The Missing Middle in Regenerative Ag Adoption with Christie Apple

In this episode of The Whole Farm Podcast presented by CHONEX, Michael sits down with Christie Apple, an agronomist, soil health advocate, and founder of Crop Scout Christie, for a powerful conversation about the role ag retail plays in the future of soil health.

Christie shares how she found her way into agronomy after starting in business administration and quickly realizing that the intersection of soil, biology, chemistry, and plant performance was where she was meant to be. Now in her 18th season, she works across the Great Lakes region helping retailers, agronomists, and farmers translate complex soil health concepts into practical field-level decisions.

A central theme of the conversation is what Christie calls "the missing middle.”

For years, the industry has focused on convincing farmers to adopt soil health and regenerative practices. But Christie argues that the bigger gap may not be farmer interest. Farmers want to do better. They want their land to last. They want practices that improve resilience, productivity, and long-term viability.

The missing piece is often the trusted advisor layer.

Ag retailers, sales agronomists, custom applicators, CCAs, consultants, and other farm decision influencers are the people farmers already trust. They influence conversations around nutrient applications, product decisions, cover crops, tillage, timing, and management strategy. But many of those advisors have not been given the education, resources, language, or incentives to confidently lead soil health conversations.

Christie and Michael discuss why that matters, especially as regenerative agriculture moves from niche conversation to broader industry priority. Government programs, grants, food companies, and sustainability initiatives can all play a role, but long-term adoption depends on practical support at the farm gate.

The conversation also explores why soil health should not be treated as separate from agronomy. Nutrient use efficiency, nitrogen stabilization, cover crop integration, resistant weed management, water infiltration, carbon, biological activity, and crop resilience are all part of the same system.

Christie challenges ag retail leaders to bring soil health to the front of the conversation—not as a replacement for fertilizer or conventional agronomy, but as a lens for better decision-making. Every pass across a field is either helping or hurting the soil. The opportunity is to equip the people closest to farmers with the confidence and tools to make those decisions count.

If you are an agronomist, retailer, advisor, or farmer trying to understand where regenerative agriculture goes next, this episode is a must-listen.

Christie’s message is clear: strengthen the people at the center of farm decisions, and we won’t just change individual farms. We can change the system.

Find Christie at: 
https://www.cropscoutchristie.com/
https://www.instagram.com/cropscoutchristie/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/christie-apple-a8243ba3/

To learn more about CHONEX, explore additional resources, and receive future episodes to your inbox, visit chonex.ag. If you found this episode valuable, subscribe to the podcast and share it with someone in your network.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Chonex podcast, where we bring together growers, industry experts, and ag innovators to explore soil health, nutrient management, and the systems that help crops and farms perform better over time. This podcast is built to bring you real insights for better crop outcomes. Let's dig in.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Welcome back to another episode of the Whole Farm Podcast presented by Chonex. I, you know, having this platform has been a real blessing to me because, you know, Chonex has given me a lot of uh ability to ask different folks that I find interesting that have lots of amazing experiences that can teach us something. And I am so thankful that this next guest agreed to come and just have a real you know download session on what she's seeing out there. She's in the field, she does so many different things, and I'm so excited to welcome Christy Apple to the show today. So, Christy, I'm gonna let you just discuss a little bit about who you are and what you do, and then we'll get into some some awesome questions, okay?

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Thank you so much for having me, Michael. I'm I'm honored to be a part of of this discussion today, and and I always treasure an opportunity to reconnect with you um, you know, in in whatever ways possible. Um I'm an agronomist. I work in, I'm located in central Michigan. I work primarily in the Great Lakes region of North America and U.S. Um, I've had, I don't know, I think this is my 18th season, I want to say. I believe this is my this is my 18th planting season that we just came through. Um just really an awesome experience. Um, I didn't come to agronomy traditionally speaking. I went to college for business. Um I always had a heart and a personal interest, a pension, I guess you will call it, even since I was a child, very interested in chemistry and biology, um, the marrying of those two things. And I always thought that my future would involve human science somehow, but I didn't even know that there was this whole entire career that involved um plant science, soil science, and the marrying of those things in a career or a field called agronomy. And um, so I came into this late in late in life at 28 years old. Um, you know, I was taking, I was taking classes and courses with young folks that were just out of high school and taking exams and things like that with people that um, you know, I just felt like I had no business being in the same room with. Um what I realized was this was actually my calling all along. And um the evolution of those 18 seasons has not only brought me, you know, professional development, but also a tremendous amount of personal growth and um just recognizing um and developing a systems approach in everything that I do. And um, so more recently, I've been in, you know, various leadership roles. I've spent most of my life in sales, even like I said, even dating back to when I was a child, um, you know, I really enjoyed the sales process. I always was interested in what made people make decisions. And so I would often have um conversations with elders and older folks about why they do what they do, what motivates them. I remember having these conversations with my grandparents and their peers when as a child I was there during coffee hour or whatever at the farm and listening to what they were saying. And they always gave me an opportunity because I asked smart questions as a kid. And so I found that asking smart questions opened doors and helped me understand the situation better. And um, I've just kind of made that a lifestyle and I've built my entire career around that, even prior to ag. And um, and now here I am, like I said, in my 18th season, loving this season of life that I'm currently in and um and having some introspection as I as I mature in my in my life and in my professional development. So um we can get into the details, but that's kind of uh sort of who I am, and we can talk about how that works and what that that actually means in real life, you know, at some point today, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

That's that's all I want to go ahead and dig in because you have a relationship with ag retail. Tell me more about that, Christy.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Yeah, um, let's see. I started working in ag retail, which is actually what prompted me to um, you know, to embark upon this journey in as an agronomist. Um, it wasn't until I was in that role in um a business admin capacity that I realized, oh my gosh, this is this is everything that I this is everything that I dreamed. I'm so interested in this. I couldn't get enough. I was so hungry for the content of the day-to-day activity and the way that you know, field practices and soil management was interacting with uh plant life and soil biological life. And um, you know, so that was really influential on putting me on this path in the first place. And um I I said to my my bosses, I I'm good at my job and I'm I'm very, you know, I'm very capable and qualified to do what I'm doing for your business. But um I think if you would support me, you know, this was only like eight months into my role, also. So I was kind of a bold ask, but I said, if you guys would take a chance on me and allow me to, you know, kind of chase down some rabbit holes and learn more about this, I think I'm gonna make you a lot more money. If if you if you know, if we find somebody to do what I'm doing right now, I can train somebody to do this, and then you let me go and and and become this, this, this whatever this is. And at the time I didn't have a word for it, but I I later understood it to be agronomy. And um, so that kind of embarked, you know, that was where I stepped into the river of agronomy. Um, and that was through this role that I had at an ag retail. It was a small business. It was two guys that went to um FFA together, they were in 4-H together, they later went to Farmhouse at Michigan State together, um, did the ag tech program together, um, and and just decided one day that uh, you know, hey guys, um we're just gonna do this. And so they cashed in their 401ks that they had at the time as young men and um decided to start an ag retail business entirely focused upon the the pillars of soil health. And in 2008, when they were having this conversation or when they were developing, launching this business plan, they realized that um the world didn't need more urea and potash. That was not our lack. That was not our lowest stave in the barrel was how much fertilizer we had access to or could apply. They realized that the lowest stave in the barrel was actually this understanding at the farm level, at the farm gate, of how our soil health practices and our biological health could unlock different things. And so, not that the science was necessarily new, but recognizing that that focusing on things like seaweed extracts, um, complex sugars and amino acids, um, carbohydrates and humics and fulvics was going to be an interesting niche to build their business on. And so they did, and they called it A and E Ag, and they brought me into it. And in a short period of time, I was so enthralled with the idea of augmenting soil health as a means of augmenting plant health and crop quality that it's all that I could think of. And um, and so they built a business. I learned to thrive in this business. I found really smart and inspiring people to learn from. Like I said, I went to college for business. I didn't go to crop and soil, I didn't go to weed ID. I didn't, I didn't have um, you know, ag economics. Uh, you know, I didn't do any of those things that way. I learned it completely organically through person-to-person interactions. I found um this was also early in the internet and in like the Googling era, like we have today. And so, you know, like this was a really awesome moment for um for this type of development to be taking place. I went to a lot of field days. I learned how to do this, how to speak this language, how to understand soil interactions and plant interactions with the soil and the microbial populations through people like Joe Clapperton, um, Elaine Ingram, like this in in an era before their fame, in an era before their renown, um, having access to these folks and in you know, face-to-face access with these folks that are now, you know, essentially leaders of uh soil health movement. Um, I bumped into a scientist at an airport. We ended up being on the flight together. We spent four and a half hours on an airplane together. And turns out he was, he happened at the time to be the executive director of the International Humic Substances Organization. No idea who he was or what that meant, but he helped me to uh have perspective. And it was such a it was just the awesome intimate learning experience with somebody who was open to sharing with me that I knew that this would be my place forever in my career. This is this was this was it for me. And um, so anyway, so fast forward to you know how this translates into my egg retail experience. I became a very effective uh salesperson in a role that never existed before. I was a soil health specialist selling products, helping farmers translate complex topics of you know soil physics and biological interactions into plant responses. And so the farmers were primarily concerned with uh yield objectives. And when we started breaking things down on how we achieve yield um as precision planters became more popular as uh more precise placement, as the fertilizer institute launching the 4R concept, all of this stuff was kind of co-evolving. And so it was such a great moment to be evolving myself in this way as well. Um, it I didn't feel quite as alone because you could you could see the industry trying to adapt and respond, recognizing the same way we've been doing things is not sustainable. And so, even giving context to the word sustainable, meaning uh keeping farmers in business while we change our practices into more uh soil-driven, soil supportive activities, uh, the whole thing was kind of working together. And so I built a really successful ag retail sales career um while doing that. And um, in 2017, the um owners of the company, one of them happened to be my husband, um, sold the company to an international products company manufacturing um high-quality biostimulants and uh granular fertilizers with um homogenized uh biostimulants integrated in the granular fertilizer. And a whole new level kind of opened up for me. Um, my role transitioned away from all direct to farm interactions over into people development and helping sales reps to understand how to do this because selling something is just a series of activities and follow-through. But but having conversations around soil health and sustainability requires some different skill sets and things. So I spent a lot of time since 2017 investing in people and helping to develop people's confidence and understanding of how products help translate into soil health practices and how that fits together. And in my role today, as it exists, I'm still working for that company. But what I'm primarily doing at this moment is helping other retailers that are using the products that I'm selling to translate to their teams and to their farmer clients how to use these types of products. How does that translate into nutrient use efficiency? How does this translate into soil health best practices? And um, in my free time, I have launched a few other businesses. So my Crop Scout Christie consulting business, focusing heavily on how do we take a so a soil health baseline and translate that into a program, a plan over the next five to 10 years to take this farm or their activities at this farm and wrap it up into something that would be, you know, the less carbon intensive, um, more translating to nutrient use efficiency. Um, I work a lot in the specialty crop market in this space with in this particular um focus on nutrient density and increasing the the amount of nutrients that are in the fruit that we're harvesting so that it can be utilized differently, more effectively in whatever the next step is, if that's feeding it to our children or it's transferring or translating that, augmenting that into a product like wine grapes into wine or hops into beer or you know, some other uh, you know, specialty crop uh use there. Um, so it's kind of been an interesting evolution for me personally, but this is um this is what I do every day, and it's it's a way of life for me. It is the way that I live my life, um, recognizing that every pass that we make over a field, regardless of what the crop is, is has a very like binary function. It's either helping or hurting the soil. And so if you break it down into the most simplistic layer possible, translating that into even the way that I interact with my adult children and the way that I interact with my coworkers, recognizing that every single pass I make, even with you, Michael, is either helping or hurting you or helping or hurting our relationship. And so it's given me a like a fundamental um compass, true north, to be able to recognize the impacts of our words and of our actions, translating that into not just human interactions, but soil interactions and helping farmers and ag retailers and agronomists like myself who have a heart and desire and hunger to be better. Um, we just don't know exactly how to get there. Um, that is that's the fundamental motivator for me is is always to leave the soil or leave that relationship or leave that better than when I first encountered it. So that's that's who I am fundamentally. That's how I got to be where I'm at. And um, yeah, and then and that's really where the ag retail experience comes into play. You know, I put together a really successful career in ag retail, and I have a heart to help people that are doing that role now. And um, I have the privilege of being able to do that, not only working for the products company I work for, but also in my private consulting side of things as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Wow. That, you know, it it really kind of rolls all of it together, you know, all the ingredients. And, you know, I had 2008, such a different time for biostimulants, for biologicals. You know, now there's you know, a really viable alternative retail kind of space that pops up that looks differently and different geographies. Obviously, brick and mortar ag retail is not going anywhere. You know, it is also evolving, though, and there's a lot of things that even more what I would call traditional ag retail is co-opting from some folks, even kind of like AE 2008, discussing things like enzymes, discussing things like humics and fulvix and sugars and complex carbohydrates, a lot of these things now are widely available. And also that creates a huge opportunity, which is what I really wanted to talk to you about. Because when we cross over from something maybe more small, alternative, maybe looked at as hey, these are my people. I learned to trust them, but they look a little different. I can't necessarily have the same feeling as when I drive up to you know the co-op that's existed for a hundred years down the road. Maybe it's a different feeling. Uh, maybe there's different levels of trust that have to be gained, but you know, we do know that ag retail is still here. And we do know that it's changing. And also, we have people that have spent a career and now they're hiring new ag retail sales agronomists. And I say new, lots of people are coming into it, maybe from different roles or different backgrounds, but maybe they're younger, you know, maybe they don't look like me, maybe they look somehow different. But you know, I I when we talked last time, Christy, and I know you've had a lot of people teach you and pour into you, and you have a heart to teach and pour into other folks, especially other retail agronomists, just as you mentioned. You mentioned this phrase that I want you to tell me about, and I I want to understand it from your perspective. When we talked last time, you mentioned the missing committal. Christy, what what is that in your perspective? Tell me about that thought that you have on that.

SPEAKER_02 17:47

Yeah, um just some context on that. I have I've had a wonderful, I mean, uh just a completely blessed experience. Um more recently, the last couple of years, I was appointed to a soil health task force, a first of its kind group of industry professionals, um, appointed by our Michigan Department of Agriculture director, Tim Boring, um, essentially tasking us with um answering a really important question. And that is how do we get farmers to adapt soil health practices forever? Not necessarily just the grant cycle um adopters, right? So when a grant wears out or or loses its funding, then the practice goes away and the farmer quits doing the practice. Why? The answer is because we have a gap in knowledge, experience, um, and also a gap from the governmental bodies and regulatory side of things that have been really uh working hard the last 10 to 15 years. There's just been, you know, there's even new new entities within our federal and our state governments that didn't even exist before, right? We weren't paying attention to um from a regulatory perspective, what was happening in Chesapeake Bay or maybe the Western Lake Erie basin, um, these really um tender water ecosystems um being affected by agricultural practices. And it took us a while to get us there. Okay, so like this is kind of where these questions came from is okay, if if farmers can change practices and um have less nutrients, applied nutrients exiting their farms, we will have better environmental outcomes, we can protect our waterways. This feels like uh this feels like something that we now know in fact. I mean, every day we're seeing, we can see smaller and smaller, literally, and we can compute farther and farther and faster now than ever before. Even in just the last three years, we've taken just these astronomical steps. I mean, just crazy amount of uh ability to mathematically and and um take what was once theoretical math and science and convert that into actual data that can be aggregated and analyzed, like meta-analysis style. So, why that's really significant to share is when we're talking about influencing farmers' practices, when there's other there's other factors that are impacting these waterways. And so I want to be careful not to just say that it's only, you know, like there's obviously lots of factors impacting these waterways, not to mention, you know, not one being urban sprawl and urban development right on top of the waterways. Um, and and there's there's things that can go wrong with all of that, but particularly in the agricultural space, I'll just focus on that. Um, how do we get farmers to do that? And so there was really well-intentioned folks that built, you know, these these wonderful programs, did a lot of work, um, a lot of products companies that were interested in developing products that could help foster these practice changes or be a part of that. Um and it enriched a lot of corporations, organizations, and um like non-governmental organizations that were adjacent to these studies and things. And but at the end of the day, the farmer who's responsible for the practices and who were really bearing the weight of the fate of these waterways was not really getting the support that they needed. They were getting one-pagers from the USDA. They were getting, you know, the EPA might have been giving them some type of something. They might have been able to access a grant to um support a practice change. But once that grant ran out, it's gone. The practice is gone. We're back to what we know. And over time, what we're realizing is, you know, we just keep spending more taxpayer resources to figure out how to change farmers' minds to adapt practices that don't do this, that that help us to get to better outcomes. Environmental outcomes. What we're not putting energy and attention into is university programs that are influencing young agronomists and young farmers. And we're also not, because university change is very slow. We need lots and lots of data in order for a university to say, this is how we should be doing it. And sometimes that takes a generation to accumulate that. So in a lot of our universities still being being educated at a fundamental level, is that you know the Haberbosch method is the way to create and and to to access nitrogen. When we we may be missing something really, really um important because the speed with which we understand things now is happening so quickly. Okay, so that's my context on all this. The question is, why aren't the farmers adopting long-term? And the problem is when the grant runs out, the the tech that was, you know, grant-funded tech is gone, or that department at the conservation district has had turnover, and so somebody who's been replaced doesn't understand your farm or that farmer's needs, or it maybe even the community's needs. Um, there's there's all kinds of factors that go into this. But again, everything is being built around like this conservation district approach, they're, you know, whatever, the FSA approach. And farmers generally resist that uh influence from that direction. They're seen as like regulatory, they're seen as like having access to their private information. You know, farmers really appreciate their privacy, and and privacy is a fundamental uh right of our republic here in the United States. And so who are they getting information from? Who are they getting influence from and their practices and their decisions? It still boils down to the guy they're buying things from or the sales rep that they're purchasing things from. And I realized through my appointment at Soil Health Task Force here for Michigan Department of Agriculture, um, there is this really big gap in the way that we support farm decisions. The gap is actually not changing the farmers' minds. Farmers want to do better. There is a problem with markets, there is a problem with surplus, there are some like systemic um supply chain uh things that need to be resolved that I can't fix. Um, as far as, you know, if if it pays, if we can make it pay for a farmer to implement regenerative practices, it'd be a no-brainer all day long. Right now, we don't have, we don't have global systems developed yet to to really encourage that to take place. So what other ins, what other reason would they have other than caring about the soil, to do this? When they go to the co-op to get or their ag retail, their trusted advisor, the person they trust, a trusted advisor could potentially be a CCA, a certified crop advisor. It could be a, you know, a CPAG, I don't know. There, it could be your sales agronomist, it could be the custom applicator that you have a relationship with who's doing your application of your your pesticides or your fertilizer. I don't know. It's all this whole like this whole group of people that would have maybe varying levels of education, maybe varying exposure to you know something from the fertilizer institute suggesting that the right time, the right place, the right rate might might be the right way to go here. They may or may not have any exposure to that, despite the fertilizer institute's best efforts to you know pour that down through those channels. If you're not a CCA, then you're not going to get that. You're not on anybody's list to teach you about that stuff. So, what about all this huge body of farm decision influencers that don't have the skills, the resources, the vernacular, the support mechanism, and also the incentive from their employer to be speaking this language? If if my trusted advisor is not talking to me about this, if my okay, translated into a different profession, if my dentist is not talking to me about the importance of flossing, am I gonna floss? I don't know. Maybe not. I might be interested in it, but like if I don't have somebody that I trust to tell me the truth about something, is not talking to me about cover crops because they don't know about it or they don't know how to make sense of it, or they don't have access to it, or you know, they're there maybe that person isn't having those conversations because they don't understand nutrient use efficiency dynamics because of their background. The conversation isn't gonna come up at the farm. And it and I don't know a lot of farmers that are gonna say, hey, I was uh, you know, I was reading on, you know, it's not reading anymore. It's I saw on Facebook or it was in my news feed or it's on my phone. That's actually the the language that gets used a lot. Hey, I saw on my phone. Um, I just assume that that's Facebook because of demographics. Um, but what what I'm hearing out there is, what do you know about this? What do you know about? I saw this guy that I watched his reels or his videos on YouTube, and he's talking about this. What do you know about that? There is an entire, like a large group of farm in decision influencers that don't know anything about cover crops, they don't know where to go for resources, they don't know how to make recommendations around it, they don't know how it influences herbicide programs or tillage practices, they don't know how. And so they walk away from the conversation because that looks like a 10-chapter book. That looks like a complicated project for somebody who's immediately out of their depth. So I sort of have discovered like this spot, you know. I I mean, working with ag retail agronomists every day. This is this is what I do. 80% of my job is supporting ag retail agronomists and being successful with nutrient use efficiency, nutrient managers, and biostimulants. That's what I do. So I have to teach them not only the concepts of nutrient use efficiency, but I also need to teach them how to have discovery conversations with farmers to understand what the farmer's level of understanding of this principle is, right? So it's it's way more than sales. It's it's mentorship, it's engaging the the practice, but it's also engaging like the philosophy of these things. And and nobody's there to support them. I'm realizing like even working for nationals, national retailers that have a sustainability program are not talking to their people that are selling products to farmers about these concepts. And I can't, for the life of me, understand why, but I'm starting to see how it translates into the resistance at the farm level to maintain these practices. I don't I don't know if anybody else is starting to see this, but like I interact with other soil health-focused crop advisors throughout the US. I have a great relationship with several of them. And it's like a really small community. We all know each other because we're the only one speaking this language. And so people are looking to us to give influence on these things or give response to these things. And the question I get sometimes on some of the forums that I interact on is what's the best cover crop to do this? That's a really complicated question because I'm gonna ask you, you know, what's your current tillage practices? What are what are your goals? Is water infiltration a problem for you? Is soil tilth a problem for you? You know, I can't answer what's the best cover crop for something. Also, there's this mindset that it's one single thing when the very fundamentals of soil health principles evolve around diversity. Like diversity in soil microbial activity is limited by the diversity of plants growing on the field that it's in. So chances are you're not going to get what's my favorite cover crop species. I'm gonna answer that with a question. What are you trying to do with it? Right? And and so, why how do we get more people to be able to competently and confidently engage those conversations at the ag retail level? That's that is that is like this missing middle. These folks have so much influence, they have the trust of the farmers already. Farmers generally don't trust the government, farmers generally are not looking for grants to solve their problems. But the fact that that's how this has been led, or big food companies saying, hey, we're gonna, you know, we want you to become regenerative or implement regen practices like a Nestle or that buys, you know, uh vegetables for baby food inputs. Um, they own like the Gerber brand and some of the others that you might uh they own like the lean cuisine brand and the hungry man and you know, stuff you'd see in your freezer section. Well, they want to put regenerative or organic labels on their food so that it becomes more attractive to encourage people to buy it at the grocery store. But the reality is like there are there are consumers that are interested in that, but that population is generally very small still. It's not mainstream still, because it's not mainstream upstream. So what if we took, you know, this like super granular approach and started to sample the populations of ag retail people that are genuinely wanting to get better in this space and develop programs, develop them, help them develop their confidence and skill set and uh ability to go seek resources around this. So then their expertise becomes more soil health focused. So their conversations with the farmers and the decisions the farmers are making become more soil health oriented. Over time, you're not just gonna be uh, you know, impacting how many acres Christy Apple's boots can touch, but you're going to be impacting regions, you're going to be impacting scalable acres. And not it isn't a challenge with whether or not the farmers want to do things right, they do. They're feeding their families. This is land that they're, that they're fundamentally like intrinsically tied to. This is how they make their living, this is how they have have their family culture is integrated into. They want this land to persist into the future. It's a way of life for the farmers. I don't care what size farmer you are. It is even the farmers that are like, oh, it's just business. No, it's a way of life for them too. So I think that there is just this gap in helping people and incentivizing people at the ag retail layer level who have the most influence on products, on on decisions, on application rates and application timings and tillage practices and all the other things that would translate into soil health outcomes, improving you know, water systems and local ecology. That is the that, in my opinion, is uh also so underemphasized. Like nobody is helping these people, nobody is effectively impacting these folks for the the good of the soil health movement. And I just I see that as a such an opportunity to, you know, to not just leave a lasting imp impact or impression from what I can am capable of doing, but hopefully to inspire other people that have way more influence than I do to start to develop these folks. I think that we will see more farm gay adoption of soil health practices if we see more ag retail education resource incentives adopted to influence those decisions. That's that's where I'm at with that.

SPEAKER_01 34:13

Wow. Yeah, I the first time you told me about that, Christy, you know, I had just been on LinkedIn scrolling on my phone. Hey, I saw on my phone that someone had posted an AI image, just like any other image. And it had a, it looked like a like a military plane, like a carrier plane, and it had a farmer dressed up as a soldier, and it had a big label that said farmer, and then right behind him that was about to jump out of the hatch. Okay, he had a parachute on, but he was about to jump out of the hatch. And then right behind him, it had four individuals that were wearing nice business suits with ties. One of them said ag retail, one of them said consultant, one of them said ag tech operator, the other person was maybe a tractor manufacturer. And they were just there like smiling as the former soldier was panicking, jumping out of the airplane. And at the bottom, it said only one person sticks the landing. And I did not know how to feel about that, Christy. Because number one, I mean, at different levels, essentially those people that were in business suits standing behind them are tied to the farmer's success. So obviously, if they're tied to the success, that's me saying, Hey, listen, like we actually have like ankle chains on, like we're in the potato sack together, like we're sharing a leg, hopping in this potato race together. Okay. So like we got the sack on, and so, or maybe our legs are tied together and on this tandem bungee cord, and guess what? That tandem bungee cord's not very long. And so is when that farmer jumps, that soldier jumps, guess what? I'm tied to him. And I felt really uh, you know, not necessarily responsible, but I felt like wow, Christy's on to this because number one, she's she's for the last 20 years, she's ate this conversation, soaked in this conversation, taught other retailers now this conversation, have been, you know, talking to so many different people that are adopting this and seeing field validation regardless of academic validation. And I said, Christy is absolutely right. Number one, I know, I mean, I'm an agronomist CCA for our nutrient management specialist myself. I didn't do those certifications and acronyms necessarily to just have a bunch of acronyms. I did it because at the time I did not have long beard, gray hair, and really rough hands. Guess what? I'm young. And if I want to show my value to a farmer, I need to be involved in these programs. I need some sort of credentialing to show, hey, listen, I can be a trusted advisor. And I feel like a lot of young people in ag retail, you know, they might say, Well, why do I need my CCA? Well, I would say, listen, it shows effort, but also it shows that you're willing to do this because you value the farmer that much to be a trusted advisor. That I'm gonna go the extra mile. So now, you know, we we're in this new phase. We're in this like region ag pilot program with USDA. We were, you know, yesterday, matter of fact, yesterday, I had a state NRCS uh agronomist, state agronomist, really awesome guy. I've sat and met with him before. My name came up on this technical service provider NRCS list for the regen pilot program. And it was for a state. Uh, I would just generally say the state is not as diverse as Michigan, uh, but it does have lots of crop diversity, it does have lots of really big row crop acres and does have lots of really good farmers that are interested in regen agriculture. And of the qualified individuals, there was only 10 people on the list. And guess what? There's probably only really four of us on that list that live in the state of Georgia. And I live way away from a lot of the acres in Georgia. So it really said, wow, like we got to get some ag retail agronomists on this list. We got to get them on this qualified individual list. We got to bring them up, we got to train them, we got to teach them. You know, if you're listening to this podcast, Ag Retailers Association, ARA, listen, this is an opportunity. And so, Christy, I I think what you know, you just said, I want you to kind of shut us down in the next kind of two or three questions. But if you were addressing ARA, the Ag Retailers Association that's made up of independent member co-ops, it's made out of national co-ops, you know, folks that are integrated, folks that are very, you know, different. How would you how would you describe this need to them on the front of what you just mentioned on this missing middle?

SPEAKER_02 39:30

Yeah, I think there's I think there's a few things there that um is concerning or is like, you know, that I feel like could be implemented in a way that doesn't require a huge amount of capital or whatever. My I would suggest if the ARA from that side of things could address anything, maybe it would be um inviting the soil health conversation to be front and center of everything we do. Right now we have a very like fertilizer-driven conversation. And I think that the tension between fertilizer and regen practices, or the tension between uh big ag and regen practices looks like these are working in opposition to each other. That couldn't be farther from the truth. There is a place for fertilizer and for you know, whatever all of the practices to fit into this somehow. Um, but there is such huge uh stigmas around these things. And within, you know, the inner faction uh battling that's taking place where we're trying to be more regenerative than this other regenerative guy, or we spend a lot of time, you know, pointing fingers at what's the problem, we'll say. I'll say the problem is farmers don't have a system, an incentive system right now marketing their crops that supports this. So there's some supply chain work that needs to be done. But the ARA, the the Ag Retail Association, what they're they could potentially influence here is creating incentives around this. Yes, I believe a CCA is uh a great channel to develop an agronomist, a sales agronomist, but also there is there is time, there is educational gaps that present themselves in this way. Um, you know, what when an agronomist is going to the field to have a conversation and they get immediately out of their depth when they start talking about cover crops, cover crops is still very fringe. Cover crops is still representing a very, very small amount of time in a conversation at any farm. And there are ways for us to integrate cover crops to manage for our pesticide resistance weeds. I think that part of the conversation is really interesting. Um we're looking at these conversations, these soil health uh conversations can also be adjacent to um resistant weed management, um, waterway protection, right? There's there's places in in all over the US that have already implemented like grassways to manage uh erosion because of their topography. They have erodable soils, they have a lot of topography change, they're planting grassways to manage some of that so that we don't lose our soil through these contours. Those are soil health conversations, but we've characterized them as something else. And so, like, I I would challenge the ARAs and challenge even the ag retailers themselves, um, as independent companies that they are. Um, ARA might be a governing body, but you know, they're only going to be able to do so much from this, like that perspective. It's actually the granular level. It is actually the location managers that influence how much conversation is taking place with the farms that's that are buying stuff from them. And so, like, I think that there is maybe some way for us to um to start having these conversations and stop asking, like, how can we get farmers to buy into this? And we start asking the question of how can we get ag retailers to buy into this? How can we get ag retailers to start stabilizing their nitrogen? There's recent estimates. I did an analysis for a crop life that I did some contribution on. What I found was somewhere in the neighborhood of only like 30% of the urea in the US is leaving an ag retail stabilized, preventing losses from environmental factors, at least even for a short period of time. That is astonishing to me. It's not the products competing, the stabilizers competing against each other. It's the untreated acre that is the problem. It's it's not if this product works 1% better. The other. It's the fact that the conversations are not taking place at the farm level because the people responsible for starting those conversations aren't educated enough about nutrient use efficiency or about the nitrogen cycle to feel confident and comfortable saying, you know, with the practices, the way that you're applying your nitrogen, maybe we could take a more soil health-focused approach and maybe treat your split your application and treat your urea or your UAN. Like those are the conversations that are not happening. I would expect a CCA to be able to do that, but most CCAs do not exist within ag retail anymore. Most CCAs are actually on the outside of ag retail. They're in the independent sector. So they're not selling products anymore or at all. And so what that means is even the CCA channel is still not impacting as much as ag retail. So in my opinion, it isn't really, I need to become a CCA, although I do encourage that. I strongly encourage that because it does give you exposure to resources that you wouldn't otherwise have to just continue that professional development to become a better agronomist every single day. But the ag retail space at large, there's a lot of different terminology terms, uh classifications for these folks. I would be less concerned with what their title is and more focused on what their role is. Are they influencing farm decisions around nutrients application, cover crops, integration, tillage, et cetera? If the answer is yes to any of those things, then I feel like that is where resources could potentially be placed to help them become a soil health focused retail agronomist, uh sales agronomist, whatever that you know that term is. I know there's a lot of, again, it goes back to this tension between, well, if you're selling products and you're not an agronomist. I, you know, I think that that's a that's part of our problem, is we're so worried about what distinguishes us one from the other because of our credentials or because of letters after our last name. I think that that's actually given way to resistance at the ag retail level. I'm not gonna get my CCA or I can't pass the test. So I, you know, whatever. But that doesn't mean you can't be an incredible, incredibly gifted and incredibly well-spoken and incredibly effective uh farm decision influencer. That's the term is is the farm if decision influencer. If you can become that without a CCA, it requires drive and it requires support. And the the drive comes from within. So if you don't want to do that, then they're not gonna do that. But if there's an incentive instruction uh structure put in place with some of the ag retailers, like this is where ARA might be able to have, you know, some influence there. But there is opportunities for us to become more and more effective with soil health-related conversations and making every single pass and every single decision with the lens of how is this influencing our soil health goals? Does this improve water infiltration? Yes or no. Does this practice improve soil tilth? Yes or no. Do I have soil that's even alive? Do I know how to find out if my soil is alive? We haven't even discussed like the technical soil work that that could potentially be in the hands of ag retail. Right now, they're producing fertilizer recommendations, not soil health recommendations. And it's because the soil testing protocol they're utilizing is was built, designed, geared for, and and perpetuates a fertilizer dependent system. So when we when we look at that, could we could we maybe look at capturing soil health baselines? Again, I mean, not to not to be bragging on Michigan, but we launched a regenerative ag program in Michigan, first of its kind in the nation. We created a role within our county networks that is solely related to soil health analysis. So you can go to any of your conservation districts in Michigan and every every single county in Michigan. You can ask for a regenerative ag specialist to perform a soil health analysis on your farm. They come and give you up to three free samples. And what it produces for you is a biologically driven soil health analysis using the Cornell Soil Health Analysis Protocols, capturing Haney tests, capturing the biological components, capturing the water extractable components, and a whole series of carbon measurements that can help us understand where we're at as a baseline. It can also give you fertilizer recommendations. So it can still, it can still fulfill what a farmer has been accustomed to to some degree, but it helps to give you a comparison. And so, like these, this is something that virtually no retail agronomists understand how to use and are currently very comfortable saying, oh, well, I heard the Haney test doesn't really do much for you. But if you talk to somebody who understands what the Haney test can capture and what the decisions you can influence with that, it's a totally different conversation. I now understand what cover crop profile might be more effective here. I now can understand that I have a carbon problem. I don't have a nitrogen volume or a potash volume problem. I have a carbon deficiency here. So it changes the conversation. And there might be products that can fulfill those needs, but the egg retail layer is not willing to entertain that yet because maybe it feels too big of a lift. But I feel like that is where the resistance is taking place. The retail agronomists don't know how to use these tools. They've never been trained, they don't have an incentive to. They also have nobody in their leadership saying, hey, I mean, we could pivot and create a product line that that meets this need. Um, you know, and it's very different than the organic movement, right? Because it doesn't have to be omri-listed in order to be supportive of soil health practices. Also, I don't care if somebody gives me the title, I'm regenerative as a farmer. I want to know, is my soil health going to last in future generations? And can I extract more value out of this without damaging it? Or where are my weaknesses here? Again, it's a soil health conversation. It's not a label. It is not a achieve a regenerative certification or achieve a, you know, like the way organic certification kind of went through this bubble, right? And and now we have enough organic producers that there's no longer a financial premium for organic vegetables or in a lot of these places to really even maintain the business model. So regenerative has more to do with, you know, the soil health principles and the soil health practices, helping your crops be more climate resilient. Whether or not you subscribe to the religion of climate change, you can recognize something has changed. And how do we become more resilient in our systems? We improve water infiltration, we improve our soil biological diversity, we do these other things that will help us to not have to have a band-aid or a fix to overcome that problem. But that is a soil health conversation, not a regenerative conversation, a soil health, soil resiliency, crop resiliency conversation. And I think we're gonna see more development from markets and supply chains, crop insurances and things like that taking place down the road. I think eventually some of the stuff is gonna have to get addressed from that way, or it's never gonna go anywhere. But at this point, our our retail layer needs support. And I mean, if I'm the only one that's willing to have those conversations, I will keep doing it. It's it's become my mission in life. And I'm I'm so I'm I'm I'm blessed and and honored to to have like recognized this. And I'm just gonna keep talking about it until people tell me to go away because it's no longer relevant. And I pray that that day actually comes, you know, that there's so many of us talking about this that they don't need me to do it anymore. But for now, this is where we make change. This is how we influence farm decisions and um and supporting our ag retail people that are influencing those decisions is the way to go.

SPEAKER_01 52:33

I mean, absolutely, Christy. That was that was so so strong. I mean, I could give so many other hard examples. You know, I'm gonna say just a few things and then just let you take us home in a summation statement, however you want to put it, and give us your best 60 seconds. But I want to just say, first of all, if anybody has any doubt on the tethering of farmers to agronomists and especially retail agronomists, I want you to go down to Florida. I want you to go see specialty crops, and I challenge you to go ride in specialty crop fields and not see a retail agronomist. I challenge you because what I have found working in Florida, and I'm certain of this with PCAs in California, is that these agronomists, if something happened to that farmer, they could make one call to their retail agronomist and say, go farm this for me. Go run my farm for a week, go do this. Matter of fact, some of them go on vacation and do that.

unknown 53:35

Right.

SPEAKER_01 53:35

So all I can say is, do you think that there's a tethering? Absolutely. Secondly, I want to give a shout out because someone mentioned to me, and I'm I'm leaving people out by just doing this, but I I really want people to know and that there are big retailers that are concerned and that do see an opportunity to help steward this conversation. And I'll give a shout out to Grow Mark. GrowMark, somebody put on my list the other day. I had no idea they were selling cover crop seed. I had no idea that they were promoting this to some of their retail agronomists. And I thought that was such an interesting thing because I'm from the South. People that sell cover crop seed are super niche and have three people in a blending bagging operation. And, you know, it's almost like it's a one-man show. And to hear that there are folks that are wanting to promote that and support that, you know, it really got me excited. We're going to have a cover crop person on very, very soon to the podcast. And what Christy said on soil health analysis is so, so important. The USBA NRCS regen program is built on this SEMA 216 testing. Okay. It is not like the a world breaker, but what comes with that is so powerful. Some of these other types of testing metrics. You know, if you have not listened to our episode with Waypoint, please go listen to Lizzie and Oscar from Waypoint. Please help yourself understand the differences of what these extractions that have been doing for 40 years versus something like what Christy said, the Haney test. And then also what comes next after that. How do you know if your biology is good? How do you even assess that on a bigger front? So go listen to the waypoint episode. Lastly, this is for Christy. Christy, we got to land this plane. It makes me very sad because you have been an absolute treasure trove around this topic. I feel, you know, like this this is kind of a mantle that lots of folks that might have a platform like this will hopefully share. Hopefully, you get to share this message again. But how would what would be your parting statement to retail agronomists right now that say, Christy, I am drowning. I'm drowning. What do you say to them and what do you inspire them with? Quick take and then we'll shut her down.

SPEAKER_02 56:12

We've spent generations now um trying to influence and change practices. We're in a constant state of evolution in the in the ag industry, other industries as well, but you know, specifically here. And we've spent so much energy, you know, trying to change practices at the farm level. If you're an agronomist or you're you identify with anything that I've shared here today, and you want more encouragement, I'm going to I'm going to tell you you're going to have to self-advocate right now because there is a gap. I've showed you this gap. And it's it's a big gap. There's lots of things that need to happen to fill. But don't discredit your yearning to do better and be better because it won't pay. I envision a future agronomist that is confident in understanding the soil health principles and how to integrate that at the farm level, that can effectively share the products that they have available in their toolbox to that farm with effectiveness and with continued trust. And if we strengthen the people, those people, you at the center of these conversations, we won't just change the individual farm. We're going to change the system. And I believe that that's possible. And I believe that's where we're heading. And I believe that's why I'm on this podcast with you today, Michael. And that's why those of you listening to this today are hearing this message. This is for you. It's possible. I'm doing it. I'm living proof that it's possible.

SPEAKER_01 58:03

No better way to end than that, Christy. Uh you have a wonderful experience. You have a wonderful message. And I am blessed to call you a friend. Blessed to have you on this podcast. And we'll put your uh maybe some contact in the show notes. Uh, just so if people have questions specifically, they can reach out to you. Um, but I do, and obviously, you're on LinkedIn, you're you're pretty easy to find. What's your Instagram handle if people want to hit you on Instagram? I know you got some good vineyard content on the Cropscale Christie.

SPEAKER_02 58:36

You can find me on everything at Cropsco Christie.

SPEAKER_01 58:38

Man, that's amazing. Thank you so much, Christy Apple. Thank you for the listeners joining us on this episode of the Whole Farm Podcast. I'm Michael. Catch you next time.

SPEAKER_00 58:51

Thanks for listening to the Chonex podcast. If you found this episode helpful, be sure to subscribe and share it with someone in your network. For more resources and information about Chonex, visit chonex.ag. Thanks again for joining us, and we'll see you next time.