Podcast Extra: Ask Me Anything with John Kempf - June 4, 2026

In this Podcast Extra, Join John as he answers a wide range of grower-submitted questions covering challenges in agriculture. The discussion focuses on managing high summer leaf temperatures, optimizing organic nitrogen budgets, and navigating severe base saturation imbalances. John emphasizes the critical connection between precise crop nutrition, active soil biology, and the natural suppression of destructive diseases and pests. Other topics discussed include:

• Distinguishing between air temperature and leaf temperature, highlighting how a healthy wax lipid layer lowers a plant's canopy temperature by 8 to 10 degrees.
• Managing the photorespiration process in C3 and C4 plants to prevent protein degradation and the buildup of high ammonium levels.
• Utilizing trace amounts of nickel (3 to 10 grams per acre) as an essential enzyme cofactor to rapidly lower ammonium in plant sap.
• Applying Rejuvenate as a foliar tool to provide stressed crops with carbohydrates, enzymes, and high-energy compounds.
• Addressing low magnesium and potassium in soils with extreme calcium base saturation using targeted applications.
• Citing historical 1960s data on fire blight indicating the disease cannot establish when sap sucrose levels remain above a 22–26% threshold.
• Restructuring high-chloride potato programs by pairing Rebound micronutrients with Holo-K, SeaShield, and SeaStim.
• Remediating the typical "burnt leaf tips" on garlic by satisfying the crop's unusually high molybdenum requirement.
• Evaluating the limitations of indigenous microorganisms (IMOs) and acknowledging that 90% of living soil microbes require active plant roots to propagate.
• Deploying PhotoMag to optimize plant sap ratios, delivering magnesium, sulfur, molybdenum, and boron to efficiently convert excess ammonium into complete proteins .
• Advocating for a national food policy focused on nutritional quality and farmer economic viability over cheap, abundant food.
• Utilizing MacroPack and MicroPack within target foliar combinations to halt disease progression. <