Brad Hobrock, formerly of AgriBio Systems, now working with VisionX Ag, spoke with Simeon about his agronomy practice. Brad helps farmers introduce biologicals and targeted nutritionals to build plant health while reducing inputs.

I grew up on a farm here in Illinois River Valley which is still active today. Went to college at the University of Illinois. I worked for a retail organization in Northern Illinois right out of college, came back home, worked for Wyffel’s Hybrids as a district sales manager for eight or nine years. Then I became an independent dealer for them and started to do independent agronomy work then in 2011. Which led into the birth of AgriBio Systems in 2016.

Can you talk about the agronomy work you were doing, how it changed when you started AgriBio, and what you do now?

When the initial independent agronomy work started, it was completely conventional. It was based on nitrogen applications, phosphorus, potassium, very typical of the conventional methods of agronomy and farming. Adam and I started questioning things because one of the guys they were working with had them applying boatloads of dry fertilizer as well as nitrogen. And in a lot of those cases, the soil test levels were not changing. When you're applying those amounts, there should have been changes in those soil tests. So we started questioning things.

Then in 2012, an individual came to us with a biological product and wanted us to try it. We were reluctant because at that point we were still very conventionally minded, very closed-minded. Essentially it became a bet because he said, “just try this and if it doesn't work, I'll never come back.” We looked at it as an easy way to get rid of the guy. So we did those trials, and it was the drought of 2012. Thankfully the vast majority of those trials were done under irrigated environments and they all paid. They all paid well.

It opened our eyes and it started to raise a lot of questions of, okay, what's going on here? Because the biological side of agriculture was not well accepted at that point in time. It was seen as snake oil. In a lot of cases, it still is today. We started doing a lot of deep digging, a lot of education of what's truly going on here. It led us to Elaine Ingham, some of her teachings and classes, led us down the compost road. Ultimately, it led us to the creation of AgriBio Systems.

There is a lot of money spent in agriculture today, and it's being spent because we've done it this way for 30, 40, 50, 60 years. And in the market dynamics of farming today, especially grain farming, we can't continue to do things just because we've done it a certain way for years.

There's things on the human health side that we thought were harmless, and we know today that they are. We need to adopt changes more readily in agriculture, because it is a business and it needs to be treated as such. And there's so much money spent.

I’m not saying that N, P and K are not important because all three serve critical roles. But so do calcium, boron, zinc, manganese, iron, on down the line. Most agronomy books today will only recognize 17 or 18 essential minerals for plant growth. If we're only looking at the structural growth, one could argue that to be true.

But when we look at the immunity of the plant, when we look at different cofactor minerals, how they make certain micronutrients or even secondaries work more efficiently, then the number of essential minerals is much higher, to the tune of 70 or more.

What did you start developing at AgriBio in terms of processes, testing and products to be able to improve plant health and plant immunity to the point of being able to reduce your fungicides and insecticides?

Early on, it was primarily only a biology-based company: the compost, extracts and teas, some jug-based products and a couple of dry seed treatment products. As we got into more sap testing and looking at Brix levels, we started looking more at the overall nutritional balance of plants. We learned quickly that biology alone can’t do it all because there are so many factors, so many variables in the soils and the plant itself.

The first nutritional products we came out with were a molybdenum product, a calcium product and a boron product. That was in response to deficiencies that we were consistently seeing in that sap test analysis, as well as Brix tests. We transitioned into providing a more complete nutritional line, looking to improve photosynthetic levels and sugar production. From there, it's developed into a complete soil systems analysis, because if our soils aren't breathing properly, if soils are not inhaling oxygen and releasing CO2 – carbon and oxygen being the primary drivers of plant growth – we have a very inefficient system. And honestly, that's the system where in a lot of cases, these synthetic fertilizers actually work.

But if we want high Brix levels, if we want plant immunity to diseases, insects, etc., we need that nutritional balance. In the farming community, we're spending our budgets primarily on N, P and K, which are extremely important, but our soils are generally loaded with those minerals, but they’re not available in a timely fashion.

In the last six or seven years, we have seen conventionally managed corn and bean fields here in central Illinois and across the Midwest, where potassium deficiencies show up in the middle of the growing season in fairly dry periods. A soil test will say that potassium levels are fine, but the plants are telling a completely different story. When we're making those applications, and still seeing the visible problems in our plants and our fields, we have to be willing to take a step back because two plus two is not adding up to four. In most of these cases, it’s poor root development, compaction and a dysfunctional environment. If we don't address those things, we will face the same problems year after year after year.

When you do a soil test, are you looking at the key ratios like calcium to magnesium, potassium to sulfur? Or are you just looking at the like base saturation levels?

In previous years, we did look primarily at base saturations and ratios, especially calcium to magnesium and magnesium to potassium. We will still look at those. The calcium magnesium ratio is one of the most critical, because it tells us how much oxygen is likely to be in that soil, if soil is likely to be flocculated. In other words, will it breathe properly? Will it exchange gases sufficiently for an efficient and effective system?

In the last couple of years, we’ve done more Haney tests, which also ties in some very critical biological perspectives, to the point where most of our agronomy and consulting customers are doing Haney tests. It is more costly, but when we look at both the nutritional side and the biological side, that is a part of a systems approach. All the minerals in a soil without biological activity and efficiency, they're just there, they don't do much.

And the third part of that would be the physical side? You look at the physical conditions, aggregate structure...

We do. Aggregate structure especially. Calcium magnesium ratio and of course soil pH are very important, but if we don't have aggregate structure, our biology will not be as active as it needs to be. That's also the environment that lends soils to be more disease-prone. So yes, aggregate structure is critical.

Here in West Central Illinois, we have a lot of soil types, from prairie soils to timber soils, river bottom gumbos, sandy loams to very poor sands. But here again, if we don't have aggregate structure, our efficiency immediately goes way downhill.

Two years ago in June, we had a very dry period. It wasn't a true drought, but we were dry in planting season and up to the latter part of June. An adage in farming and agronomy that we still hear is, “we want soils to be dry early because it forces roots to go after moisture.” There is some truth to that, but it’s also true that roots need moisture to grow. And they need the ability, via aggregate structure, to grow as deep as they possibly can. In that growing season, we heard a people say that our root systems must be great because we’ve been so dry and it will force those roots to go after moisture.

And it was some of the poorest root systems that we had experienced in dry land conditions in several years, simply because there wasn't enough moisture and that soil system was not efficient and functional enough for those roots to grow. We did catch some timely rains and we had a respectable crop, but we were literally days away from having major disappointments in yields because of crops burning up.

When you start out with a new customer or with a new field on your farm, what is the expected transition period? Or is it always in transition?

That is a great and loaded question, Simeon. There is a protocol. The first part is recognizing the primary soil type that we're dealing with. From there, we want to look at soil test ratios, again, calcium to magnesium is first. We do a soil health assessment, a Haney test, biological assessments with microscope, as well as penetrometer testing. We look at previous history. What's been done, what's been applied.

We take that information and formulate a plan, starting with number one, two, three, four, five, and so on. Depending on how much money is in the budget to correct things, we’ll start with number one, go to two, number three. And if we potentially run out of budget money, we don't do six before we do number one.

If things aren't done methodically, that’s where we could stub our toe and create some disappointment. Whether it's a new farm or a new customer, we have to keep expectations realistic. It's not for everybody and that's okay. But we are about efficiency, we're about education. We help people understand that we can take money from this side and put it here. In some cases, we're trading dollars, and in some cases, we’re saving people money. But in farming, with the myriad soil types, myriad chemical reactions, there is no one size fits all approach to anything. For example compost extract or compost tea it can be very beneficial, but if we don’t address the issues in the soil first and foremost, we set ourselves up for failure.

If the soil is extremely tight, if the calcium and magnesium ratio is way out of balance, maybe biology is not the first thing to do. In some cases, we start by ripping that soil and getting a cover crop on it. Then if there's still money in the budget, then we look at other things. But if our home, the soil, is not conducive for those beneficial microbes being able to live, let alone thrive, then we have to look hard at where we spend our money first. That's where we get the most efficient returns and success in these fields.

Can you walk through sap testing, when you would start, how often you do it and how you follow up from a sap test to an application?

We've come a long way in the sap testing protocol. When we first started doing sap tests back in 2011 or 2012, it was still very new. One of the things that turned us on to sap testing was back in probably 2004, 2005 when we were doing a lot of tissue sampling. It was very common to go to a field, look at plant leaves and see nutrient deficiencies, the interveinal striping on the leaves, which signifies micronutrient deficiency, primarily iron, manganese, zinc, magnesium. Especially if we had an area in that field that looked really good and an area that was struggling, it was common for everything to come back as sufficient. (This is when we were trying to break through some yield barriers of 220, 225 bushel corn.) When we started doing the sap testing, it showed the deficiencies that we were visibly seeing. At that point we were not doing any Brix testing, that was several years later. It was available then, but we didn't know about it.

Today when we get a sap test back, we look at what's excessive first, because excessive levels in plants are actually creating some of our deficiencies. Just like we're sitting here today, we've got two chairs. If another person wants to sit down, we don't have that parking space available. It’s the same in plants. There's only so many parking spaces there.

If there's something excessive, like nitrate nitrogen, that's one of the first things we have to first to address, get that lower to make room for those others. Nitrate is the biggest one because it suppresses the uptake of many other minerals like potassium, calcium, boron as well as phosphate and sulfur. If those nitrate levels are high enough, it can even suppress more than those.

Plant nitrates are the biggest indicator to plant diseases. They're the biggest indicator to insect infestations. When we see diseases, we know we very likely have a nitrate problem. When we see insects in our fields, we very likely have that same nitrate problem. That’s why one of the first micronutrient products we brought to the market was molybdenum, to balance those nitrates, but also to convert all of the nitrogen to the amino acid form and eventually then to a complete protein within the plant, and also in the soil. It also helps produce the phosphatase enzyme, which helps that trickle phosphorous release through the entire growing season.

The sap tests are also used to better balance plant nutrition through the growing season. Where we have growers looking to get away from the synthetic fungicides, plant immunity from nutritional balance is critical. That why we also brought calcium silica mixture to market. We also include boron because of the synergy between calcium and boron, as well as a little bit of sugar. In the last few years we’ve gotten a lot of data showing that nutrient mixture giving very similar results to synthetic fungicides, and we're doing things that the plant wants rather than that fungicide.

How many times at the growing season are you doing that for say a corn crop?

It’s dependent on we’re looking to do. At a minimum, we want to do three sap tests through the year and that would be V3, V5, VT. If we're doing four, we do V3, V5, V12, VT. On trial fields or situations where we’re pushing yield or trying to learn something specific, we may do more, up to every other week.

Soybeans, we're looking at V3, again just prior to flowering and then again at about R2. Now there are situations in soybeans where we will also do more depending on specific trials and things of what we're wanting to see or what we're wanting to learn. But if we're not doing at least those three, we're just not gonna learn near what we need to learn.

Depending on growing conditions, soil moisture, aggregation, efficiency, all of those factors, things will change just like a soil test will change. If we were to go out here in this field and pull a soil test today and then come back a month from now, a lot of those levels would be different. It's a snapshot of one point in time. The sap test is no different. The beauty of the sap test is that it gives us a two or three week window where we can see potential nutrient deficiencies in that plant before they show up visibly on the leaf itself. That's one of the things that distinguishes it from tissue test. In some cases with a tissue test, you learn too late, especially with corn being determinate. Once that yield is lost, it makes no difference what we do or how conditions may improve. Once that yield is gone, it's gone forever.

Do you follow up with a foliar application every time you do a sap test or is it also just gauging what to do? About how many foliar applications would you make throughout the season?

Two is pretty common, usually foliar nitrogen, our NitroHume product, as well as calcium silica boron mixture replacing a fungicide application. We do have cases where in the first year, growers want to see a few sap tests through the growing season just to see what happens. In those cases, we might do five or six foliars throughout the year.

In most cases, five or six across every acre is not feasible from the overall farm perspective and grower perspective. That's why improving the overall system that starts with soil aggregate structure is critical. Generally, two foliar applications a year is going to catch the vast majority of what's needed.

So how do you take a sap test? Just quickly.

The protocol changes depending on the growth stage or the height of that crop. If a crop is less than, say, 10 inches tall, we pull the entire above ground portion, send that off for testing because there's not enough leaf material to distinguish older growth, the lower part of the plant versus the upper growth or the new.

Once the plants are 12 inches or taller we pull two different sets of leaves, one from the old growth, and we're gonna keep those separate, put in a bag, and then we pull a different set from the new growth or the upper part of the plant. This is another one of the downfalls of tissue testing is that we want to see in the nutrients that are mobile within that plant, whether we are robbing from the old growth to feed the new growth, because if that's the case, we've got problems.

By the same token, those minerals that are not mobile within that plant, say calcium, do we have sufficiency in the old growth, but deficiency in the new growth? That's how we design foliar protocols to address those things, and it gives us a tremendous of the true nutritional balance of that plant. Later in the growing season, especially in corn, where you might have a corn plant or a field that is 10 foot tall, that’s a long way to move minerals, and so it is nice to see that new growth versus old growth comparison to be able to make some of those changes.