Resources

Building Compost for Soil Biology with Ian Hunter

Rion Naus Talks About Who Is in Your Soil and What They're Up To

Jesse: This afternoon we are speaking with Dr. Norman Arancon from the University of Hawaii in Hilo. As we at Hiwassee Products were researching the science of vermicomposting, the name Norman Arancon PhD kept coming up in the literature and the studies that were referenced. I’ve been looking forward for a long time to speaking with you and finding out more about your trials, and the things you've studied. Also joining me today is Natalie from Heart and Soil magazine. This interview will be part of the regenerative resource that we're working on together.

Students from Vanderbilt University School of Engineering conducted a project at Caney Fork Farms to explore compost extract application through irrigation drip tape. Their objectives were to develop a pilot irrigation setup capable of delivering living microbiology to plants in a greenhouse setting and to address the problems of biofilm and sediment accumulation in the drip lines.

This afternoon we'll be hearing from Steve Diver, who has a long background in biological agriculture and manages the research farm at the University of Kentucky. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Watch the first part of Building a Biological Powerhouse in Your Soil, a webinar series produced by Eco-Farm with presentations from Hiwassee Products, Cure Soil and Sanctuary Farm. This session focused on composting practices that maximize beneficial microbes.

This afternoon we have the privilege of speaking with Dr. Tom Dykstra, the renowned entomologist who's been making waves in the Ag scene with research on the correlation between Brix levels and whether or not an insect will attack a plant.

Today we're speaking with Dan Kittredge. Dan is a leading advocate for the concept of nutrient density and is working on some exciting projects about measuring nutrient density in food products, which I'll let him explain much better than I can.

Jesse from Hiwassee and Natalie Forstbauer of Heart & Soil spoke with authors Anne Bikle and David Montgomery about the evolution of their understanding of soil and health, their four published books and what food production might look like in twenty years.

This afternoon we’re speaking with Dr. Zack Jones in Fort Collins, Colorado. Zack and I first met at the last vermiculture conference put on by NC State, run by Rhonda Sherman, the godmother of vermicomposting. We were doing market research, coming in from the manufacturing side, how to design a good vermicomposting system and from there to producing extract.

Today we are joined by Miles Sorel from Terraforma and Miles, do you want to introduce yourself and tell us a bit what you're about what Terraforma is all about?

Today we have the privilege of speaking with Graeme Sait, world renowned educator and ag specialist from Australia and founder of Nutri-Tech Solutions. Graeme could you give us a brief overview of yourself, your work and a little bit of how you got you got into this whole business of soil health?

Matt Drane of AgriBio Systems showed us how they produce 40,000 lb of vermicompost each year to produce compost extract on a commercial scale.

A vibrant microbial ecosystem plays a critical role in agricultural soil. Where this ecosystem is inadequately developed, microbial populations can be extracted from biologically rich compost and applied to the soil as a liquid compost extract.

Today we are going to be hearing from Dr. James White out of Rutgers University and Dr. White's fame in the ag sector has exploded over the past five years with his research on rhizophagy and a lot of the soil health nerds realizing the implication that this research has in determining the connection between the microbial health of the soil and the health and nutrition of plants and crops.