David Bray serves as the agriculture and livestock consultant for Omnicrobe Natural Solutions, an all-natural microbial amendment, and represents the company throughout the United States.
Omnicrobe Natural Solutions has performed soil tests in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas on a variety of crops. Their SOIL2 product breaks down the nutrients that are in the soil to become more readily available to the plant root system. Applying SOIL2 lessens the demand for fertilizer by utilizing the nutrients’ that are existing. They use microBIOMETER® to establish a base line reading then retest at various phases to determine how the soil is progressing.
Our customer Living Water has been utilizing microBIOMETER® to enhance their approach to sustainable farming and to refine their microbial treatments, ensuring they meet the specific needs of each farm.
Their innovative system integrates with the existing irrigation setup to distribute beneficial microbes effectively. With the help of microBIOMETER®’s soil testing, they are able to analyze microbial biomass and adjust the microbial mixes they provide each month, ensuring optimal soil health.
Sales rep Brent taking a soil sample at one of the farms in West Texas
Leveraging microBIOMETER® for Increased Soil Health
Our customer Living Water has been utilizing microBIOMETER® to enhance their approach to sustainable farming and to refine their microbial treatments, ensuring they meet the specific needs of each farm.
Their innovative system integrates with the existing irrigation setup to distribute beneficial microbes effectively. With the help of microBIOMETER®’s soil testing, they are able to analyze microbial biomass and adjust the microbial mixes they provide each month, ensuring optimal soil health.
Key Benefits:
Living Water and microBIOMETER®’s collaboration is the result of their shared passion for soil health and their quest to transform farming with data-driven microbial management.
About Living Water: Living Water is a visionary agricultural technology company with a mission to redefine the way farmers approach soil health. Their flagship product is a subscription-based automated microbe bioreactor that seamlessly infuses essential nutrients into every irrigation cycle. Designed to deliver maximum efficiency with minimal labor, this innovative system eliminates the need for labor-intensive hauling, mixing, or application processes. Learn more at WeSaveSoil.
Soil testing in Mexico
In the Pacific region of Mexico (state of Sinaloa), many vegetables are grown mainly for export to the United States and Canada. The soils in these crops have been greatly affected by the intensity of their management, which has unfortunately caused a considerable loss in their fertility and microbial biodiversity. In lieu of this, the use of biotechnologies based on microbial complexes is currently being highly promoted in order to inoculate the soils and recover part of the natural fertility. This is being performed alongside the use of other organic tools such as algae extracts, humic/fulvic acids, and liquid composts.
Mydagro LLC is using microBIOMETER® on vegetable plots where their biotechnology E-Microzyme (mix of beneficial bacteria) is inoculated into the soil. Their results have shown an increase in microorganisms and yield compared with the check plots. With the use of the microBIOMETER® soil test to measure the microbial increase quickly, it is now possible to better understand the behavior of microbiology and the positive effects of this type of horticultural crop.
“microBIOMETER® has proven that the use of biological and organic technologies can substantially help with the renewal of worn-out soils and gradually revitalize them to boost the productivity and health of the crops.” Fernando Cantu Galindo- Technical advisor Mydagro LLC Mexico
Founded in 2003 UK based Wildflower Turf Ltd has pioneered and developed a soil-less growing system which has transformed the concept of turf growing.
Working with soils a fair bit, it being the substrate into which their products are grown, they are interested in understanding the relationship between plants and soil. This involves investigating things such as soil structure, nutrient content, and more recently microbial content, at their R&D testing facilities in Hampshire.
They know that microbe-rich soil is beneficial for plant health. However, is there a relationship operating in the other direction? Does having a healthy plant population, or a more diverse plant population like the kinds of habitats they are trying to create with their products, influence the soil community or the type and scale of microbial activity in the soil?
To investigate this, they used a microBIOMETER® kit to conduct a study into the difference in microbial biomass of soils under meadows compared to lawns.
The results suggested that increased species richness above ground supports a larger amount of microbial life in the soil below. The meadow areas they tested, where there was around 14 species per m2 on average, had 42% higher microbial biomass than the lawns, which consisted of only a handful of species, and a 60% increase in the amount of fungi was also seen. Microbial biomass was therefore found to be positively correlated with species richness. So, they can demonstrate that there is some kind of positive interaction between the species richness of the planting scheme and the life in the soil below. And this corroborates evidence from a number of similar studies which have shown positive relationships between plant species richness and various soil factors.
This is very interesting research which leads them to believe that you should be able to improve the health of your soil just by increasing the diversity of your plants. Because they know that the more microbes and fungi there are, the more ecosystem services the soil will be providing. There’s more work to be done here to investigate this relationship, but just from this brief study they have found that the soil-plant interaction is much more complex than they were giving it credit for, and the benefits of biodiverse planting schemes like wildflower spaces are also more myriad than they imagined.
Previously they had focused on the importance of wildflower reintroduction for improving aboveground biodiversity, in the form of habitat for insects and birds for example. But they are just beginning to understand how important this habitat is for its relationship with the soil as well. It is their hope that research like this will continue and eventually feed into recommendations like Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) in the UK, and the many benefits of improving soil health through soil organisms.
Amy Gardner of Kalispell, Montana serves farmers in the Flathead Valley as an agronomy coach through her business, Lower Valley Consulting Inc.
Amy has been scouting soil health trials as part of gathering third-party research for the company AgriGro. Farmers have been applying AgriGro’s prebiotic technology to boost soil health and in turn grow more productive and nutrient-rich crops. Amy uses microBIOMETER® to help compare soil microbiology in the control strips and where the prebiotics have been applied. Other data points collected for the trials have included plant counts, soil moisture, tissue tests, soil tests, vegetative cover percentages, GreenSeeker readings, and root, plant mass and health observations. So far 14 soil health trials have been performed in Montana and Idaho. More trials are scheduled for the Summer of 2023.
Amy Gardner was born and raised in Kalispell, MT. She has her BSc in Agricultural Education from Montana State University. Amy is a Certified Crop Advisor, as well as a Precision Ag Specialist, through the American Society of Agronomy. She is passionate about helping growers build healthy soils to produce high yielding and nutrient-rich crops through precision management. Her and her husband enjoy the Montana outdoors with their 5 boys.
Fig Tree Organic Farm produce at the farmer’s market
Adam Jone’s Fig Tree Organic Farm in Queensland, Australia has moved to organic farming. This farm is one of the key producers of foods for the Organic Weekend Sunshine Coast markets, a famous destination for food consumers and tourists. Adam had spent a lot of his time trying a variety of different solutions to grow his crops for market.
Then, Adam met Bronwyn Holm, founder of Earthfood. Arriving on Figtree Organic Farm, Bronwyn and Adam tested the soil with microBIOMETER®; a soil test Bronwyn has been using for some time. The results showed Adam that Australian soil is damaged. This damage is caused by years of hot bush fires, extended lack of rain, overuse of chemicals, topsoil drying out and blowing away, nutrients locked up making soil water-resistant and land surface flooding. This is Australia. It is an ancient land of beauty with extremely damaged farms.
The microBIOMETER® test results also determined the soil was very low on microbes and fungi, and other tests showed it high in acid forming chemicals, probably from the previous owner. Adam was working hard making composting baths and worm juices, yet there was no deep repair due to many years of damage. The microBIOMETER® soil test was evidence that things needed to be done differently.
Bronwyn then explained to Adam the benefits of using Earthfood products which are made by using live microbes, and how they could change his farm’s health, crop yields, and increase his farm’s income. The two filmed a documentary on the farm just after planting. The original crops in the film were up to their knees and the trees to their waist.
Then after using Earthfood for three months, another microBIOMETER® soil test was performed, and they began to see some improvement. The crops seemed settled, and the pumpkin vine which usually has one crop per season had several wheelbarrows of produce. Adam was pleased with the results so far.
Bronwyn and Adam soil testing
At month nine, they ran more soil tests and took another collection of images and were excited about the changes. The soil under the cover crops was cool, and consistently damp when outside the farm boundary the environment was hot and dry. The trees were now two meters above their heads and all bush crops were up to their waist full of produce. The same pumpkin vine produced three crops in the same season and 2.5 tons of produce. The nine-month-old banana trees that were to their waist previously and not doing well were already fruiting and grown way above their heads. It would normally take eighteen months for these trees to grow and fruit. This outcome proved to be very profitable for Adam and he was happy with the results.
Since then, Adam has dove further into the regenerative farming and microbial world. He holds talks and field days, educating the public on the importance of microbes and syntropic farming. He’s found the crowds are getting bigger and bigger each time, which he believes is a result of consumers becoming more aware of their food and the environment in which it is grown.
Earthfood is excited to share their next documentary with us as well which they are currently finishing up. This documentary is on a farm which grows Heritage tomatoes, beans, squash, kale, dragon fruit, papayas, citrus trees, avocados trees, bell peppers, Japanese greens, bananas, and herbs of all kinds.
“Unless you can measure your soil foundations and biology, it is a guessing game on what can be grown to its potential,” Bronwyn said.
ABOUT EARTHFOOD:
Earthfood is rainforest in a bottle powered by live microbes. Historically handed down in my family since the mid-1880s and used in the Internationally awarded Hermitage Estate Wineries (Dalwood Estate now as one of them) when Eggert Holm, my great-great-grandfather, was their master winemaker using live microbes. With a soil scientist the IP for suspending the microbes to sleep so that the microbial concentrated solution can now be sent globally, and the microbes survive and thrive whether used in a pot-plant or on acres of farming food.
Earthfood has been supplying their liquid microbial concentrate to farms for the past 25 years, in the U.S., Central America, and Australia as well as in trials of vineyard owners in Bordeaux, France, and sugarcane farmers in Fiji, to name a few.
microBIOMETER® can tell you if you are increasing the nutrient value and disease resistance of your crop.
A Rodale study showed greatly increased levels of the vitamins and minerals in sustainably farmed soils as opposed to mineral fertilized crops. And at Rodale, the sustainable practice yields are the same as the paired fields farmed with mineral fertilizers – and in bad weather, and disease years significantly better. Rodale is only one of many studies showing the increased nutrient value of organically and sustainably grown food.
Now Dr. Montgomery of the University of Washington’s team in a similar study has shown that if you are increasing your microbial biomass you are increasing the nutrient level of your crop: “soil health is a more pertinent metric for assessing the impact of farming practices on the nutrient composition of crops”.
Biklé, A. and Montgomery, D.R., 2021. Soil health and nutrient density: beyond organic vs. conventional farming. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems.
Hepperly, P.R., Omondi, E. and Seidel, R., 2018. Soil regeneration increases crop nutrients, antioxidants and adaptive responses. MOJ Food Process Technol, 6(2), pp.196-203.
Austin Arrington of the Plant Group
Austin Arrington of Plant Group NYC performed a research study on hemp’s capacity to sequester carbon. Austin utilized microBIOMETER® in this research. We originally had the pleasure of meeting Austin through Indigo Ag’s Terraton Challenge. Plant Group is a fellow semi-finalist and alumni.
Hemp has the promise of being a twofer: a financially successful crop as well as a carbon crop that increases soil carbon for carbon credits and increased fertility. Austin used microBIOMETER® to evaluate two organic fertilizer regimens for a hemp crop; an early fertilization during the vegetative phase and a month later during the flowering phase.
Honeysuckle Hemp 2021: Research Notes
One hectare of industrial hemp can absorb up to 22 tonnes of CO2 per hectare. The fact that industrial hemp has been proven to absorb more CO2 per hectare than any forest or commercial crop makes it an ideal tool for carbon farming (Vosper, 2011).
Two acres were hand seeded with Maya hemp grain on 05/23/21 in a silt clay loam soil in Council Bluffs, IA. Prior to tilling (with a rear tine tiller) and seeding with hemp the area was covered with white clover. The area was split into two zones that each received organic fertilizer at different times. The Early Fertilizer Zone was fertilized on 07/25/21. The Late Fertilizer Zone was fertilized on 08/08/21. Mega Green (2-3-2), the organic fertilizer applied for the study is derived from squid waste and was diluted with water for application across the field.
The microBIOMETER® spectroscopic tool was used to estimate microbial biomass carbon and fungal to bacterial ratio. Microbial biomass carbon is a measure of the carbon ( C ) contained within the living component of soil organic matter (i.e. bacteria and fungi). Microbes decompose soil organic matter (SOM) releasing carbon dioxide and plant available nutrients. The measurement unit of the device is ug C / g (micrograms microbial biomass carbon). Click here to read full study.
Katharhy G. is an agroecosystem and ethnoscience researcher who traveled to Ecuador to investigate the relationship between microbial biomass and crop health, as well as to study the local indigenous agriculture practices.
He visited 28 different farms growing 15 different crops. 14 of these farms are practicing conventional farming, while the other 14 farms are practicing indigenous regenerative farming. Most sites are not receiving irrigation. He tested the soil with microBIOMETER® and ranked the crop health as poor (1), average (2), good (3), excellent (4).
As the graph shows, microbial biomass correlated with crop health under all these different conditions. Samples with microbial biomass lower than 225 were all poor (1) and samples above 400 were all excellent.
The take home lesson is that to improve your plant health and yield, increase your microbial biomass by feeding your microbes with organic amendments.
If you have microBIOMETER® research data you’d like to share with us, please contact us. We would love to share it with our readers!
Contact:. ka*******@***il.com
