When: February 20, 2025, 9AM-3PM
Where: A&M Farms, 749 Collins Rd. Lyons, GA 30436
Price: $125
RSVP: Please RSVP by February 14, 2024
Most soil and plant ecosystems are degraded to the point where we don’t immediately recognize how dysfunctional they actually are. We don’t have a frame of reference to know what “normal” looks like anymore. We seldom get to observe a crop that is so healthy it is completely resistant to disease and insects. Yet, the agronomic information about how to achieve these results is readily available. It is possible to increase yields and plant performance well beyond our present baseline when we take a different approach to plant nutrition.
In this in-depth workshop, John Kempf will describe how to develop regenerative agriculture ecosystems in which soil health is quickly regenerated, crop yields and quality constantly improve, pest pressure becomes less of a challenge, crops are much more resilient to climate extremes and require much less water to thrive. When a truly regenerative ecosystem is functioning well, the need for external inputs becomes less and less.
This will be a participatory conversation, in which John will engage in-depth with questions from the audience to help them solve real problems on their farm. Attendees should come prepared with questions they’d like John to answer.
While the principles and science behind this workshop are transferable to all crops, we will primarily focus on vegetable crop production. Some topics that John will be discussing include:
- How to reduce crop water requirements by 20-40% with plant nutrition and soil structure management.
- How to access the very large untapped genetic potential of many varieties to produce higher yields. This discussion will focus on understanding plant nutritional requirements at specific growth stages to increase marketable yields.
- How to increase photosynthesis from common baselines to much higher levels, by managing carbon dioxide release, water hydrolysis, chlorophyll levels, and influencing leaf size and thickness.
- How to manage nutrition to produce higher quality proteins to provide crop resistance to the various insects which require soluble nitrogen sources within the plant as a food source.
- How to manage nutrition to stimulate plant production of immune compounds to provide resistance to all diseases, insects, nematodes, mites, and more when nutritional profiles are balanced correctly.
- How insects communicate with plants in the infrared spectrum, and how nutritional profiles affect plants’ infrared signature.
- How to develop disease suppressive soil microbial profiles that provide abundant mineral release for crop nutrition by managing crop and cover crop type and rotation.
- How to manage fertilizer applications to increase soil and plant health, which fertilizers to avoid, and when to apply products for the greatest economic response.
- How to monitor and manage nutrient release curves for soil and fertilizer supplied nutrients during the growing season, and over multiple growing seasons.
- Why insects and diseases are attracted to crops with specific nutritional profiles, and how to prevent them.
This is an in-depth workshop, and will build on many of John’s webinars and resources available online.
