We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jeremy Ledgewood . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jeremy below.

Jeremy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

We’ve seen some crazy things happening with fertilizer lately, most notably a hike in prices and a mass shortage. These things are impacting everyone as a whole. We got tired of paying an arm and a leg for fertilizer and having our growing season impacted by the fertilizer shortage — not to mention depending on other countries to source something we could do here. That’s when we developed SafeGro as an alternative to conventional treatment methods.

What’s different about our fertilizer in comparison to others is that it’s uniquely designed to accelerate microbial growth and decrease a grower’s nitrogen usage while still using the 6, 8, 12 method. We also added humic acid to our fertilizer.

One question we always get is, “what is humid acid?” Simply put, humic acids are fully decomposed remains of organic life. “Humic acid” is a broad term that refers to a complex mixture of many different acids that are soluble in alkaline solutions. They exist naturally as part of nature’s life cycle in soils, oceans, and streams.

Due to modern farming methods, humic acids are less abundant in today’s agricultural and gardening soils, because the natural cycle of life, death, decay, and rebirth has been disrupted. This is why it’s imperative for these acids to be replaced to restore a healthy soil, healthy plants, and healthy crops — and why we chose to use it.

We have also done very specific studies seen an increase in the crops we treated, showing a steady increase as well as more consistent sizing and health.

What’s great about us is our products are made in and shipped from Texas, readily available, and will be more cost-efficient than anything on the market. The biggest thing we wanted to do was reduce the cost of farmers standard fertility program and allow them to spend capital toward other necessities.

Jeremy, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

SafeGro was developed as an alternative to conventional treatment methods. It was uniquely designed to accelerate microbial growth, and decreasing a growers nitrogen usage. We keep a growers cost in mind. Our product reduces cost for a growers standard fertility program and allows them to spend capital towards their future.

We all know that ammonia is a great nitrogen source but it is very expensive and you have to side dress other nutrients in. With Safegro, we feel that our product is a better all around product than ammonia, as we get the soil producing its own nitrogen, while adding nutrients into the soil. Soil microbes are able to make essential nutrients soluble then absorbed by the humid acid thus making it a source to the plant.

Plants rely on soil microorganisms to solidify nutrients for growth and development. In order to sustain soil and plant growth, soil microbes are not only beneficial, but crucial. Microbial activity is stimulated by humic acid by giving the domestic microbes a carbon source as food, which promotes the activity and growth, which is why you’ll see incredible results with any of our SafeGro products.

How’d you meet your business partner?

I met my business partner on a hunting trip. I drew an elk tag in southern New Mexico and my buddy brought John Etcheverry to be the camp cook. He woke us up to the smell of bacon in the morning and sited old cowboy poems in the evenings around the campfire. John and I hit it off very well as we both come from a farming and ranching background. John and I spent a lot of time together after that trip and he even taught me how to rope. As organically as our friendship formed, it turned into more and that’s when Universal Ag came to be. We’ve both come a long way and cannot wait to see what’s in store as this company continues to grow (no pun intended).

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Our best source for new clients has been word of mouth. It never fails, after a farmer, rancher or even greenskeeper tries the product and sees increase in yields, we get a call from a new client wanting to try the product. Bottom line, our product speaks for itself. Once growers see the performance of our SafeGro products they can’t help but tell their neighbors about it.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.getsafegro.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/safegro_
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/getsafegro
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/safegro/