Love everything that lives.

It Takes a Whole Community to Build Awesome Soil

by Jim McCue appropriatebiotech@yahoo.com

There's a difference between dirt and soil. When you say dirt you're talking about that messy and sometimes dangerously polluted stuff that may constitute an allergen or disease hazard. The word soil, however, refers to that living community of microbes, bugs, and worms which, as a whole: nurtures healthy plant life; speeds up the breakdown of some pollutants; limits the toxicity of some other pollutants; and serves as a limiting factor on plant and animal (including human) disease by competing with disease organisms. Soil is wonderful stuff. Dirt just gets in the way.

Our society has taken some wrong turns in it's history. Out of fear of our fellow creatures (large and small) we have been exterminating species after species. Along with human overpopulation we have underpopulation of a growing number of other life forms which are vital to the function of the ecosystem as a whole. Few people in the city have had the joy of sinking one's hands into good soil. It's soft, and can have a variety of smells from reminiscent of ant (remember what ants smell like - or did you never notice?) to foresty to mushroomy to fruity sweet to so many other smells depending on it's composition and biochemical activity. A healthy environment is something we all unconsciously desire and gravitate towards. Everybody enjoys being where there is a lot of life, such as in a garden which has had a quantity and variety of soil species fed by plenty of waste organic matter.
Our fear of bears, whales, mountain lions, and so many other large animals led to their extermination in various parts of the world. Our fear of, and competition with, so many of the smaller life forms is continuing to make the world's soil poorer. It used to be that natural recycling to the soil of the manures of these animals - and the recycling of the animals themselves and dead plants and microbes after they die – served to the regenerate fertility. No more. Now we are making parts of the Earth barren.

With deforestation, for instance. Right now, huge numbers of trees are going to make newspapers and advertisements to be quickly thrown away to be sent to landfills with or without [mostly without] reading). Is this really necessary?

Fear-mongering businesses make money exaggerating the dangers of specific species. Bats, for instance, used to be exterminated due to their disease-carrying capacity. Now they are being encouraged because of their disease-fighting capacity (via the insects they eat). As contrasted with vast numbers of locally grown food production and distribution operations in other parts of the world, we are cursed with too many packaged food choices which have been made not with the consumers in mind but with the producers' profits in mind. Storage time has been increased by allowing quality to decline drastically. Real bread tastes better and is better for you.

Why is no one talking about starting a whole grain bakery in
Hazelwood?

The consumers' desires have been manipulated so that few even know what real whole grain bread tastes like. Real whole grain bread needs either to be eaten within days of baking or refrigerated, as it will get moldy. That stuff you buy on the shelves has been chemicaled up and nutriented down so that it is no longer so attractive to the mold. Take that as an indicator: it should no longer be so attractive for you to eat either. It keeps longer but is worth less.

I could write for days about the screwed up perspectives we have developed about microbes. Microbes are for the most part either good for or not harmful to humans. Because they function as part of a whole community - in the soil and elsewhere - they play a role in disease suppression by competition and by predator-prey relationships. A disease microbe is less likely to become epidemic when it's a part of a healthy soil ecosystem - that is, one having a lot of different kinds of life. Far from being afraid of microbes, we should be welcoming them in a controlled manner - for instance in our gardens. Whenever you see an ad that says "Kills germs" ask yourself first whether you want all microbes gone from that place. Then find out if that product actually does get rid of all microbes when applied (many if most don't succeed in creating an entirely sterile situation). And ask yourself whether the stress from use of that product - on you and the other people, plants, pets, and other loved ones in the area it's applied - is worth the claimed disease protection effect of that product. Many of the worst disease hazards are actually caused by situations (such as hospitals and livestock-slaughtering operations) in which chemicals such as bleach and other techniques such as boiling water are being used in partially successful microbe-killing operations. Disease microbes surviving these operations tend to be accidentally stress-bred to be even worse genetic varieties, and also tend to become epidemic because the now simplified (partially sterilized) ecosystem more likely will allow them to reproduce to become epidemic.

From a food handling course provided by the Allegheny County Health Department I learned that it's better to - rather than constantly dose your restaurant with increasing amounts of pesticides in a futile attempt to eradicate the constantly mutating-to-adapt bugs - better just to keep things clean and dry, thus limiting bugs' access to food and water.

To promote soil community life, we have to love life rather than fear it. Love and encourage a variety of life forms both large and small. That will add to the health of the soil, and help to get us off this treadmill of increasing worldwide competition for decreasing rations of food caused (in part) by the depletion of the soil.