Organic Mine Material Goes Global

[Russell Taylor] I'm at our mine here in Emery, Utah. We mine and manufacture humates. So this backdrop here is just a picture of the mine humates.

[Paul Yeager] What's that? 

[Taylor] So we might have mineral deposit. That is. Think of it as an ancient forest floor. So 75 million years ago, what you see behind me was a tropical forest like the Amazon. And through the thousands and thousands of years that organic matter stacked up and is now trapped underneath the sandstone layer you see behind me, the, humic shale is used in different industries dietary supplements, cosmetics, animal feeds and fertilizers. So it's a nice agricultural input.

[Yeager] How long has that mine been operational, though? 

[Taylor] My father opened the mine in the early 80s. It's kind of a sad story to begin with, but, it resulted from a coal mine fire that my father was in. 27 people died in that fire. And, my father decided to leave the coal mine and use his mining knowledge elsewhere. They were searching the desert out here, looking for, tar sands , oil shales, part of the 80s Superfund money. And they found this deposit here, and they said, well, it's not what we're looking for. It might make a good fertilizer or something. And the group moved on. So my father decided to place the claim and, took $50, went to the states that would like to mine this property. And actually, you know, started from ground zero. I was nine years old at the time.

[Yeager] And did he, I mean, yes, it sounded like he had a little bit of experience in mining, but does everybody just have that experience there, when they're around mines and mountains? [Taylor] Okay. No, no, no, it's he had some mining knowledge, but yeah, the uses of the product for humic shale were still a little bit nascent. And so developing the industry that we're into now, I mean, we sell into multiple industries agriculture, dietary supplements, cosmetics, animal feeds and fertilizers. So what created this was just a lot of hard work, you know, take a dollar, put it on the table. Make two would do that for the last 35 years. So, you know, I got all kinds of fun stories about driving heavy equipment as a young kid, helping my father prepare the mining supplies. you can't make this stuff up. It's the real American dream.

And do you still have an active role in it? 

[Taylor] Yeah, yeah. So I'm vice president of the company. I do a lot of outside sales. I'm also our lead agronomist, so I do a lot of, in the field work with the farmers and growers and distributors. So. Yeah. Actively involved. I get less day to day, handling explosives, which is a huge downside. But, it's a lot of fun. What we do, you know, we're helping to improve lives, both, human nutrition and soil nutrition.

[Yeager] Help me out here, because I don't quite get the line between a mine and an agronomist and why that's needed. I mean, you've said what products come out of that, so I. I can kind of draw the line, but I need you to do that for me, Russell.

[Taylor] Yeah. So let's connect the dots here. Nutrients is the, and result of decomposition. So when you put compost or manure or those kind of things on the ground through microbial degradation, you take those act organic matter and you turn them into stable organic matter, which ends up being humic acid, folic acid and human. Those components of your stable organic matter contribute to things like water conservation, nutrient retention, improving soil texture and structure. So by applying that with your fertilizers, farmers are able to improve their fields and improve their nutrient utilization. So it's kind of a way of, speeding up the process instead of putting compost or manure down, you're putting something that is already degraded and fully ready to be able to contribute to that soil vitality. 

[Yeager] As an agronomist. Then how, where are the farmers? What are the farmers growing and how close are they to where you're at? 

[Taylor] So we ship products internationally. So our products were used in Japan, Malaysia, South Africa, Poland. The neat thing about the products we mine is they contribute to your soil organic matter. So anywhere where you've got low soil organic matter, you can use these products used by cannabis growers. They're used by turf growers. Live Earth Products has been a proud corporate partner with the Rose Bowl stadium since 2006. So it's not just, you know, one crop. You know, there are plenty of people that are growing corn that use our humic acid, and there's definitely an application for it. But yeah, it's anything with roots is where our products will be used and use well. 

[Yeager] You're going to have to help me on the definitions because is your product considered then a natural product? 

[Taylor] Yes. So certified organic, it's just all plant material. What these organic products are is just fully degraded, ancient plant material that has gone down to a very stable, sequestered carbon, which they call humic and full acid. So, yes, natural certified organic. And what's in there is actually three components. You have the organic acids, you have a little bit of occurring natural acidity and then also the trace minerals. So a lot of times we're isolating the minerals for certain applications. And sometimes we're just selling the organic acids. Typically those are used in nutrient stabilization and soil aggregate formation.

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