Regenerative Agriculture Product Aims To Dramatically Cut Fertilizer Use

Yeager: Welcome. It may be too good to be true, but we're going to find out if that's the case in today's MtoM podcast. I'm Paul Yeager, glad to have you here. We're going to talk about a product that could change agriculture dramatically, and I'm not trying to overstate it. A two-time application of a product might reduce the need for any of your regularly used fertilizers.

Yeager: We're going to get into the weeds — or maybe the lack of weeds and lack of fertilizer in a field — with a product called Holganix. It's holistic organics. We're going to talk to an Iowa guy who's now with this company, this startup. He's going to tell us about the conversations he has with farmers who say there's no way this is true, and then he'll show you the way it works.

Yeager: It's regenerative agriculture. It's a way to work on water quality and better grow products all across the country. We're going to talk today to Bryan Hansel. He's with the company Holganix, a regenerative agriculture company. We're also going to talk about fertilizer usage, and the lack of need for fertilizer, which means you wouldn't be susceptible to the volatility that's out there.

Yeager: We were really just going to talk about fertilizer in general, but then we found out a whole lot more about this product. So here's today's installment of the MtoM podcast. I'm Paul Yeager again. New episodes come out each and every Tuesday. Sign up for our newsletter, check out our website, check out our show. Glad to have you here. Here's our discussion.

Yeager: I make a joke about the Tampa heat and the humidity. Tell me the differences between Florida heat and Iowa heat, Brian.

Hansel: Raised in Iowa, we actually had all the seasons back then — I'm old enough to say I had snowmobiles and we actually had snow. But summers, if we get plenty of humidity, the difference here is it never cools at night and the humidity never seems to go away. I'd rather be up north.

Yeager: Your state has its own issues. But here's the thing — we've been having humidity, and that's been a problem. Rust was an issue last year with corn, partially because of our high humidity. So we're trying to catch up to you there.

Hansel: Well, it's not a good goal to have.

Yeager: You grew up in Cedar Rapids, went to Kirkwood. What'd you study?

Hansel: Business administration. I always knew I'd be an entrepreneur, and ultimately I've been a part of about eight different startups and built businesses. This is my last one. I'm confident.

Yeager: Where'd you go from Kirkwood before you started all eight of those startups?

Hansel: I started my businesses when I was still in college — my first couple. That's why it took me a minute to get through it, because I was working full time. I couldn't ask for a better place to be raised. I tell people here that we never had a key for our door, and they just can't comprehend the idea of being raised in a place where you live in the country and don't even worry about locking your door.

Hansel: It's kind of a full-circle moment for me, because when I was 21 I headed to Minneapolis, and then I spent most of my adult life raising my family down in Kansas City. And now I find myself, at 60 years old, driving through Iowa, talking to farmers and trying to educate people on how to rebuild their soil.

Yeager: I was going to ask — what's been the theme? Has there been any connection between the companies you've been a part of?

Hansel: I'd say there was one consistent thing — what I call a discontinuous innovation. That's a technology that shows up in an industry and replaces the prior one. An early example is the typewriter versus the word processor — both create a letter, but one was completely different in approach. I did that in my career, working with Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids on laser imaging for printed circuit boards, because it was a completely different technology evolution in that industry. Throughout my career — medical devices, printing, a number of different industries — it's always been when I brought something in that disrupted the norms, because I was trying to convince people that maybe there's a better way.

Yeager: To give the audience some context — there's a lot of agriculture in that part of Cedar Rapids, cornfields close to a lot of neighborhoods. When you were a young guy looking at that area, did you ever think there was something that could be done differently with soil? Did you think, maybe we don't need to be doing all the things we've always done?

Hansel: What's interesting is I've never met a farmer that wasn't trying to do the right thing. They genuinely feel like, based on the knowledge I have, I'm trying to do the right thing. I've never met a farmer that didn't want to take care of their soil or make it better — they just honestly haven't been given the tools.

Hansel: My connection here is that Roundup Ready was the fastest-adopted technology in the history of agriculture, and for good reason — it truly was a breakthrough. Unfortunately, what happened after that is we started looking to chemists for all our answers. Every time we have a problem — nutrition, disease, whatever — it's, what chemical do we have to solve that problem?

Hansel: A lot of that was born out of the fact that this chemical seemed to be magic and did something. Somewhere along that continuum, I feel like we lost the thread that nature already had a lot of these systems solved. We've systematically taken nature out of the conversation and reduced the amount of life on our fields, reduced our reliance on nature to do its part.

Hansel: I think the pendulum swung a little too far one way. A big part of our conversation is how do we bring it back to the middle — not that you want to get away from great technology advancements, but nature is underserved currently. A lot of our conversations are about its role in nutrient efficiency, feeding the plant, disease suppression, soil structure — a lot of really cool things that can happen. Unfortunately, a lot of that has been beaten down a bit by some of the chemicals and technology we've applied.

Yeager: This question might get us both in trouble — did we find a solution, or were we sold a solution?

Hansel: We talk a lot in our organization — I say every day we want to be the most trusted brand in all of agriculture. That's not a casual thing to say out loud. One of the things we talk about is what we call the trust equation — how do you break down trust as a concept?

Hansel: On the top side of that equation, you've got competency — are you good at what you do? Reliability — do you actually do what you say you're going to do? And intimacy — have you spent time to understand me, do we know each other? If you think about the opportunity, five across each of those, you'd have 15 across the top.

Hansel: If maybe you don't respond to every one of my emails on time, maybe I'll give you a three on reliability, because I can't always count on you being there. Let's say you have a 12 across the top. Below the line is self-orientation. A one is, I've got your back. A five is, I'll throw you under the bus because I'm doing it for myself and looking to get ahead, not really concerned about you. You divide by five.

Hansel: So if you're a two or a three on self-orientation, not a lot of trust there. If you're a one, you're going to have a fair amount of trust. The bottom has a disproportionate amount of impact. And the reason I say all of that is when I walk onto a farm for the first time and nobody's ever met me, I'm a five.

Hansel: Somehow the ag industry has earned that position — that people show up to sell you something and take some money from you whether you need it or not, and they don't really care about you or your family, they're just trying to make a buck. Whether that's accurate or not, that is absolutely, in my experience, the sense I get from a farmer when I walk onto his ground. What I have to do every single day, what I challenge our team to do every day, is prove that we actually care and we're actually there for them. Everybody says farmers are their partner and they're trying to do right by them, but the farmer is unfortunately still holding on to his wallet — and that's why.

Yeager: I have a farmer friend who posts pictures of the Ford F-150 sitting outside his shed — somebody's trying to sell him something yet again. Do you drive a white Ford F-150 when you go to these farms?

Hansel: I have a Chevy, but it's white.

Yeager: I get what you're saying. The most sacred thing a farmer has is that ground. And you're trying to say, I'm trying to help you, and at the same time I'm trying to help the environment and your soil.

Hansel: We start by having a conversation about what they want and get aligned on the vision. As I've gone through that conversation, I say, imagine if in three years you couldn't recognize your soil, because the soil structure and tilth are completely different and it's holding moisture like it's never held before. And of course the farmer says, yeah, I want that — I just don't know how to get there.

Hansel: Unfortunately, I think the avenue that's been offered to them has been what's known as regenerative farming, and traditionally that's perceived as a couple of things: stop tilling, add cover crops, and crop rotation. But predominantly you're talking about reducing tillage and adding cover crops — and it's honestly been subsidized for a long time, trying to motivate that behavior. At least the math I know is we're at about 4.7% of U.S. acres being regenerative, so about 5% adoption after 20 years of trying.

Hansel: The reason I believe that's occurred is that it just takes too much time — the distance between stopping and seeing benefit is a number of seasons. And with $4 corn, that's not an easy road to travel. So part of our conversation with farmers is, what if we could put life back in your soil first, get it to start acting differently and delivering for you differently? Then, as you see that, it'll tell you it doesn't need to be tilled — stop tilling after you see it.

Hansel: That's the difference in our message — let's show you the impact and give you the benefit, and as you see benefit, make a new decision because you're seeing something different. Probably the harder conversation for us with farmers is cutting fertilizer, because it's a requirement in our approach that you have to cut your fertilizer, and that's the risky piece of the puzzle. Everything they've been told has always been, when in doubt, add more — never add less.

Hansel: We're saying you have a choice. You can be on team fertilizer, which most every farmer has been for the last 20 years, or you can be on team soil health. You can't be on both. You can continue what you know works and stay on team fertilizer, and you'll be fine if you're satisfied with today's performance. But if you want better yields, lower cost, more cash flow and profitability, then you need to choose soil health — and that requires you to make a decision to pull back on fertilizer.

Yeager: Is team fertilizer a treadmill, and team regenerative an open path?

Hansel: The beauty of the open path is it's got a bright sunset and a beautiful outcome — you're not staring at a wall doing the same thing over and over. Most farmers tend to live pretty in the immediate future, thinking about this growing season, and this growing season looks a lot like the last one. So they're on that treadmill. Part of our job is to get them to look three years down the road and see a different outcome, a different path.

Hansel: When you rebuild your soil and nature is naturally, proactively feeding that plant, you just need less fertilizer, less inputs, because what you're putting on the ground is getting to the plant. If you've got inactive soil that isn't alive and doesn't have the biology, you're over-fertilizing, hoping the roots can find enough, and inevitably you're coming up short on something because you didn't put the right mix down. That's limiting the potential of the plant, because it's not in balance — nature will always keep that plant in balance.

Hansel: As you rebuild nature in your soil, that efficiency, that engine that feeds the plant, comes back. As it becomes effective, you need less input — that's why you need to put less down initially. Our product is 1,000 living species of biology — a probiotic for your dirt, reinvigorating and putting the life back that should be there. But that's just seed stock — it needs exudates from the plant to feed it, in order to grow, multiply, and do what it needs to do.

Hansel: If that plant and those roots sense they have all the food they need, nature's not going to overeat and waste energy feeding my biology to go find food it doesn't need. So if you don't cut the fertilizer, the plant senses it has enough food and will never activate the systems that feed the biology to go find and bring it more. That's why we're asking people to cut fertilizer — to activate nature, not just to save money.

Hansel: Everybody's telling farmers to cut fertilizer right now because it's expensive — maybe you can skip a year. We're talking about permanently transforming your soil so it just doesn't need the inputs, because what you're putting down is getting there efficiently. Now you're talking about putting down a fraction of what you've historically done.

Yeager: We're in an immediate-response society — we want to see the fertilizer or the chemical work right away. What you're talking about is going to take years, maybe decades, to show results. Is that accurate, or too big of a generalization?

Hansel: This has been my energy around this — traditional regenerative ag takes decades, in my personal definition. If you look at our soil before conventional farming in Iowa, we were probably at 8% organic matter. I'm on farms every day that celebrate two-and-a-half or three percent — they're excited to have that. We've lost 60% of our organic matter and we're celebrating what's left.

Hansel: The math and science would tell you that if you go 100% regenerative today — stop tilling, add cover crops — about 500 years from now you'd have that organic matter back. What we lost in a hundred years, we'd replace in 500 years. It just isn't fast enough.

Hansel: I just got off a call with our science team — we focus on one county, because our vision is how do we get to 50% market share in every county we operate, so we can transform that county's economy and have a ripple effect. The average farm in that county added a half a percent organic matter in one growing season. So let's say 25 years — I could have you back to 7 or 8% organic matter. That's a trajectory in our lifetime. We can have our soil back. That's what we're offering people, but it's a journey.

Hansel: The good news for us — unlike traditional regenerative approaches — is that we put this probiotic down and within five days you see the impact. If you put it down before planting and leave a strip down the middle of a field, when you plant, the treated crop will emerge a day or two ahead of the untreated strip. That's where the excitement from our growers comes from, because it doesn't take years — every year it gets bigger and better, it's a stacking effect, but there's an initial 'wow' — more roots already, a growth stage ahead. Already in the first season, I'm seeing real results, I can feel it in the tilth of the soil. It's already changing. That gets them hooked.

Hansel: I'll ask you a question. If one of my soil health specialists walked onto a farm and there was a 70-year-old, his son who's 45, and his son who's 20 — which one would be most excited about adopting our product?

Yeager: I'm going to guess, just the way you're setting me up, it should be the younger one — but the older one probably has the better long-term memory to say, I remember when we didn't have to put on all the chemical. So it's the one in the middle — the one in my generation — that's probably the problem.

Hansel: Honestly, the younger ones are the biggest problem. Conceptually they want it, but all they've ever known in their life is chemicals — that's the only farming they've ever experienced. Even at Iowa State they're going to hear how to use chemicals to solve all the problems — it's like going to pharmacy school, learning all the things you need to know to be an effective farmer today.

Hansel: It's the 70-year-old, every time — he doesn't miss a beat, he says, this is what I've been waiting for, we've got to get rid of this other stuff. And you're right, it's the person holding the checkbook in the middle who can be really problematic, because they're thinking, I can't be the one who loses the farm — everything's tight, I can't make a dollar right now between diesel pricing, input pricing, commodity prices. I only have 40 chances at this, and I don't want to mess this one up. So they're under the most pressure. This is where I really look forward to having the older generation in the room, because they'll say, no, trust me, this will work out — let's give it a shot. And when it does, everybody gets excited.

Yeager: I got going so quickly on our topic, I never let you tell me — what's the one-line pitch? What is Holganix?

Hansel: We put life back in your soil. We have one job, one product — we rebuild topsoil. The product itself is a living product, over a thousand species of living biology that we ferment — we brew it like beer, we bring it up to a very high population of life. We've got about 26 different micronutrients in there to feed the biology while it's a liquid, and you apply it at or before planting to get that relationship with the plant from a nutrient-uptake perspective.

Hansel: Then you apply it after harvest, because decomposition is biology — bugs eating organic material. If you want to accelerate decomposition and clean the fields without having to burn them, and move those nutrients back through that breakdown, that's what our product does in the fall. Spring application feeds the plant, fall application decomposes and builds the soil, because the root mass converts to organic matter two-and-a-half times faster and easier than any organic matter from above ground.

Hansel: So yes, we're cleaning the field, but what you're not seeing is that we're breaking down the root wall and turning it into organic matter. That's really where the whole flywheel gets rolling in terms of the health of the soil, the soil structure so it can hold moisture and nutrients, and all the efficiency starts to come back.

Yeager: It's a liquid — so does it come out in a sprayer?

Hansel: Any way you'd apply a liquid. Broadcast spray is probably 70% of the application. We can tank-mix with anything but a fungicide — a herbicide pass in the spring, a starter pass in the spring, so we're not making an extra pass. If you have liquid on your planter, we can usually tank-mix with that and apply it at planting. In the fall it's a broadcast spray, usually with a fall herbicide pass to take care of the weeds. Because of the way our product works, that herbicide effect tends to last through the spring, which saves a spring pass.

Yeager: Are there regions where you're more received, with more product out there?

Hansel: It's been a pretty wild ride. I joined the business about four-and-a-half years ago, the spring of '22. I've known the founder of Holganix for about 25 years — he started the company 15 years ago. We were on about 160,000 acres nationally, and only about 3,000 acres in Iowa. I thought, wait a minute, there might be some additional farm ground in Iowa beyond that. So I went back to Iowa — I was in Kansas City — and started knocking on doors. We went from 30,000 acres that spring of '22 to about 300,000 in spring of '23, and this spring around 3.2 million acres.

Hansel: It's been a good expansion. Iowa was our biggest state from an acreage perspective, closely followed by Missouri and Nebraska. We have a pretty big presence in Kansas, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and South Dakota — across the upper Midwest at this point. But we've got a lot of work yet to do, though we've been making some really good progress.

Yeager: Let's talk about our home state in relation to water quality. Des Moines Water Works reported this morning that they've taken out the most nitrate they've ever taken out — I don't know if it was a month or a quarter, but it keeps adding up and setting a new record. Tell me what this product and strategy does for water quality.

Hansel: There are multiple dimensions of impact here. Foundationally, our average grower has been told and educated to put down a pound of nitrogen for a bushel of corn, which is roughly two times what that plant can actually accept. But that's been the rule of thumb. The removal rate — what you actually take out in a bushel of corn — is about 0.53 pounds of nitrogen, but we're putting down a pound to grow it.

Hansel: Our average grower is down to about 0.6 by year three — so we're seeing about a 40% reduction in what's applied. That alone, in the watershed coming into Des Moines, would make a huge difference if all the farmers there were using our product. But the second thing is, as the biology gets really active, bacteria will outcompete the plant for the inputs — nitrogen specifically. Bacteria are one nitrogen to five carbons, so they're nitrogen hogs. We're at 30 to 1; they're at 5 to 1. So they hold on to a lot of nitrogen.

Hansel: Once it's inside the bug, it's immobilized — it holds on to it. It lives in the root zone because that's what it feeds off, so now it's there and it's not washing away, it's not going to the water. We're putting down less, and what we're putting down is being immobilized by nature. The other layer is we're putting fungi, protists, and nematodes in our product — you get the full microbiome. As the plant is in a growth stage and needs nitrogen, it sends signals into the ground, and the fungi and protists will start to eat the bacteria and release the nitrogen as it's needed. So it stays in place until it's needed, naturally consumed and released in the root zone as the plant takes it up. You're putting down less, and what's there isn't washing away.

Hansel: We're working with Iowa State this growing season on a water quality study, to show that our nitrates don't leach the way traditional nitrates do — trying to prove the science so the state can feel good about it. That Des Moines watershed is a real issue, and we could solve it quite simply.

Yeager: It's going to be the crux of the secretary of ag race in the state of Iowa, and the governor's race too — the Republican nominee is talking about water quality differently than I've heard from that party in a while. So maybe something's coming on water. We'll see. Let's talk about the fertilizer impact — that was kind of the whole original thing. Between when I booked this interview and now, there was a pullback in prices and then volatility again. So if we don't need the product that's in the center of the volatility, we're not going to be as impacted. Is that accurate?

Hansel: There are two pieces to this puzzle. We've talked a lot about nitrogen — if you're buying 40% less, the volatility has 40% less impact on you. That's just a reality. But the bigger, more interesting story is that unfortunately, in the cycle we live in, the standard soil test available to a farmer doesn't show the amount of actual phosphorus and potassium in their soil — it shows what's available, and those are very different things, because P and K are tied up with minerals with opposite charges that want to bind. So we put down 100 pounds of potash and hope 20 pounds is available to the plant. Then the next year we put down another five years' worth, and the year after that another five years' worth — we've been doing that as long as we can remember.

Hansel: What solubilizes that and breaks it from the mineral is biology — that's what biology does. In our consortium we have that ability, and as we show and prove to growers, the biology percentages double and triple, and we balance it in there. Most of our third-year growers don't have any P and K application at all, and every year their numbers go up, because as nature gets working, it just continues to make more available. We've got people on five and six years who have the best soil they've ever had, and they haven't added any in three or four seasons. If you look at the math, they probably have 200 years' worth banked in that field. I don't want to steal from my field — if I've been depositing five times what I need every year as long as I've farmed, I can take one, two, or the next two decades off, and I'll still have such a surplus, it's unbelievable.

Hansel: Our goal is to make sure that farmer hands down to his son better soil than he was given. We think that's really worth the effort.

Yeager: In the last couple of minutes — if I haven't given you softballs yet, these are going to be even bigger. Tell me the reason why this would be a good idea for any grower anywhere in the country, no matter what crop they're growing.

Hansel: Because soil is the essence of everything. If we don't consider soil infrastructure, don't treat it as such, and don't rebuild it, we have a problem. We've taken 60 to 70% of the life out of our soil — it's time to put it back. The beauty is it'll be the most profitable thing you'll do on your farm. I've sat with growers in year two and three who said this is the biggest thing that's ever happened to agriculture. It is — it's the ability to put nature back into the conversation, and it's as simple as it gets. It's a liquid product, you apply it as part of your normal pass. We're not asking you to change until your soil tells you to change.

Hansel: To me, the no-brainer is that it's not disruptive to your operation, it gives you immediate profit, and it gets you to a place where you're handing back to your next generation a better quality than what you were handed.

Yeager: Is this too good to be true?

Hansel: This is the funniest thing we say at every meeting — at some point your BS meter's got to go off, because no one product can do all this. It's crazy — and I haven't told you half the stuff it does. But I remind people, we don't have a product, we've just successfully figured out how to bottle nature. This is just the living life that should naturally be occurring in your soil.

Hansel: If you go measure your soil today, I'll tell you — I've been on 500 farms in Iowa and measured every one — the average is 90% bacteria and less than 10% fungi. You have to have a 50-50 balance to have a productive field. By year three, we'll have you back to 50 over 50, and you'll have five times more life than you have today. You've got to get the life of nature back in your field. We just figured out how to take nature, reproduce it, and hand it back to you in a format you can efficiently apply. It's a probiotic for your dirt — like if you had an antibiotic for ten days, your doctor would say, you killed the bad stuff, but you also killed some of the good. You need to put the good bugs back. We've never had that for farming before. We're blessed to be the ones trying to help farmers figure out how to apply it.

Yeager: Brian, I appreciate the time. Thank you so very much — it's almost like a summer school class here with you. I'm learning all sorts of things, and it's fascinating to hear what everybody's trying to do to make us more efficient. But we're finding out there are so many different ways to get there.

Hansel: I'm excited for anybody who makes the commitment to make the shift. But change is hard, and we do need to make some changes.

Yeager: All right, Brian, thank you very much.

Hansel: Thank you. Appreciate it, Paul.

Yeager: We are produced at Iowa PBS. Our production supervisor is Sean Ingrassia. His crew is Reed Denker, Kevin Rivers, Julie Knutson, Neil Kyer, and David Feingold. The executive producer of Market to Market is David Miller. I'm Paul Yeager. We'll see you next time.