Soil
A lot of people don't know that in order to feed the people you have to feed the soil. Most people don't even think of dirt as being alive and so in need of food; but actually one third of a healthy soil is alive. Germs, molds, viruses, worms and other little critters (which are fed upon by larger forms of life) - an incredibly complex variety of life - work together to feed plants through their roots. And every animal we eat is either fed by plants or fed by animals that are fed by plants, so we are dependent on the soil community.
To think of plants and animals as needing only certain nutrients - nitrogen (protein), phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, copper, and others - is overly simple and materialistic. Our simple-minded thinking that Nature is just a collection of things to be used has resulted in the troubled world we see around us. We think we can just take a piece of land, rope it off, and make it grow whatever we want by just throwing in those nutrients and ignoring all the life in the soil.
Ultimately, the health and fertility of a garden or farm or fishery is dependent on both the quantity and variety of life in it. So - in contrast to the big business quick profit tendency to try to exclude everything other than what you're trying to grow from the area (by fences, pesticides, fungicides, traps, etc.) - organic growers welcome (selectively) a wide variety of wild things. This is a more complex whole systems way of thinking.
There's a saying that it takes a whole village to raise a child. In other words, each adult needs to care for all the children in their community, not just their own loved ones. Well, the same goes for a garden or farm and the area in which it functions. If your neighbors use and/or discard toxic chemicals for one reason or another, inevitably that's going to drift onto your growing area via the air or the water. Just as a bird is free to fly over a fence, a woodchuck or rabbit or rat can burrow under it, and a bug to fly through it, and just as the boundaries between countries are really just imaginary lines of ink on a map, there is no way anyone can or even should want to possess a piece of land as if it's theirs and theirs only.
American Indians understood better than their European invaders that we are all part of Nature and can't section it off into parcels to be bought and sold without wounding the web of life of which we are a part. The Europeans started the war on natives and won it with their superior technology (guns), NOT their superior morality.
So now, these many years later, we are seeing the shortcomings in our way of disrespecting the other animals and plants. We don't even think of ourselves as animals, but we are. The high tech agriculture we think of as so profitable and efficient is actually (in the long run and big picture) not only unprofitable but damaging to future profitability.
Every time we throw the big three plant nutrients N-P-K (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) at the soil we acidify it, kill fungi and bacteria and other parts of the soil web-of-life which are essential to plant nutrient uptake, lower the ratio of trace nutrients and other plant essences which are vital for both taste and nutrition, and lower the plant's immune system so it easier picks up some disease. Not much of a bargain for a little faster growth rate - The food has a higher ratio of water to nutrients. The only kind of agriculture this mindset yields is that of the addict and the profiteer; you have to add more and more organic matter to feed the soil you've destroyed or else abandon the ruined land and grab some more somewhere else. A conqueror's mindset, breeding ever more strong pests and ever more vicious competition in the marketplace. Thus our industrial agriculture has become addicted to fossil fuel inputs and transport to market.
I'm writing all this to advocate the huge increase in organics recycling we need to get back to some aspects of the "good" old days in which all dead plants and all animals' manure and dead bodies (including of humans') is returned to the soil to replenish the Earth. Our manufacture of chemical fertilizers and diversion of nutrients into the rivers and landfills is wrecking the ecosystem services that have kept us alive and eating and breathing since the beginning of our species.
In preparation for the writing of this article I was advised by a friend to not be too radical. My response to that is - A radical time with radical problems requires radical solutions. The ultimate radical solution - working towards loving all life (as impractical as that can seem).
Jim McCue
412-421-6496
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com
To think of plants and animals as needing only certain nutrients - nitrogen (protein), phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, copper, and others - is overly simple and materialistic. Our simple-minded thinking that Nature is just a collection of things to be used has resulted in the troubled world we see around us. We think we can just take a piece of land, rope it off, and make it grow whatever we want by just throwing in those nutrients and ignoring all the life in the soil.
Ultimately, the health and fertility of a garden or farm or fishery is dependent on both the quantity and variety of life in it. So - in contrast to the big business quick profit tendency to try to exclude everything other than what you're trying to grow from the area (by fences, pesticides, fungicides, traps, etc.) - organic growers welcome (selectively) a wide variety of wild things. This is a more complex whole systems way of thinking.
There's a saying that it takes a whole village to raise a child. In other words, each adult needs to care for all the children in their community, not just their own loved ones. Well, the same goes for a garden or farm and the area in which it functions. If your neighbors use and/or discard toxic chemicals for one reason or another, inevitably that's going to drift onto your growing area via the air or the water. Just as a bird is free to fly over a fence, a woodchuck or rabbit or rat can burrow under it, and a bug to fly through it, and just as the boundaries between countries are really just imaginary lines of ink on a map, there is no way anyone can or even should want to possess a piece of land as if it's theirs and theirs only.
American Indians understood better than their European invaders that we are all part of Nature and can't section it off into parcels to be bought and sold without wounding the web of life of which we are a part. The Europeans started the war on natives and won it with their superior technology (guns), NOT their superior morality.
So now, these many years later, we are seeing the shortcomings in our way of disrespecting the other animals and plants. We don't even think of ourselves as animals, but we are. The high tech agriculture we think of as so profitable and efficient is actually (in the long run and big picture) not only unprofitable but damaging to future profitability.
Every time we throw the big three plant nutrients N-P-K (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) at the soil we acidify it, kill fungi and bacteria and other parts of the soil web-of-life which are essential to plant nutrient uptake, lower the ratio of trace nutrients and other plant essences which are vital for both taste and nutrition, and lower the plant's immune system so it easier picks up some disease. Not much of a bargain for a little faster growth rate - The food has a higher ratio of water to nutrients. The only kind of agriculture this mindset yields is that of the addict and the profiteer; you have to add more and more organic matter to feed the soil you've destroyed or else abandon the ruined land and grab some more somewhere else. A conqueror's mindset, breeding ever more strong pests and ever more vicious competition in the marketplace. Thus our industrial agriculture has become addicted to fossil fuel inputs and transport to market.
I'm writing all this to advocate the huge increase in organics recycling we need to get back to some aspects of the "good" old days in which all dead plants and all animals' manure and dead bodies (including of humans') is returned to the soil to replenish the Earth. Our manufacture of chemical fertilizers and diversion of nutrients into the rivers and landfills is wrecking the ecosystem services that have kept us alive and eating and breathing since the beginning of our species.
In preparation for the writing of this article I was advised by a friend to not be too radical. My response to that is - A radical time with radical problems requires radical solutions. The ultimate radical solution - working towards loving all life (as impractical as that can seem).
Jim McCue
412-421-6496
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com
posted by St. Jim the Composter at 1:01 PM
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