<div>We grow stone fruit, but I’ll give you my thoughts. Silica levels are directly correlated to biology levels in the soil. I have seen a big bump in some fields, less in other, after using the AEA fall primer program. I hit the fields that had low/average silica a second time this fall so we’ll see how it works. I could see a huge difference in stem strength in some of the higher blocks, new cherry branches that would bend like plastic! We had tried adding silica as a fertilizer in the past and it didn’t compare at all. The biology treatment was cheaper as well.</div><div>

Being an employee will make it hard to change things. If the owners are proactive you can convince them to try one block. If they are cheap you can try to find a spray that is ineffective and take it out. Either way you would need to give them an upside for moving toward a regenerative perspective even if that isn’t what they are searching for.

In my experience being proactively biological, or regenerative, is a plus but doesn’t have the quick responses that chemicals do. You need to be confident in what you change because most farmers will accept a downside if it is conventional but find it unacceptable to have any loss because things were done outside the norm.

For example, we did not spray for mites this year, which we had done every year for forever. Our PCA must have asked me 10 times “did you spray for mites yet?”, especially when it got hot. I had listened to John Kempf on his podcast about what causes mite outbreaks. We had been watching our ammonium levels in our sap analysis and had made sure our magnesium and molybdenum levels were good. The upside is saving a spray, and not putting out pesticide, but if I had an outbreak I would have looked bad. You need to be more knowledgeable than confident, and when an owner isn’t as knowledgeable it can be a tough road.

Finally, a sap test should never be out of the question. It is pretty cheap relative to the cost of a spray you don’t need.

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