Regenerative Agriculture Podcast

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1. Episode 195: Your Soil's Water Reservoir Is Smaller Than You Think with Jerry Hatfield

   5 november 2026 · 1 uur 14 min

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   Jerry Hatfield earned his PhD in agricultural climatology from Iowa State University and worked at UC Davis before spending his career with USDA's Agricultural Research Service. He led the National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment in Ames, Iowa, for about 25 years. He has written nearly 500 research papers and was inducted into the ARS Science Hall of Fame in 2014. Lees meer

   Since retiring in 2020, Jerry has worked as a freelance agricultural scientist, helping farmers improve production while protecting soil, water, and air. He studies how water, carbon, and gas exchange interact in the soil, using CO2 flux measurements and instruments built to measure CO2 inside crop canopies. He uses a "four R's" framework for water management: retain, redistribute, reduce, and remove.

   In this episode, John and Jerry discuss:

   Why water is the first thing to change as you build soil health, before carbon and then nutrients.

   How bare soil can lose three-quarters of a one-inch rain to evaporation, and each tillage pass can cost another half inch.

   Why raising organic matter from 2% to 4% stretches available water in a five-foot profile from 5 days to 13 days in August.

   How hidden drought stress can cost 30 to 40 bushels on a 250-bushel corn crop without the leaves ever curling.

   How one pass with a disc on wet soil created a shear pan that cost a farmer 150 bushels per acre.

   Why tractors are getting about 900 pounds heavier each year, and compaction from a combine can still be measured 15 years later.

   Why roughly half the carbon a crop captures can go into the soil as root exudates to feed soil biology.

   Additional Resources
   To read articles by Jerry on soil health and water management, please visit: https://greencover.com/author/dr-jerry-l-hatfield

   To learn more about Jerry's work with the Soil and Water Conservation Society, please visit: https://swcs.org/about-us/our-people/board-of-directors/jerry-hatfield

   To listen to Jerry's first conversation with John, please v…

2. Episode 194: Glyphosate and the Herbicide Treadmill with Chuck Benbrook

   30 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 19 min

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   Chuck Benbrook is an agricultural economist with a PhD in agricultural economics who has also farmed commercially. From 1979 to 1997 he worked on agricultural policy in Washington, D.C., including as executive director of the National Academy of Sciences' Board on Agriculture and of a House Agriculture subcommittee. He has spent more than 40 years researching farming systems, pest management, and pesticide regulation. Lees meer

   For the past 25 years, Chuck has served as an expert witness in pesticide litigation involving glyphosate, chlorpyrifos, and paraquat. His 2025 paper proposes that glyphosate can persist in human bone. He is involved with the Heartland Health Research Alliance, which is running a Midwest birth cohort study on herbicide exposure.

   In this episode, John and Chuck discuss:

   Why weed control in 1996 often took three to five herbicides, and how Roundup Ready crops replaced that with one pass.

   How glyphosate use grew about 20-fold, reaching 80% of U.S. row crop acres at its peak.

   Why the first glyphosate-resistant marestail in 2004 started farmers on the herbicide treadmill.

   How seed and pesticide costs for corn, soybean, and cotton farmers have roughly tripled since 1996.

   Chuck's hypothesis that glyphosate binds to calcium and is stored in bone, then slowly released back into the blood.

   How Don Huber's work on glyphosate tying up minerals in soybeans helped Chuck connect the dots.

   Why pre-harvest desiccation is only 2-3% of glyphosate use but may drive about 90% of dietary exposure.

   How John uses boron as a maturity enhancer to replace a chemical desiccant and improve grain quality.

   Why Chuck believes current EPA toxicity testing misses chronic health effects, and what he would change.

   Additional Resources
   To read Chuck's paper on glyphosate persistence in bone, please visit: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12302-025-01057-1

   To read Chuck's widely cited paper on trends in glyphosate use, please visit: https://link.springer.com/article…

3. Episode 193: A Different Perspective on Fusarium with Heber Hall and Kirk Mersil

   22 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 46 min

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   In this episode, commercial indoor producer Kirk Mersil shares his journey managing a 10,000-square-foot controlled-environment facility through an unexpected crop health crisis. Facing harvest losses exceeding 50% due to extreme plant brittleness and severe quality collapse, Kirk resisted conventional advice to destroy the operation and instead partnered with researcher and consultant Heber Hall to diagnose the root physiological drivers behind the outbreak. Lees meer

   Drawing on plant pathology and biochemistry, Heber explains that Fusarium is not inherently an aggressive pathogen, but rather a ubiquitous fungal endophyte capable of conferring disease protection and facilitating nutrient reduction in healthy crops. By shifting away from pathogen eradication toward terrain management, their collaboration demonstrates how regulating fertility inputs, sustaining photosynthetic sugar supply, and preventing oxidative cascades can downregulate pathogenic gene expression and restore resilient crop health.

   In this episode, some of the topics discussed are:

   How Fusarium naturally functions as a beneficial endophyte in most plants and only turns pathogenic under specific environmental or nutritional stress.

   The hierarchy of fungal food preferences, shifting from plant sugars to nitrates and oxidized minerals as plant energy declines.

   Critical nitrate thresholds, including how levels above 120 parts per million activate pathogenic genes and drops below 40 parts per million cause sudden wilt.

   Utilizing foliar sprays of reduced trace minerals to bypass stem blockages and restore vital antioxidant enzymes.

   The vital role of soluble calcium and calcium signaling in fortifying internal plant defenses against fungal disease.

   How fungal quorum sensing coordinates communication to transform localized infection into systemic crop virulence.

   Preemptive applications of molasses and calcium prior to heavy rains to buffer root zones against stress-induced disease triggers.

   Additional Res…

4. Episode 192: Breaking Up Compaction with Roots Instead of Steel with Lloyd Murdock

   15 oktober 2026 · 1 uur

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   Lloyd Murdock grew up in Oklahoma, earned his PhD in soils at Virginia Tech, and found his way to the University of Kentucky while stationed at nearby Fort Knox. He has spent more than four decades there as Extension Soils Specialist, and is now Professor Emeritus at the UK Research and Education Center in Princeton, Kentucky. Lees meer

   Lloyd helped make no-till wheat standard practice in Kentucky. He also contributed research behind the soil penetrometer and developed an algorithm for variable-rate nitrogen in wheat. For the past decade or more, he has focused on breaking down fragipan soils with annual ryegrass. He still consults with farmers.

   In this episode, John and Lloyd discuss:

   Why fragipans leave many eastern U.S. crops growing on just two feet of soil above a concrete-like layer.

   How annual ryegrass roots break down the fragipan at 3/4 of an inch to 2 1/2 inches per year.

   A farmer who broke through more than a foot of fragipan with only four ryegrass crops in seven years.

   How most roots stall above 300 psi of soil resistance, and why annual ryegrass can push through.

   Why subsoiling only pays when more than 30% of a field has significant compaction.

   How Kentucky's state average wheat yield climbed from the 40s to 70 bushels by doing small things right.

   Why many farmers fear annual ryegrass, and how drones make fall seeding into standing crops easier.

   How chlorophyll sensors and a high-nitrogen reference strip help fine-tune wheat nitrogen rates.

   Additional Resources
   To read the University of Kentucky's guide to fragipan remediation with annual ryegrass, please visit: https://publications.mgcafe.uky.edu/agr-250

   To learn more about Lloyd's fragipan research, please visit: https://news.mgcafe.uky.edu/article/researchers-believe-fragipan-breakthrough-horizon

   To read about Dave Fischer's annual ryegrass system at Fischer Farms, please visit: https://www.agproud.com/articles/46700-beef-on-rye-at-fischer-farms

   Learn more about AEA: https://www.advancingecoag.…

5. Episode 191: Tar Spot, Tip Back, and Real-Time Plant Data with Jeff Kleypas

   8 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 1 min

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   Jeff Kleypas is Distribution Manager and Senior Agronomist at Advancing Eco Agriculture, based in South Texas. He began his career 20 years ago as a crop consultant walking South Texas vegetable fields that were sprayed weekly with insecticides and fungicides. He started working with biologicals in 2009 and joined AEA four years ago. He also runs a 1.5-acre market farm at home, where he tests new tools himself. Lees meer

   Jeff works with row crop growers and dealers across the Midwest and South, many of them now in year three or four of a full AEA program. This season he helped calibrate the CropTix sap sensor on cotton and corn and ran live demos at Midwest grower events. He uses FieldLark and other AI tools to turn sap, soil, and imagery data into faster recommendations.

   In this episode, John and Jeff discuss:

   A 3,000-acre Illinois corn farm that saw 5% of the tar spot with Pinion compared to its conventional fungicide check.

   How cutting P and K too hard led to tip back in Illinois corn.

   How the Croptix sensor returns full sap results in minutes.

   A grower with a 58-bushel soybean break-even who is averaging over 80, with some spots near 100.

   Pinion results from Jeff's own cut flowers, including a full month without disease.

   Why AI should make farmers better at seeing patterns in data, not replace them.

   Why sugars give a much bigger response at much lower rates in biologically active soils.

   A biological in-furrow program that beat a 2x2 of 40 units of nitrogen by 25 bushels.

   Additional Resources
   To learn more about FieldLark, please visit: https://fieldlark.ai

   To learn more about Pinion, please visit: https://advancingecoag.com/product/pinion/

   To learn more about Croptix, please visit: https://www.croptix.ag/

   To listen to Jeff's earlier podcast short, please visit: https://advancingecoag.com/podcast/podcast-short-10-breaking-away-from-traditional-agronomy-with-jeff-kleypas/

   Learn more about AEA's regenerative programs and products: https://www.advancingecoag.c…

6. Episode 190: What the 1980s Farm Crisis Should Have Taught Us with Wendy Johnson

   1 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 25 min

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   Wendy Mariko Johnson farms in Floyd County, Iowa, near Charles City. She grew up on an Iowa farm, left at 18 in the 1990s for an 18-year career in the Los Angeles fashion industry, and returned in 2010 with her husband Johnny Rafkin. Having watched farms close across Iowa in the 1980s, she came back determined to follow the three things that carried her parents through that era: diversification, low cost of production, and little to no debt. Lees meer

   Today Wendy runs two businesses from the same land. Jóia Food & Fiber Farm carries 160 ewes, 25 cows and their calves, plus hogs, chickens, and ducks across roughly 130 certified organic acres, alongside 15 acres of Kernza and more than 6,000 trees planted over the past decade. Jóia Sleep turns the farm's wool into comforters, mattress toppers, and pillows. She also co-manages Center View Farms, her family's thousand-acre commodity operation, and serves as vice president of the Perennial Promise Growers Cooperative, co-founder of 99 Counties, and chair of Iowa's USDA Farm Service Agency state committee. Her current question is how to take what she has proven on 130 acres and extend it across a thousand.

   In this episode, John and Wendy discuss:

   What carried her parents through the 1980s farm crisis, and why it still applies

   How direct marketing made her a price maker instead of a price taker

   Why the thousand-acre corn and soybean farm is becoming obsolete

   How Kernza thrived through a 10-inch drought year and a 12-inch rain month

   Why she hires custom operators instead of owning machinery

   What it would take to treat agrarian labor like the skilled trades

   Whether the next generation wants land ownership or just land access

   Why she would rather be paid on practice and nutrition than on yield

   Four years of silvopasture planted over field tile

   Additional Resources
   To listen to the podcast episode featuring Austin Unruh on integrating trees into working pastures, please visit: https://advancingecoag.com/podcast/episode-97-i…

7. Podcast Extra: Why Corn Is Dying Early with John Kempf & Brody Benton

   24 september 2026 · 1 uur 30 min

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   In this Podcast Extra, Brody Benton of Six B and John Kempf, founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture, dig into why plants are shutting down weeks before black layer, what top dieback is actually telling you, and how nitrogen form, leaf temperature, and trace minerals decide whether a crop finishes strong or hollows out from the inside. Lees meer

   John explains why the fungi behind stalk rot and crown rot — fusarium, rhizoctonia, pythium — are saprophytes that navigate by electrical charge, and why they only attack cells the plant has already given up on. Brody brings the 2026 weather data: 43 nights above 68°F in Polk County, Iowa (vs. a 28–29 night average), 35+ in York County, Nebraska, and record dew points that opened the door for tar spot. Put those together and you get a plant burning protein for energy, converting rubisco and PEP carboxylase back to ammonium, robbing amino skeletons out of the leaves, and dismantling its own photosynthetic engine during grain fill.

   From there the conversation goes well past stalk rot: front-loaded nitrogen and electrolyte overload, chloride and sodium from manure histories, herbicide and fungicide effects on fungal-to-bacterial ratios, the depletion of microbially active carbon under corn-on-corn and corn-soybean rotations, molybdenum and nitrate assimilation in soybeans, EDTA chelates that pull one nutrient out while adding another, plant sap pH targets, and how humic substances turned a manure pit into liquid gold.

   Additional Resources
   If you farm in the midwest and would like to get in touch with Brody, please reach out to him via email, brody.benton@gmail.com

   To listen to the Podcast conversation with Mike Omeg, please visit: https://advancingecoag.com/podcast/episode-188-eliminating-ground-applied-urea-with-mike-omeg/

   About John Kempf
   John Kempf is the founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture (AEA). A top expert in biological and regenerative farming, John founded AEA in 2006 to help fellow farmers by providing the education, tools,…

8. Episode 189: Why Your Nitrogen Program Is Costing You 50 Bushels with Ed Baumgartner

   17 september 2026 · 1 uur 43 min

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   Ed Baumgartner is a corn breeder and co-founder of Bass Hybrids in Olivia, Minnesota. His family has been in the seed corn business since the late 1930s, when his great uncles began producing hybrid seed as Troy Farms. Ed studied agronomy and plant genetics and spent 21 years and five mergers inside the commercial seed industry, much of it running winter nurseries in Puerto Rico and doing trait integration work for major companies. Lees meer

   At Bass Hybrids, Ed breeds non-GMO corn using a shuttle breeding model borrowed from Norman Borlaug, cycling material between Puerto Rico and Minnesota for three generations a year under deliberate heat, drought, and disease stress. Working in 18 identified genetic families rather than the industry's two, he has selected for native insect tolerance and broad stress resilience and found those selections also produced plants with unusually strong microbial association and markedly lower nitrogen requirements. His current work includes nitrogen rate trials across genetics, interseeded cover crop studies in three states, and a 148-acre discovery farm dedicated entirely to regenerative research.

   In this episode, John and Ed discuss:

   Why corn inbreds developed before heavy nitrogen fertilization still carry the genetics for nutrient efficiency

   How some Bass hybrids produce 200 bushel corn on 50 pounds of applied nitrogen, and drop to 150 bushels when nitrogen is pushed above 200

   Why Y-drop nitrogen placed too close to the stalk causes a yield hit on biologically responsive genetics

   The plant characteristics that signal high biological receptivity, including pubescence, leathery leaves, multiple ears, and heavy pollen loads

   Results from interseeding nine species of cover crops at V3, where the highest yielding treatment came with nitrogen cut by 25 percent

   Why Bass asked its seed producers to apply AEA's Pinion this season in place of conventional fungicide

   How AEA's fertility guidance gives growers an off-ramp from high nitrogen and a…

9. Episode 188: Eliminating Ground-Applied Urea with Mike Omeg

   11 september 2026 · 1 uur 20 min

   Afspelen
   Mike Omeg is a fifth-generation farmer who grew up on a diverse family farm in Oregon, initially producing cherries, hay, cattle, apricots, apples, and wheat. Over time, he honed in on fresh cherry production. He is currently the Director of Orchard Operations at Orchard View Cherries. Drawing on decades of tree-fruit experience and driven by a vision to keep his operation thriving for the next 100 years, Mike has spent the last 13 years collaborating closely with Advancing Eco Agriculture to challenge the conventional . Lees meer

   Currently, Mike is implementing management practices to maintain high cherry yields while drastically reducing input costs . He has completely eliminated dry nitrogen ground applications, shifting toward targeted fertigation and carbon-based energy sources to optimize tree metabolism . By focusing on biological precision and custom blends, he is growing firmer, higher-quality fruit while successfully testing new methods to control severe powdery mildew pressure without relying on conventional fungicides .

   In this episode, John and Mike discuss:

   How eliminating dry nitrogen ground applications improved overall tree health and nutrition .

   Boosting calcium absorption by 45% using Advancing Eco Agriculture custom blends .

   Turning large cherry crops into high-yield, premium-sized fruit while lowering harvest labor costs .

   Utilizing carbon and targeted sugars as energy sources to expand leaf size and drive tree vigor .

   Testing AEA's Pinion to manage severe powdery mildew without applying conventional fungicides .

   Maintaining a strict twenty-dollar-per-acre budget for foliar applications .

   Supporting multi-year crop loads without sacrificing branch strength or tree vitality .

   Additional Resources
   To listen to the podcast episode featuring Jim Dunlop, please visit: https://advancingecoag.com/podcast/episode-183-overcoming-the-ammonium-death-spiral-with-jim-dunlop/

   About John Kempf
   John Kempf is the founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture (AEA). A t…

10. Podcast Extra: Building High-Efficiency Fertility Systems for Row Crops

    4 september 2026 · 1 uur 18 min

    Afspelen
    Join us for a discussion led by Heather Poutre of Agronomy Diversified LLC, Jeff True of True Potential Ag Consulting, LLC, and John Kempf, founder of Advancing Eco Ag. With nitrogen management remaining a central topic amidst heightened focus on water quality, Heather, Jeff, and John will dive into practical agronomic strategies designed to balance environmental stewardship with farm profitability. Lees meer

    Topics in this webinar that are discussed include:

    Navigating evolving water quality focuses and proactive nitrogen management.

    Building a practical fertility program designed to maximize nutrient efficiency and profitability.

    Implementing management practices that address root causes rather than relying on bulk fertilizer top-ups.

    Actionable strategies for cutting conventional commercial fertilizer dependence while maintaining yield.

    Utilizing biology, humic and fulvic acids, and amino acids to improve nutrient uptake.

    Maximizing Return on Investment (ROI) by lowering unit costs per bushel through smarter nutrient delivery.

    Additional Resources
    Click here to watch "How Excess Nitrogen Creates Yield Drag"

    For Iowa/Midwest growers who want to reach out to Heather or Jeff, contact info is below:

    Jeff True, True Potential Ag Consulting, LLC.
    641-431-0436
    Jeff serves the NW and SE corners of Iowa

    Heather Poutre, Agronomy Diversified LLC

    About John Kempf
    John Kempf is the founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture (AEA). A top expert in biological and regenerative farming, John founded AEA in 2006 to help fellow farmers by providing the education, tools, and strategies that will have a global effect on the food supply and those who grow it.

    Through intense study and the knowledge gleaned from many industry leaders, John is building a comprehensive systems-based approach to plant nutrition – a system solidly based on the sciences of plant physiology, mineral nutrition, and soil microbiology.

    Support For This Show & Helping You Grow
    Since 2006, AEA has been on a missio…

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