Episode 02 | R-Soil Conference: EM Nitro Protocol - How to Reduce Nitrogen Inputs 50%

 

Show Notes: 

From R-Soil 2024 - Tjaša Krause gives an overview of the EM Nitro Protocol, and how it empowers conventional farmers to save 50% on their Nitrogen & fertilizer inputs.

Schedule a call with TeraGanix to learn more:

https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/bookings/em-nitro

Ways to tap in with TeraGanix:

• 🌐 Website: https://TeraGanix.com
• 📷 Instagram:   / teraganix  
• 🌱 EM Nitro Protocol: https://ag.teraganix.com/em-nitro-quote

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Podcast Transcript:

MJP (00:23.128)

Welcome everybody. You've got Matt here and Tjaša with TeraGanix and we are going to be discussing a little bit today about our Nitro protocol or nitrogen reduction protocol. And in this session, we're really going to dive deep and explore how farmers can navigate these uncertain fertilizer prices that we're expecting here in the near future through the upcoming season and really how

you can optimize your nitrogen use and nitrogen management on your farm and really control those input costs, which we found to be a significant portion of revenue per acre for a lot of farmers, especially a lot of ground crop farmers. So today we're really gonna tackle some of the current challenges that farmers face with relation to fertilizer costs, some of the common myths that

that we see out there with regard to nitrogen use and fertilizer use in commercial agriculture. We're going to introduce you to the Nitro Protocol, talk through how that works, bring you through the process, how it's applied, what results we're seeing, and yeah, we'll share some of the real world success stories that we have. So we'll kick it off here with Tjaša to give us a little bit of...

a little bit of backstory on who TeraGanix is and the role that she plays here with the team.

 

Tjasa Krause (01:52.967)

Thank you, Matt. So TeraGanix, we work with effective microorganisms, if you heard of EM1. Our goal is in agriculture to reduce inputs, herbicide inputs, nitrogen inputs. Our goal is to support soil health, to support plant health. Our products are used in various different fields from

probiotics for gut health, to probiotics for soil health, to probiotics for animal health. It's used in agriculture, in cannabis growing, in poultry, in cattle, livestock. But mainly today we're going to talk about agriculture and nitrogen reduction. A little bit about my background and how I came to work with

microbes. So my journey with agriculture started quite a long time ago with a funny story. I actually started working with camels, raising camels in the Middle East, and my company was producing camel food. Why I started doing that is because, you know, on my travels I've seen this interesting thing how they're feeding camels with a lot of sugar and basically destroying their health.

for performance and knowing that we can do better, we did create a good food that was healthy for the camels and it was actually, know, these camels were still pretty good at performing. And that's where I came across, okay, why don't we stop doing things conventionally and so like medically and go back to nature, back to things that we know.

that work. And after that, I started working with EM-1 microbes in organic waste recycling. And that's how I learned how they can actually affect on utilizing fertilizers in agriculture and came across to organics. That was a complete alignment with the vision. What I wanted to do is basically

 

Tjasa Krause (04:10.439)

help agriculture, make it better, make food better, and make these farmers more profitable. And that's why I joined the organics.

 

MJP (04:22.616)

the last few years that you've been with the team, what problems have you identified that really led to the development of the EM NITRO protocol?

 

Tjasa Krause (04:36.061)

So we can see that especially ground crops, which are very important in the United States and they've been grown on millions of acres, are using a lot of synthetic nitrogens, nitrogen fertilizers. And fortunately, yes, we've seen in our past and our history, when we managed to...

 

syntheticatize? Synthetize? Not! Bookmark! Okay, got this one. We've seen in our past when agriculture became big-scale, that when we managed to synthesize nitrogen fertilizers, yes, at first we've seen, you know, one bag more, seven bushels more, an acre, and it was very important at that time to

 

MJP (05:09.198)

Synthesize, synthesize.

 

Tjasa Krause (05:33.925)

to feed the world and basically the demand of food was bigger and bigger and the agriculture, conventional agriculture managed to supply according to those demands because of nitrogen fertilizers. But what we've seen in the last decades, the benefits are not bigger than the cost that we're gonna start to pay.

 

and the soil is being more more depleted because of that. Farmers have big costs of these fertilizers and the grain cost is pretty low. So conventional farmers have low margins. So we try to help that. So especially in 2022, we've seen that it was 150%, 200 %

of nitrogen fertilizer costs went up. And it was a big hit for conventional agriculture in United States because of that. So that was probably one of the biggest things that we've seen that we can help. But on the long term, like I said, our soils are getting depleted. Our soils are actually getting sterilized because of the buildup of consequences of using these fertilizers. And an interesting thing that

I dive deeper into lately is, you know, we've all been talking a lot about not just the fact that we don't even produce enough anymore, but the fact that our food is not nutritionist. So at this point, this is something that's kind of known, right? That the food is not as nutritionist as it used to be, you know? Eating an apple, you're not going to get the same amount of vitamins and minerals as you did 20 years ago. So

 big reason is actually because our plants, our crops, used to get nitrogen fixated from the atmosphere, of course, so that we were able to produce more. We used processes to sanitize.

 

MJP (07:42.926)

Synthesize.

 

Tjasa Krause (07:44.423)

I will skip that word. Not my word. So we use processes to be able to produce synthetic nitrogens and to be more productive per acre. But the environment, because of that change, plants started absorbing it differently. They didn't release sugar.

back into the soil and the microbes that supported the absorption of micronutrients were not working anymore. They were not there anymore. And that's why we have now crops that are gaining biomass, but they're nutrient deficient because they're not absorbing micronutrients back.

 

MJP (08:38.798)

seems like a nasty little feedback loop that we're caught in where it originally applying fertilizers, applying nitrogen helped give that competitive edge. But over the long term, we are now.

Depleting our soil of nutrients, we're depleting it of fertility for future crop cycles and then furthermore depleting the nutrients that are in the actual food that we're consuming and causing potential risks to future crops unless we continue to use more and more and more.

nitrogen inputs, fertilizer inputs that then eat into the profit margin until a farmer gets bled so much that they can't remain profitable. I mean, think that's one common story that we're hearing is a lot of farmers are afraid of potentially losing their farm due to not being able to stay profitable in the next few years.

 

Tjasa Krause (09:43.869)

Exactly.

 

MJP (09:46.304)

So let's start to talk about the microbes and how that plays into the nitro protocol. And ultimately, I know we.

I know we always say the ideal goal is to cut your nitrogen costs and cut your nitrogen inputs with instead reliance on a more organic, more natural approach with the microbes being inserted with our protocol. But let's just take a foundational approach to that here with the microbes and just kind of a compare and contrast with the nitrogen fertilizer and how the microbes play a role.

 

Tjasa Krause (10:24.829)

course. So effective microorganisms, EM-1, we use it as a tool and then we can deploy different protocols for different outcomes in agriculture. One of those protocols, as you mentioned, we call it Nitro, is a nitrogen reduction protocol. So if I take a step back and talk a little bit about nitrogen fertilizers that are majority used in the United States, the most known are urea and basically liquid nitrogen.

So what happens with this nitrogen sources is this is not a usable form that's readily available for a plant to absorb it right away. So when we put it down on the soil, when we fertilize, it needs to go through a process. It needs to break down to nitrates and ammonium, which are the two molecules that plants can actually absorb and then use. So in urea form, there's quite a lot of processes that need to happen for that.

for that outcome. And unfortunately, it takes quite a while. It can take up to 20 days for it to become available for plants to absorb it. And in that meantime, a lot of the product gets lost. So in general, we know that in conventional agriculture, from 50 % to up to 90 % of nitrogen product put down in the soil gets lost because a lot of it can gas.

 gas off. When it's in the form of nitrates, it can easily leach. So it can go into groundwater. If it's a slopey hill, it can leach even faster. If you don't have a lot of organic matter and the soil doesn't bind with anything, again, it just leaches out. So we already know we're losing a lot of that product. So we have a cost effect there, and we have an environmental effect there.

So what Nitro does, it basically, take urea, a nitrogen fertilizer source, we mix it with EM-1, those are basically effective microorganisms, probiotics that will break down urea into usable forms, and we do that in a tank. So basically what happens in the soil, the breakdown process, we do it in a environment that's like contained.

 

Tjasa Krause (12:51.387)

and we do not lose any of the product while that happens. And then the end product, we call it nitro, we apply it foliar on leaves. So we do not apply it on the soil. And there's another thing that's in this product besides nitrates and ammonium, which are the usable forms of nitrogen, there's also amino acids.

So amino acids are very important for this process because they store and transport nitrogen. So what we do is we deliver the vehicle and the fuel to our crops. So the product has minimum loss and it's pretty much completely utilized and used in two to three days after we apply it.

 

MJP (13:41.652)

And just a quick side note on the EM-1 and the microorganisms, what exactly are in those products, essentially? What are the microbes that are acting with the urea and with the amino acids to create this effect?

 

Tjasa Krause (14:03.719)

There are various different strains of microbes that are playing together, but I would mention yeast, different strains of lactobacillus, and photosynthetic bacteria.

 

MJP (14:20.662)

And then, so you mentioned, we're essentially replicating that nitrogen life cycle in a controlled environment where, you know, number one goal there is prevent the loss of nitrogen that is happening in conventional farming with fertilizers. Then we are applying it directly via foliar, directly on the leaves. Then we're saying that the nitrogen uptake is two to three days, so it happens a lot quicker.

any other any other you know reasons to mention that we're that we're applying via foliar rather than in soil.

 

Tjasa Krause (14:59.805)

Besides that, this is really cost effective. Like I said, we will not lose the product. And there's also the environmental effect, right? These are not nitrates in the soil that can leach. So it's not going to gas off. We're not going to have any negative environmental effects. And yes, after we apply this, we plan.

the season so that we can actually reduce what's applied on the soil first year by 50%.

 

MJP (15:34.434)

Gotcha. essentially, essentially we are, you know, and it's, it's almost like a little bit of the math there where if we are applying a hundred percent of fertilizer for a given season and we're losing.

say 70 % of it, then we're only retaining 30%. And if we're able to apply half of that 100 % and maintain the full amount, we're able to effectively reduce the amount of nitrogen that you're putting via conventional soil application by 50%. And I would say in Qualify, that's always our goal year one is to reduce conventional nitrogen inputs and fertilizer costs by 50%.

And how do we see that impacting crop yielder or quality of crops during that first year?

 

Tjasa Krause (16:31.681)

During the first year, we on average do not see any changes in crop productivity or yield, which is the goal, right? Our goal is not to make sure that the yield is bigger or higher, whatever. Our goal is input reduction and maintaining the same productivity and making the plants healthier. And on average, that's what we're seeing.

we've also seen a little bit change in the nutrient value. So the nutrient value was a little bit bigger. But on average, what we're seeing after harvest is pretty much the same yield. And then looking back, they've spent on ground crops, corn, example, on average, they spend $50 to $100 less per acre on nitrogen fertilizers, which is

Quite a lot when you're farming corn, nitrogen fertilizers are a big, big part of your costs per acre.

 

MJP (17:41.716)

in the Nitro protocol? this applicable to all crop types, all soil types?

 

Tjasa Krause (17:50.417)

Yes, EMNitro is applicable to any crop or produce where you are using synthetic nitrogen fertilizers and of course any type of soil because we're not applying it on soil, we're applying it directly on a plant. Of course there are different doses, there are different protocols for different crops. We always adjust it to the farm's needs.

We check how much nitrogen is being used, what type of crops they're farming or produce, and then we make sure that we deliver it at the exact right time when the plant needs it the most, which is for different plants in different growing stages.

 

MJP (18:37.784)

What would you say is it, I guess, hard to say typical when we're customizing protocol per farm, but what are some examples of application? I'm thinking in the sense of, so it gets applied as a foliar spray.

at the right time, like for a typical farmer or an example farmer that we see, you know, how many applications of the Nitro foliar spray application is happening per season and at what times are we typically seeing that happen?

 

Tjasa Krause (19:12.349)

Yes, we're working with different crops, but majority we work with corn, wheat, pasture, hay. Those are our leading crops. For corn and wheat, we apply it two times in the season. It's mostly applied in the vegetative state for corn. And for pasture, we apply it after each cutting. So depending on how many cuttings a season there are,

I would say the farmers we worked with, that would be two to four cuttings this season. That's how many applications we have.

 

MJP (19:51.896)

And then depending on where someone's at, and I know we're mainly focused here in the United States, but depending on where someone's at with weather conditions, is there any kind of variance there depending on the region or the weather?

 

Tjasa Krause (20:06.971)

weather conditions itself, if they are, you know, average, if you don't have, we're talking about here, excessive weather incidents like hail or, you know, hurricane, that we cannot affect, but in average weather conditions, it pretty much works in any weather condition. Like I said, it's absorbent two to three days, so

there's not much that you need to plan around, you know, is there going to be excessive rain for the next 20 days, right? Because when you're putting down on soil, if you're putting it down and then you have two, three weeks of excessive rain, it's going to be washed out. So luckily, because the absorption happens at maximum three days, it's easier to to apply it.

 

MJP (21:02.51)

Gotcha. Tell me, you know, what are some of the reactions that we're getting from conventional farmers that have been, you know, farming the same way for years, maybe decades now, that have been caught in the fertilizer, you know, feedback loop, call it.

What are some of those reactions that we're getting after the first year, second year trials that we're starting to see?

 

Tjasa Krause (21:34.429)

So we always recommend our farmers first year, always go with a trial so that you can actually see it side by side. You you have the same soil fertility, you'll have the same weather conditions. The only thing you're going to change between these two fields is you're going to use 50 % less nitrogen so that they can actually see, okay, I saved money on this one and the yield is comparable, it's the same.

And what we're seeing is they're pretty excited when they harvest and they see that pretty much they're getting the same yield. And then looking back, they're like, yeah, I spent $50 less. So, you know, on a thousand acres, that's a significant amount of savings, for example. And lately we've also been getting some...

Other results and calls for example, like I'm gonna share a funny story. This is farmer that has cattle and has been using Nitro for second year now on pasture. And he noticed that from the first year that he used Nitro and the second year that he used Nitro, he had the same yield, right? He harvests the same amount of his

of his crop, but he added more heads. So now he has more heads on his farm and he said that he's feeding them with the same amount, which is indicating that the nutritional value of the crop is just higher. And we've been getting that feedback mostly from pasture because I guess...

they can notice it faster, that the nutrition value is higher. And corn, by far the biggest result that they're seeing is, you know, $50 to $100 on average savings, which is a big deal.

 

MJP (23:48.452)

That's a huge deal. And I know that's usually our sticking point is, first and foremost, we want increase farmer profitability. We want to help you reduce those nitrogen costs, those fertilizer input costs by 50 % just to edify for.

you know, for the cost benefit if a farmer is switching over to the Nitro protocol, what are the costs associated with that? You know, for removing 50 % of the nitrogen costs, you know, our protocol isn't free. You know, how does that factor in?

 

Tjasa Krause (24:26.133)

The for these crops that I've been mentioning over this time we were talking cost approximately $11 an acre in products. So it's not a big cost. The savings pay off the protocol more than once.

And there are no initial investments, right? So we always start with trials. We always adjust it to the infrastructure that our farm has. So they don't need to buy any equipment. It's compatible with whatever they're already using. And then yes, when there are bigger deployments, when farms are doing many thousands of acres, usually those big farms already have tanks.

But rarely some go and do an investment of buying a tank so they can ferment bigger amounts of product and it very quickly pays off the cost of an additional tank and the savings they get in first or second year.

 

MJP (25:36.696)

That's awesome. That's the goal. that's our short-term goal of increasing profitability. And I mean, we'd be robbing ourselves if we weren't talking about the long-term impact of this for overall soil fertility and soil health.

dive into that a little bit for me, talk to me about how we are seeing this protocol specifically. And again, the dual impact of reducing nitrogen inputs that are kind of nuking the soil along with introducing effective microorganisms into the mix that should be helping revitalize soil health and bringing or rather

waking up the life that's in the soil. Talk to me a little bit about what we're seeing as far as long-term benefits of making this switch.

 

Tjasa Krause (26:43.249)

Yes, I mentioned before, EM-1 effective microorganisms are a tool for us and then we have different protocols that we can deploy. We actually have protocols that are helping bring the life and biology in the soil back by just adding our probiotics in the soil. Nitro itself is not delivering live microbes, but what it is doing is reducing

this synthetic nitrogen, and over time it will have a greater effect on soil that we can see in the first year or two. So the effect that farmers see in the first year or two of just using nitrogen reduction protocol is they'll see, you know, I'm still having the same yield or I'm even getting some higher nutritional value. I am spending less money on nitrogen fertilizers, but over time

you'll see that there's gonna be less and less build up excessive nitrogen in the soil that's usually just building up there. And if you don't have a good biology in soil, you cannot use that product. We call it it's locked in. It's locked in nutrients and then they can get washed out. So a lot of it actually goes into groundwater. So those are the things that authorities are also testing. How much nitrates are there in groundwater.

agriculture can sometimes get penalized because of that, And there's so many effects that will happen over the next few years of using less nitrogen. So right now what we're seeing is we've been using nitrogen fertilizers for decades and we're seeing that we have less organic matter in the soil, we have less life in the soil, we have less microbes that are helping with absorption of other nutrients in the soil and it's...

Basically the effect is on the nutritionist value of the crops and produce that we're eating. If for the next decades we can reduce nitrogen and keep the same yield or production so that we can, you know, feed the demand for food that we have, eventually we believe that the food will become more nutritionist because we can

 

Tjasa Krause (29:06.781)

bring life back, organic, natural organic matter back, biology back, and basically reverse the process that was happening in the soil. We're not gonna see that in one season. The fact, like I said, in one season for conventional farmers is they're gonna save money and they're gonna see a healthy plants, crops, and they're gonna basically maintain yield. But over a decade,

we're going to see a lot of changes.

 

MJP (29:40.224)

Any other, any other, you know, success stories over the past few years that that come to your mind that you want to share?

 

Tjasa Krause (29:51.029)

I have so many names in my head of farmers that I almost talk weekly to them for the past two years. We have farmers from different states, majority are coming from the Midwest or so called Corn Belt. But yes, can talk about...

Farmer Tracy I've been working with for a second year now from North Dakota and seeing his yield being comparable to last year with a reduction. think he reduced about 50 % of his nitrogen, which I know it was at least $50 an acre for him in savings. And he also he applied Nitro on a

part of field that was already underperforming. So it was already, you know, not the best, the most fertile soil. And he was getting pretty much comparable yield to the rest of the field. I can talk about Arlen from Kansas. Also, I've been working with him for the second year. He's been using it on first on corn, then on winter wheat.

We have his trial results from last year and you can see that where he used Nitro, the yield was comparable to his normal average nitrogen program. But on the parts of the field where he knows that he has a little bit better soil fertility, the Nitro was performing even better and he actually gained some

yield there compared to other fields. I can talk about Mike and Danny. They both farm pasture, they both have cattle, and they both called me to let me know, hey, I think I'm seeing higher nutritional value in my crop. You know, when I mentioned before

 

Tjasa Krause (32:12.197)

adding more heads the second year and still basically using the same amount of food made him think, hey I think I have a higher nutritional value because they don't eat as much. They're happy, they eat the same amount or a bit less than last year and they're doing great and I think it's because the nutritional value is higher. And I got a couple of calls like that.

 

MJP (32:41.976)

That's awesome. I just saw you light up thinking about all the, all the stories. I mean, you know, this is for us and the rest of the TeraGanix team, it's, you know, getting, getting to interact with those farmers and, and seeing and hearing those success stories, you know, makes it, makes it, you know, the reason why we, why we get up and do what we do.

Maybe we close on that and just kind of get some thoughts from you on what does it mean to be able to work with these farmers and see the impact that we're seeing and see the results that are potentially changing lives and changing the future and the impact of the land that they're.

their families have had and that they're you know that they're going to farm and pass down to future generations.

 

Tjasa Krause (33:40.957)

Yes, the farmers we work with, these are like second, third generation family farms. They are pretty big compared to where I come from. I come from Slovenia in Europe and I think we talked a couple of days ago and compared the acres that we farm there are compatible. The whole acreage that we farm there is...

parable with one really big corporate farm in United States, for example, right? So, you know, these farms look so big to me, but they're not that big farms. They're family farms. They're a second, third generation. And this is their life. This is what feeds their family. And they very much care about their farms. They care about their plants and they care about the product they put out there. And, you know, we talk a lot about

that all the chemicals we're putting down in different fields from agriculture to how do we produce food are just not okay. And what I love about what we do is we're helping these farms. They always wanted a solution. It's just this is what it was offered to them. So you know they would take whatever is better because they want a better food. They want to have a better farm. They want to have a healthier farm. And I feel like

helping them get better results and that it doesn't hurt their bottom line, it doesn't hurt their pockets. It's not just another added product that costs more money, but we're actually saving them money and giving some margin back so that these farms can actually breed means a lot to me and it's fun. I like doing it. I like working with them and I love...

at the end of the first year when they actually see results. you can see how they light up and see how they can use it next year and basically utilize it more and get more benefits when they deploy more and more and more acres.

 

MJP (35:57.166)

This has been a great discussion. I know we'll have Tjaša's contact info here on the screen as well. If anyone wants to get in touch and learn more about the Nitro protocol, if you've got additional questions, we definitely encourage you to touch base and reach out. We can share more testimonials and stories and probably put you in touch with some of the farmers that have been seeing the results and seeing the impact firsthand.

Yeah, it's definitely an exciting shift in what we're seeing with conventional farming and overall with what we're seeing on the regenerative agriculture movement. And we're grateful to play a part and have a role in pushing the next generation forward. Tjaša, any final words?

 

Tjasa Krause (36:54.621)

Thank you for everyone's attention and I hope you made it till the end. I hope it was interesting and if anyone wants to work with us, we have open arms. We're happy to bring anyone into our community and also we're so grateful to be here on this conference.

You know, this community has already brought so much good to us and we're so happy to bring in more people.

 

MJP (37:26.37)

Yep, sharing gratitude with everybody today. I love that. Yeah, thank you everybody for your attentiveness and yeah, we'll end it there.