Episode #75: James Johnson
Regenerative Agriculture Podcast
AEA Marketing
4.7 • 546 Ratings
🗓️ 6 August 2021
⏱️ 96 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
James Johnson is a fourth-generation farmer in New Mexico and the Vice President of Carzalia Valley Produce. When James finally took over the family farm in the early 2000s the outlook of his operation seemed grim. After many years of trial and error with various practices, James found the Advancing Eco Agriculture team where he discovered the benefits of regenerative agriculture.
Thanks to his partnership with AEA, James achieved an outstanding yield of 1,490 lbs/acre for Pima Cotton at the end of harvest season 2020 while his county average was 880 lbs/acre!
In this episode, James and AEA founder John Kempf discuss:
- The shift in agronomy management on James' farm over the last 20 years.
- James' first encounter with John Kempf and the similarities in their personal stories.
- The long-term effects of herbicide, insecticide, and pesticide use on crops from the perspective of a self-declared "recovering glyphoholic"
- Solving onion thrips and western flower thrips pressure with regenerative foliar applications, rather than insecticides.
- James' observations on chlorpyrifos and diazinon—how their use affects non-target species and overall soil biology.
- The technology James uses as a self-proclaimed early adopter, including evapotranspiration platforms and an AI robot that pulls weeds.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi friends, this is John and this is the regenerative agriculture podcast where we talk about the agronomic science and the cultural management practices that regenerate plant health, soil health, and public health, and that should also regenerate farm profitability. |
| 0:14.0 | I'm very happy today to have James Johnson here as a guest. James and I have known each other now for, I think, |
| 0:22.5 | maybe three or four years, something like that. James is an AEA customer. Just want to put that out |
| 0:28.5 | there so all of you are aware, he has been very gracious in sharing his story and some of the work |
| 0:32.6 | that we're doing at AEA. And he has a really incredible story. So I wanted to have him here to share that with all of you as well. |
| 0:40.3 | James, thank you very much for being here today. Can you offer a little bit of context for our audience? |
| 0:45.0 | Tell us a little bit about your personal story and background, the scope of your farming operation |
| 0:50.0 | and the work that you're doing and the context of what's going on. |
| 0:53.8 | Well, thanks for inviting me, John. I'm humbled by the fact that you're doing and the context of what's going on? Well, thanks for inviting me, John. |
| 0:55.5 | I'm humbled by the fact that you felt that my story was worthy of being told on this platform. |
| 1:02.0 | So I'm a fourth generation farmer here in southwest New Mexico. |
| 1:08.0 | Our operation started off as a cattle ranch and in the 1950s during the drought, much |
| 1:13.1 | very similar to what we have today. They started drilling irrigation wells, trying to grow |
| 1:18.1 | feed for the cows. Ultimately back then, the farming kept the ranch afloat. They started off producing |
| 1:26.7 | cattle feed, switched over, started producing at that point. |
| 1:31.3 | Canning tomatoes moved into grain sorghum, cotton. And then we've diversified over the years into |
| 1:39.3 | onions, chili peppers, pecans, pistachios. And during certain years, we've grown watermelon's pumpkins, |
| 1:49.0 | spinach, lettuce. We have a very different microclimate here. Our elevation is 4,300 feet, |
| 1:58.2 | so even though that we're at a real south latitude, we still tend to get cold in the wintertime. |
| 2:03.9 | We have about 222 degree frostry days that allow us to have a pretty diverse crop. |
| 2:12.9 | Really, what hinders us most is probably the extreme heat that we have. I mean, today it's supposed to be |
| 2:20.2 | 105 degrees. That's probably combined with low humidity given the southern location where you are. |
... |
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