour of
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soil biology on regenerative farms let me
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know oh and lastly if you want to listen to one of my podcasts
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got serial killers the podcast all about pest disease and weeds of arable crops
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or if you grow hydroponically i've got hydroponics daily which is i've stupidly
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decided to do a daily podcast which is a lot of work but yeah a lot of fun as
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well thank you very much thank you ross So.