N/C Quest Inc would like to thank all of our users who used, have used or continued to use the Bio-Agtive practice on their farm. We also thank you for the feedback given needed to continue in our quest to not only teach proven science but to apply it. We are thankful for all the support received over the past seven years. N/C Quest Inc is proud to have completed and published the final report on the Bio-Agtive Technology. This paper reports the results of the project conducted by Montana State University-Northern Bio-Energy Center in collaboration with , Bio-Agtive of Montana LLC , and N/C Quest Inc over the past couple years. The objectives of the project are: (1) To examine the possibility that different fuels can be used to add key fertilizer ingredients and micronutrients to the soil from tractor exhaust emissions using the Bio-Agtive Emission Technology, (2) To use our understanding of the chemical composition of the emissions using farm scale equipment to test the ability of the exhaust emissions to augment or replace fertilizer applications to the fields, and (3) To determine which bio-derived and petro diesel fuels work best for stimulating microbiological activity in the soil, and thereby maximizing the availability of essential crop nutrients.

The Bio-Agtive method of using tractor emissions to stimulate plant growth is a growing "carbon farming" practice around the world. President and founder of N/C Quest Inc Gary Lewis says food security and climate change are some of the biggest issues facing governments and society. The Bio-Agtive technique presents primary producers many opportunities to meet that challenge. He says using the Bio-Agtive method, food production can go beyond carbon neutral to a point where healthy soils can be used to sequester carbon. Field results from the past 10 years combined with the latest university research shows recycling tractor emissions and incorporating them into the soil provides a number of benefits. With more and more positive data surrounding the Bio-Agtive method, farmers and contractors with high horsepower tractors have many good reasons to take advantage of what is now a wasted resource. The Bio-Agtive method involves cooling the tractor exhaust emissions then injecting the condensed gas into the air cart or directly into the soil while sowing or cultivating. When seeding with Bio-Agtive Emissions Technology (BAET), the cooled exhaust emissions are directed firstly into the air cart. It exposes the seed to humidity and oxidised elements from the emissions. Mr Lewis recommends to farmers in Canada, the USA and Australia that they need to capture more sunlight energy on their farms. Bio-Agtive adds this captures carbon energy into the soil where it helps to grow roots.

The Bio-Agtive Method of using tractor emissions to stimulate plant growth is a growing practice in "Carbon Farming" around the world. Published in the Ag Contractor Publication by AGRI MEDIA http://www.agrimedia.co.nz Download (pdf):

Thanks again to all those people who helped make the Bio-Agtive field day at Lake Cowal a great succes.

Special thanks to Geoff West and Evan Mickan for opening their farms and sharing the us their experinces with the Bio-Agtive method to date.

It was great to hear Gay Lewis explain his theory on why the technology works reinforcing what is goin on out in the paddock. For the last 10 years Gary has studied plant physiology and meneral nutrition in detail. As he say's he is only applying science already known but often forgotton and misunderstood by many.

We look forward to continue to collabrate with Australian farmers, helping them to be more confident in the future of agriculture by being more economically sustainable and more enviromentally responsible.

Video:

Gary Lewis on Carbon Credits and Stored Energy at Lake Cowal Field Day

 *Full feature of Gary's presentation is uploaded in user secure area for the Bio-Agtive User's. Login and look under BAET Educational Center for more!

We are excited to share with you our first Bio-Agtive™ Bulletin for 2012.  Please feel free to forward on. 

http://bioagtive.com/index.php?s=1&p=1053&op=865
 
On behalf of the team at N/C Quest all the best for the New Year!
 
Regards,
Braddon Modra

Working on an exhaustive answer

Greg Heard 03 Feb, 2012

 

WITH the spectre of climate change meaning carbon emissions are an increasingly dirty word across the globe, developers of a technology whereby exhaust emissions from machinery are captured and put back into the soil are hopeful they will be able to allow farmers to markedly cut emissions.

Tanzanian farmer Mick Dennis, formerly of Birregurra in Victoria’s Western District, said the Bio-Agtive system worked using a small condenser which captured exhaust emissions and placed them back under the soil where they were sequestered.

Together with the international distributor of the product, Canadian Gary Lewis, and Australian Bio-Agtive representative Brad Modra, Mr Dennis held some on-farm trials of the Bio-Agtive system at Birregurra last year.

Mr Lewis, whose company N/C Quest licenses the Bio-Agtive system, said the system had been a success right across the world.

“It’s been used everywhere from Tanzania, Kazakhstan, Britain to Canada, it can be fitted just as easily to small scale tractors or top of the line equipment used in Australia or North America.

Mr Dennis said the trials at Birregurra were being done on corn, barley and pasture crops.

While he said the benefits in Australia would be obvious when the carbon tax comes in, he said the reason the technology had been taken up in Africa was that it also boosted productivity.

The theory behind the technology is that the emissions boost carbon levels in the soil.

The recycled engine emissions fill the soil air spaces with oxidized organic matter (emissions) created by the tractor engine to move the seeder tines through the soil.

Mr Lewis said a complicated biochemical event occurred when carbon levels were boosted which reduced plant’s reliance on synthetic fertiliser.

Mr Modra said Australian farmers could be set up with both the Bio-Agtive technology, including the condenser and the systems to enable them to understand how to boost crop yields using the technology, for $60,000.

“The equipment is custom fitted to your seeding tractor, and then all the data is put onto a computer and is constantly updated.”

STOCK AND LAND

http://sl.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/grains-and-cropping/general/working-on-an-exhaustive-answer/2442684.aspx

When the smoke from a tractor exhaust goes up, it's pollution. But get those emissions down into the soil and they become fertiliser, as Canadian farmer Gary Lewis is demonstrating.

Mr Lewis has spent the best part of a decade developing and refining a system that pipes tractor exhaust emissions through a condenser and into the pneumatic system of air seeders, which injects the carbon- and nitrogen-rich emissions into the ground with seed.

What is generally considered as pollution is in fact prime soil food, Mr Lewis said, and tractor exhaust has allowed him and other farmers working with his technology to grow excellent crops without conventional fertiliser.

The exhaust gases are claimed to stimulate microbial activity and root growth, allowing the plants to more efficiently extract nutrient and moisture from the soil.

Mr Lewis, an Alberta rancher and former auto mechanic who has specialised in growing timothy hay for export, claims not to have used fertiliser on his 250 hectare irrigation farm since 2001, instead fertilising with his own "BioAgtive" technology.

Mr Lewis said says he has seen no loss of production, his soils have moved from pH 8 (the same as the irrigation water) to a pH of about 7, and his soil organic matter levels are currently about 10 per cent.

In testimonials quoted on the BioAgtive website, former Agriculture Canada scientists turned consultants Dr Jill Clapperton and Dr Loraine Bailey agree that something positive is happening in BioAgtive treated soils,

"...the obvious conclusion is that the exhaust had a positive effect on crop growth, yield, and quality, and may have positively enhanced soil nutrients and nutrient chemistry," Dr Bailey wrote.

Understanding why BioAgtive is not just "blowing smoke", as Mr Lewis feels many scientists think he's doing, requires a different perspective on exhaust emissions.

In excess in the atmosphere, exhaust emissions are undesirable. But a breakdown of the content of diesel exhaust looks like a partial shopping list for plants.

A Volkswagen analysis of light-duty diesel engine exhaust published in a World Health Organisation-sponsored report gave an analysis by weight of 75pc nitrogen, 15pc oxygen, 7pc carbon dioxide and 2.6pc water vapour.

Several other substances exist in far smaller quantities, less than 0.1pc. (The report also noted a number of toxic compounds in diesel exhaust, mostly related to fuel additives.)

Mr Lewis calculates that a zero-till rig will put 1100 kilograms of air through the tractor engine to work a hectare of land.

"There's a lot of actual weight and volume to gases," he said.

Dr Bailey wrote that the exhaust treatment "... resulted in significant release of soil N and/or stimulated the crops to take up soil N".

"There were also small increases in the uptake of P, K, and S on the exhaust treatments that may be due to the function of the exhaust on the soil. Slight shifts in the amount of some micro-nutrients taken up by the crops were also observed."

If it proves viable, BioAgtive might also be a tool for farmers wanting to reduce their emissions profile under emissions trading.

"We're incorporating most of the tractor emissions," Mr Lewis said.

"We've analysed behind air drills and there's minimal escape if everything is operating properly."

Rather than sealing in the gases mechanically, the system relies on attraction between negatively-charged ions in the gases and the soil's positively charged alkaline component to hold the exhaust in the soil.

Some Canadian farmers are now growing their own biofuel crops using BioAgtive technology, Mr Lewis reported, potentially closing the emissions loop.

About 150 farmers around the world, including Australia and recently China, have bought into the BioAgtive concept.

"Most farmers are getting similar yields to conventionally fertilised crops, but sometimes they will get a little less," Mr Lewis said.

The system doesn't come cheap, at about CAN$40,000 –but Mr Lewis says a farmer can then potentially save $400,000 in fertiliser in a year.

BioAgtive users will feature at the Carbon Farming Conference and Expo at Orange, NSW, on November 4-5.

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Websouce: http://sj.farmonline.com.au/news/state/grains-and-cropping/general/reduce-emissions-with-bioagtive/1643157.aspx?storypage=2

FARMER Mick Dennis believes a unique crop planting method that pumps his tractor's exhaust fumes into the soil to boost the yield and health of his crop is the way of the future.

Mr Dennis, from Birregurra near Colac, says the technique reduced the need for fertilisers and produced a healthier, often bigger yield, by assisting in the soil's biological processes and enhancing root growth and microbial activity.

''Everybody has to be responsible and look after rural industries. The farmer has to change his ways and if he does the right thing, he will get rewarded,'' he said.

A COLAC district farm’s carbon emissions trial could help improve food security in a developing African country.

Mike Dennis, who is originally from Birregurra and lives in Tanzania, has started a trial of a tractor kit to plant maize at the Dennis’ Warncoort farm.

The N/C Quest Bio-Agtive technology converts the tractor’s exhaust fumes into organic fertiliser, and injects it into the soil to stimulate crop growth.

Mr Dennis said his Tanzanian company Field Master won $400,000 from an Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund to use the technology.

“I believe it’ll be very good for our farmers there because we don’t actually use fertiliser over there,” he said.

“I want to improve their food security and yields for farmers.

“I’m very excited to see how this works, it’s going to have a potentially massive impact to Africa because it’s a huge problem and the fertility in the soil is going down every year.”

Mr Dennis said Colac district farmers could also benefit from the technology, but the price tag could be too high for individuals.

He encouraged interested farmers to visit the Warncoort farm.

“The idea of the maize is to provide an alternate crop for summer,” he said.

“What I see in the future is grouping farmers on a world scale – we log all our data, which will go into a central data pool and that initiative then applies that data to the government in their country.

“With the initiative of the carbon tax in Australia, farmers should be entitled to be paid for that.”

N/C Quest’s Gary Lewis, a Canadian farmer and automotive mechanic, brought the equipment to Warncoort as part of a journey to participating Australian farms.

Mr Lewis said about 170 farmers were using the technology worldwide, with research continuing to refine and prove its capabilities.

“Working with the Montana State University in the US, we have instruments that test the carbon dioxide all around the tractor, the exhaust levels, and we’re able to document that the tractor emits zero emissions,” he said.

“The plant becomes more mineral-rich, and more positively charged to bring more carbon dioxide from the air.

“It could possibly take twice as much CO2 from the air because we’re stimulating the plant’s physiology.”

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Websource: http://www.colacherald.com.au/2011/11/colac-farm-trial-helps-african-nation/

MOST farmers wouldn’t want Matthew Barton’s 20-year-old Versatile tractor, or the visual messiness of his pasture cropping system, but they might envy his return on investment. And that’s the point. Take away land values, says Mr Barton, and many farming enterprises are either making a negligible return on investment or are quietly losing money. Mr Barton, a former corporate treasurer with Aztec Mining, wants a low-risk farming system that delivers a return on investment (ROI) not too divorced from what he might achieve through other investment strategies, while building up the ecological base of his central NSW farm. That’s led him into a low-input system of wall-to-wall winter cropping and strategic grazing on “Baragonumbel”, the 1200 hectare family property he took up with wife Kylie in the late 1990s. On average over the past decade, Mr Barton said, the cropping program has delivered him about seven per cent ROI, lifting to nine per cent when he brings in agisted stock. A winter wheat crop costs him about $150 per hectare, all inclusive from seed to silo. At this rate, pulling off a modest crop of 2.5 tonnes per hectare adequately rewards his investment--even with wheat prices below $200/t. He prefers not to talk of cropping success in terms of yield. Success, Mr Barton said, is 100 per cent ROI on crop investment: this year that means $350/ha. For the whole farming business, he’s aiming for at least 10 per cent ROI--in a sector where ROI hovers around the three per cent mark. Mr Barton’s financial acumen was helped by his accounting training, but his approach to farming started with Resource Consulting Services (RCS), a consultancy that has turned out a number of award-winning farmers. RCS training emphasises the “triple bottom line”: the understanding that no enterprise is successful unless it simultaneously succeeds economically, ecologically and socially. It also demands a rigorous focus on business costs. It is chiefly by slashing costs that Mr Barton has ramped up his ROI. His 20-year-old Versatile 4WD and his similarly vintage sowing rig, newly equipped with BioAgtive exhaust-inject technology cost about $100,000 all-up. He avoids staffing pressures by leisurely dry-sowing in autumn (“we’ve never had a failure with dry sowing”) directly into native grass pastures after using 400 millilitres of glyphosate to knock over emerging winter annuals. (Summer annuals are on their way out by sowing, and he strives not to kill any perennial plant except lucerne, a legacy of the farm’s previous management.) Not only do the natives not compete with the crop, in Mr Barton’s view: they actively support it by storing moisture around their root mass, preventing moisture from leaching down through the soil and maintaining an active soil microbe community. Since he began pasture cropping a decade ago, solid fertiliser has been progressively phased out. For the first four years, Mr Barton hedged his bets by maintaining a conventional cropping program on about a third of the property alongside the pasture cropping. Crop yields from the two programs were line-ball, but the decisive moment came when Mr Barton began to drop fertiliser inputs. On the pasture-cropped land, decreasing the fertiliser budget made no difference to yield. On conventionally-cropped soil, it did. The conventional program was dropped, never to return. This year, solid fertilisers have been dropped altogether in favour of BioAgtive technology, which reputedly fertilises seed and soil using nitrogen, carbons and other nutrients contained in tractor exhaust. It’s been the driest decade in the Wellington district’s 150 years of recorded history, yet Mr Barton said he has still made some gains. His farm’s soils are recycling nutrient, promoting their own fertility and resilience, and Mr Barton said he now only needs to work about half the year on the farm--he works much of the other half as an RCS educator. Financially, “Baragonumbel’s” returns haven’t yet matched those of the financial markets. But that’s not the only metric of success, Mr Barton observed. “If we hadn’t done things the way we’ve done them, we’d be in desperate straits now,” he said. “If we were still here.”

Canadian farmer Gary Lewis spent 7 years developing a technology that may change the world. Mr. Lewis' process cools the exhaust from farm tractors and injects it into the soil. This process eliminates the need for fertilizer. This is a very exciting technology that will not only make the man-made global warming bozos happy, but saves farmers hundreds of thousands of dollars in fertilizer costs annually and yields superior crops. The Pincher Creek, Alberta native has started a company, BioAgtive, to manufacture and distribute his technology. Absolutely brilliant.

Come Join us in Parkes, NSW, Australia for the 3rd Annual Bio-Agtive Gathering! Learn about plant physiology, soil structure and how the Bio-Agtive theory works! Its not that complicated so come over and find out!