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Better than Organic

By Michael Astera

Part I: A Conversation with Agricola Part II: (Bad) Science and the (Hopeful) Future Which Mineral Does What? Copper Zinc Iron Manganese Boron Minerals and Manure Minerals and Compost Frequently Asked Questions http://www.soilminerals.com/

Part I: A Conversation with Agricola

Q. You were saying Organic farming and gardening arent really working. How are they not working? Agricola: Theyre not working on several levels, including corporate greed, business ethics, and of course Were from the government and were here to help you. But thats not what Id like to talk about today. Id like to focus on the nutrition aspect, and on soil, plant, and animal health. Specifically, why most Organic food isnt necessarily more nutritious than chemically grown food. Q. It isnt? That certainly isnt the conventional wisdom. The people who grow it and buy it seem to think it is. Agricola: Yes, theres definitely a myth or misunderstanding that organically grown means more nutrition. But when tested or assayed for vitamins, protein, minerals, etcetera there is no good evidence that organically grown food is more nutritious than chemically grown grains and produce. Organic growers and consumers dont like to hear this. They seem to believe that it has to be better, and of course it is better in one way: it has fewer pesticides, herbicides, and other nasty chemical residues. But these are all negative things, saying what organic food doesnt have. They say nothing about what it does have. And the simple fact is that it is possible to grow more nutritious food with standard NPK fertilizers and lime

2 than with just composted organic matter.. Q. What? Thats heresy! (Laughing) Agricola: I know. How dare I say such a thing? Well, for one thing, were not farming much virgin prairie soil any more. The virgin prairie soil was gone a hundred years ago, and all of our best agricultural soils have been farmed and cropped steadily for at least a hundred years. [In the USA] Most of them are worn out, and many of the soils were farming today werent that good to start with. Sure, a lot of them need organic matter, they need humus, but they also need minerals. Manure and compost dont have any more in them than the organic materials theyre made frommostly Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen, which the plant gets from air and water, plus, usually, an unbalanced amount of Nitrogen and Potassium and some humic acids. High Nitrogen and Potassium levels can grow big, lush, healthy looking crops, but theyre not balanced nutritionally and they may even be harmful. Let me give you an example. If you have ever wandered around in a cow pasture you have seen these lush green little patches growing where the manure has landedbig, tall bright green grass that the cows wont touch, wont eat. Theyll graze right up to it and all around it but they wont eat it. Why not? Its not just because theyre finicky about grazing where they pooped. That lush green grass can actually be poisonous to them. It will make them sick if they eat much of it. Its full of nitrates and incomplete proteins and probably too high in Potassium. After maybe a year, after the winter rains and snow have leached and diluted the manure and the soil microorganisms have gone to work on it, and the grass roots have maybe pulled up some Calcium from the subsoil and mellowed things out, then the cattle will graze that spot again. What do they know that we dont know? Well, they know instinctively what is good for them and what is not; whereas we humans seem to have lost that ability. And thats the kind of food that most organic growers are growing. They add tons of manure and compostthe more the better, they thinkand grow these same kinds of crops that the cattle wont even graze onbig, lush, green, watery crops loaded with nitrates. And too often thats what were getting when we buy organic. Q. So are you saying that you think chemical fertilizers are better? Agricola: Dont get me wrong. Im no big fan of chemical fertilizers. The right ones used in the right way can grow good, healthful food, but seldom are the right ones used in the right way. Usually the wrong ones are used in the wrong way and they end up killing off the soil life: bacteria, fungi, protozoans etc. which of course leads to erosion, ground water pollution, etc.etc. However, lets say you used some high quality ammonium sulphate for a Nitrogen source, some single superphosphate, which is just a concentrated form of natural rock phosphate, and a decent Potassium fertilizer like Potassium sulfate or Potassium nitrate (not muriate of potash, Potassium chloride. That stuff has the same effect on soil life as pouring Chlorine bleach on your soil would). These are all considered chemical fertilizers. And lets say you had spread some gypsum or some limestone or even some dolomite lime on the field or garden the previous year. Now instead of this imbalanced high Nitrogen, high Potassium situation from manure and compost, you might have the proper amounts of Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, Calcium, Magnesium, and Sulfur plus whatever trace minerals might be in the soil or in the limestone or gypsum you applied. You will hopefully have a little organic matter in the soil from last years crop roots and residues; youre going to be able to grow much healthier and more nutritious crops than

3 you could possibly get from manure and compost alone, simply because you have a wider and more balanced array of nutrients available. It may not be ideal, but youll certainly grow better food than from just adding organic matter to a depleted soil. Q. I guess that makes sense. So would you recommend throwing out the conventional organic approach and using a combination of chemical fertilizers and compost or manure? Agricola: Not exactly. More like a combination of science and nature. But lets back up a bit. Id like to talk a little about how we got to this situation with Organic growing in the first place. Q. Going back to Sir Albert Howard? Agricola: (laughs)You got it. Albert Howard was a British agriculturalist who was stationed in India for a number of years, from about 1905 to 1924, in an area of poor and worn out soils. He hypothesized that what was wrong with the soil was a lack of organic matter, so he had the locals round up a large quantity of manure and crop residues, which he composted and applied to this worn out soil. I imagine this soil had been farmed for hundreds if not thousands of years. Howard claimed he grew marvelous, abundant crops and that the animals fed these crops were healthy and disease resistant All well and good, but Ive always wondered if that was any kind of a solution for the locals. I mean, if theyd been farming and gardening there for hundreds of years, they must have been well aware of the benefits of adding manure and organic matter to the soil. I imagine if the locals had had the ability to round up all their neighbors manure piles to use on their own crops they might have done so, but their neighbors might have objected. Anyway, Howard didnt invent composting, it was well known in Asia, but he seemed to think hed discovered something new. Q. Why is that? Werent they composting and using manure in England? Agricola: Oh, of course, but not so much as they had done in the past, and it certainly wasnt the modern, scientific thing to do and wasnt taught or encouraged in the colleges Sir Albert attended. In order to explain why, Ill need to go back a little further. Q. Go ahead. Agricola: OK. Well, you see, chemistry as we know it really isnt a very old science. Modern chemistry, which is based on knowledge of the 92 natural elements and their properties, didnt really begin until the late 1700's. Dalton isolated Calcium in 1804. Dmitri Mendeleyev didnt publish his Periodic Table of the Elements until the 1870's. Before Mendeleyev, though, some people had come up with some very useful things to do with the new science. In the 1840's, a Paris trained German chemist, Justus von Liebig, burned some barley grains to ash and analyzed what was left. He came up with Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium. NPK. Von Liebig showed that if he added just N,P and K ( K is for Kalium, the name the German alchemists used for Potassium) to the soil, the plants grew well. He reasoned that certain elements had been depleted from the soil over the years and needed to be replaced, and he was right. Von Liebig rejected the prevailing agricultural wisdom of his day, which was the old idea that humus, totally broken down organic matter, supplied plants with food. NPK worked great, and it was relatively cheap and easy to manufacture. His discovery was immediately seized upon by the German industrialists, and thus was born chemical agriculture. Humus, composting, and manure were off the fashion runway. All one needed was NPK to grow huge crops and the chemical factories made money hand over fist. So did the farmers, for a while, until it got to the point of diminishing returns, where they had exported the reserve fertility from their soil and had to dump more and more chemical fertilizer on their soil to get results. At that point, which was reached anywhere from ten to twenty years after the introduction of chemical fertilizers to

4 the soil, the chemical factories kept on making money but the farmer didnt. His profit was going to make the industrialists rich. And thats how things have remained to the present day. Von Liebig has gotten somewhat of a bad rap over the years and has been blamed by some for the excesses of chemical agriculture, but what he really stated was that whatever needed nutrient was in the shortest supply was going to be the limiting factor in how well the plant grew. He called it the Law of the Minimum. Von Liebig did realize by 1850 that humus was essential, but by then the industrial chemical factories had taken over and no one listened. The manure piled up in the barnyards and the modern farmer didnt need to get his hands dirty with it. So by the time Albert Howard was going to school in England in the late 1800's it was all chemical fertilizers, all NPK, and organic matter and humus were forgotten. Is this getting too detailed here? Q. No, it's fine. You were saying, then, that Albert Howard, later Sir Albert Howard, rediscovered the value of humus and organic matter in the soil? Agricola: Exactly. And, back in England, he proceeded to put his ideas into practice and to write a couple of very influential booksAn Agricultural Testament in 1940 and The Soil and Health in about 1947. Q: And that was the beginning of the Organic movement? Agricola: More or less. Around 1940 in Pennsylvania, a young health magazine editor named J.I. Rodale happened to read an article about a boys school near London where the food was grown by the Howard method. A dramatic decline had been seen in the incidence of flu, colds and scarlet fever, except in new arrivals, who soon became well. Rodale read Howards book, and was so excited that he began corresponding with Howard and soon bought a farm where he began growing crops by this new method. Rodale had been sickly. When he noticed an improvement in his own health, he soon became a fanatic. Q. Youre calling J.I. Rodale a fanatic? (laughter) I can see your point. But was that good or bad? Agricola: Both, I guess. It was good that he was inspired to preach the message of Organic agriculture and to start the magazine that became Organic Gardening Magazine, which got the message out to millions of people. Bad, in that he was pretty much what one might call a one trick pony. Organic matter, compost and humus became the litany and the dogma of the Church of Organic Gardening, no heretics need apply. Understand, I mean no disrespect to either Howard or Rodale. Both of them made valuable contributions in waking people up to the dangers of chemical agriculture and the importance of a healthy, living soil. They just sort of got stuck in simplistic answers. They neglected the all important mineral balance. Howard was of the opinion that composted leaves from forest trees would supply all the minerals necessary. He figured the tree roots would go deep into the earth and pull up any that were needed, which may be true if the needed minerals are down there. Pine trees and maple trees, however, dont necessarily need the same mineral balance as cabbages and wheat. Howards books contain almost no mention of minerals. Neither Howard nor Rodale were well informed chemists or nutritionists. Although Rodale did recommend the use of lime, phosphate rock, and greensand in his later work, it was never strongly emphasized and was largely ignored by his followers. Rodale himself didnt seem to have much understanding of minerals. Neither of them ever

5 advocated a soil test beyond measuring pH, as far as I know. And how is one to really know whats going on without a soil test? Q. I agree, although interpreting a soil test is rather complicated, and knowing what to do with the results is even more complicated, isnt it? Agricola: Sure. And many gardeners and farmers arent willing to invest the time, expense, and effort in getting a soil test and educating themselves, especially when its so simple to just pile on more manure, compost, mulch etc. Which is fine, I think, unless theyre actually trying to grow real food to grow healthy bodies and keep them healthy. Ive been fascinated for many years with nutrition, medicine and agriculture. In my opinion, real scientific agriculture trumps medicine and it trumps nutritional science. Nutritional science these days is mostly concerned with supplementsvitamins, minerals, amino acids, enzymes, hormones, herbal extracts and all the pills and potions on the health food store shelves. All of these are only needed because the nutrients that should be in our food arent there. And why arent they there? Because the minerals arent in the soil the food is grown in. For example, Zinc has been shown to be necessary for over three hun-dred metabolic and enzymatic processes in the body. With no Zinc, or not enough Zinc, youre looking at over three hundred vital processes in your body that arent going to hap-pen. Could this have an effect on your health? And going back to Howards mulch of leaves, if the rocks that broke down to form that forest soil didnt contain Zinc, there wont be any Zinc in the leaves, will there? Q. And how does Agriculture trump Medicine? Agricola: Because Medical care for disease, as opposed to injury, is mostly dealing with the results of malnutrition. Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, chronic infections etcetera are largely diseases of malnutrition. This has been shown in thousands of scientific studies for the last century. How much sense does it make to treat malnutrition with drugs and surgery? How much proof do we need? None of these diseases are caused by a deficiency of drugs or surgery. The real nutritionists realize this, so they attempt to alleviate problems by having people change their diets and take supplements, like vitamins and minerals. That wouldnt be necessary if the full complement of nutrients was in everyones everyday diet. Q. But Organic farming, at least by the Howard/Rodale method, isnt the answer? Agricola: Well, Im sure you can see from what Ive said so far what Im leading up to. Mineral balanced agriculture is the only thing that can work. Its the puzzle piece thats been missing from organic gardening, and from nutrition, and from medicine. What we need to do first of all is to figure out exactly what constitutes a perfect or nearly perfect diet for the human body. We can do this. Nutrition is a well advanced science, unlike most of todays agriculture. Much of what has been discovered in nutritional science isn't being taught in the colleges, but the information is there for those who look. Once weve figured out the nutrients we want in our food, then we figure out how to grow crops that contain those nutrients. And in order to grow crops that contain those nutrients, we have to figure out how to build soil that contains the elements the crops need to make those nutrients. When I first grasped this concept it seemed overwhelming because I thought wed have to start from square one, but as I did more reading and research it turned out that a lot of the work had already been done, mostly in the period from 1930 to 1950. And just like in nutritional science, the research was shut down and the results buried by the chemical/industrial cartels after World War II. Table of Content

6 Did you know that there has been no basic research done on soil science in American agricultural colleges since the mid 1950's? None. Zero. Whats with that? There has been plenty of research on hybrids bred to produce bulk tonnage on an NPK diet, and more recently on genetically modified organisms created to survive lethal doses of herbicides etc., but nutrient content and health hasnt even been in the picture. The entire picture has been greed, monopoly, and short term gain. Dont look to corporate agribusiness or the chemical companies to solve world hunger or malnutrition problemsthey are the problem. Q. Tell us about the work that has been done. Agricola: Gladly. There are several major figures who have done original research on soil minerals, people whose work has gotten enough attention to actually make some difference. I already mentioned Von Liebig, who got the ball rolling. Another early contributor of note would be Julius Hensel. In 1893 Hensel published Bread From Stones, an overview of the experiments he had done in Germany using rock powders, ground up rocks, to fertilize farm crops. Hensel was a serious chemist as well as an agriculturalist. He argued against the use of large quantities of manure, saying it weakened the plants and the soil. He also blamed the overuse of chemical fertilizers for ruining German food production, and claimed he got greater quality and quantity of crops using only rock powders. Needless to say, the industrial chemical cartel did their best to discredit him and bury his message, but his book is still in print and well worth reading. The two biggest names in what has become known as Eco-Agriculture, however, are William Albrecht and Carey Reams. Albrecht was head of agricultural research at the University of Missouri from the 1920's until the mid 1950's. He was very much a classical scientist. He and his colleagues made the single most important discovery in soil science to date, the role of the clay fraction of soil in cation exchange capacity, abbreviated CEC or just EC for exchange capacity. Briefly, its the ability of the clay and humus in the soil to hold and release tiny particles of certain positively charged minerals, for instance Calcium, Magnesium, Potassium, Sodium, Manganese, Copper. When we talk about clay we are actually talking about colloids, particles so small that they suspend in water and wont settle out. Theyre not dissolved in the water. The negatively charged clay particles can hold onto positively charged ions of Calcium, for instance, that would otherwise be leached away into the subsoil by rain and irrigation. The clay keeps these minerals from washing away, but gives them up easily to a plants roots in exchange for Hydrogen (H+).Albrecht discovered why different soils have different exchange capacities. A soil with a lot of clay in it can generally hold onto a lot more minerals than a sandy soil. Humus also has a high exchange capacity, which is a good argument for maintaining soil humus in the ideal 4-5% range. Albrecht and his crew made this discovery about clay in the 1920's, and this led to many years of experiments with the mineral balance of the soil and its relationship to plant, animal, and human nutrition and health. He believed that animals had a finely tuned sense for what was good food and was good for them. If the pigs, rabbits, or cows wouldnt eat forage that was grown on a certain soil or fertilized in a certain way, or would eat it only if starving, he wanted to know why. His published work, collected in four volumes by Charles Walters, is called The Albrecht Papers. It covers a vast amount of territory, from geology to soil organisms to animal husbandry to human nutrition, and in my opinion it stands as the greatest agricultural work yet written. Yet Albrechts name doesnt even get a mention in modern soil science textbooks, though they have entire sections devoted to cation exchange capacity and the structure of clays. Sort of like Nikola Tesla or Kary Mullis. Tesla

7 gave us our entire worldwide electrical system, Mullis gave us the polymerase chain reaction that is the basis of all DNA work today, and neither of them get a mention in the textbooks. Q. Linus Pauling comes to mind, too. Agricola: Yeah, and Pauling spent the last years of his life working out the links between mineral deficiencies and disease. Pauling and Mullis both won Nobel prizes too, and I imagine that million bucks took a bit of the sting out of being shunned by the textbook writers. Albrecht was just shuffled off out of the way when the chemical companies took over the ag colleges in the 1950s. If it hadnt been for his friend Charles Walters, who recognized the importance of his work, Albrechts work might have been lost and forgotten. Anyway, Albrecht concluded that he got the best results when the exchange capacity was saturated with about 65% Calcium, 15% Magnesium, 5% Potassium, a couple percent Sodium, and a few parts per million of some other mineralsZinc, Copper, Manganese, Iron. That leaves about 10% of EC which is saturated with Hydrogen. If you add in some humus and organic matter, Phosphorus to equal the Potassium level, some Sulfur and a tiny bit of Boron, you have the basis of the Albrecht method. These ratios will give you the balanced mineral base for a healthy soil, and you should be able to grow bountiful, healthy, highly nutritious crops. The Albrecht method works very well, but of course its not the whole answer. Carey Reams gave us another big piece of the puzzle. Q. Yes, Im curious about Carey Reams. From the little I know Ive gotten the impression that he was pretty eccentric. Agricola: Well, if you ever try reading him, I think youll agree that he was unconventional, at least. Reams was not the same sort of classical scientist as Albrecht was, even if he did have a PhD, but he was an awesome scientist nonetheless. What makes him difficult is that there were no accepted scientific terms for what he was observing and measuring, so he either borrowed terms like cation and anion from mainstream science and used them in his own way, or he made up his own, like his fabled millhouse units of energy. Reams can be obtuse and often verges on the mystical, but he undoubtedly got results. He was certainly involved in determining the ideal mineral balance in the soil, although he used whats called the LaMotte method for soil testing, which uses a weaker extracting solution and measures easily available nutrients. But his more important focus and contribution was on the energy balance or imbalance of the soil; the flow of energy in the soil. One way of describing his energy ideas might be the comparison of a dead battery and a fully charged battery. Their elemental makeup is identical: the same amount of Lead, Sulfur, and water are in each, but one of them can do useful work while the other one just sits there. Theres an energy flow when you connect + and on the charged battery, nothing on the dead battery. Let me see if I can make that a bit more clear. The charged battery has the same mix of elements in the same proportions as the dead battery, but there are a lot of potential chemical reactions that havent happened yet, chemical reactions that release energy. Sort of like a bottle of vinegar and a dish of baking soda; when you pour the vinegar onto the baking soda, things start fizzing, heat and energy are released. When the fizzing stops, things have reached chemical equilibrium and theres no more energy release. A living soil with the right balance of minerals always has a certain amount of chemical imbalance, things being born and dying and decomposing, plant roots exchanging Hydrogen for Calcium or Potassium, grains of sand breaking down and releasing new minerals. Nutrient elements are constantly shuffling around and energy is being released. In a dead soil, nothing

8 is happening, new nutrients are not being released and exchanged, and the only way to get plants to grow is by feeding them synthetic fertilizers. So one could have two soils of identical chemical composition but of different energy potentials, and the energized soil would grow good crops while the dead battery soil just sat there. This is a valuable observation Reams made, one that has been overlooked by many agricultural researchers. Reams and his students also popularized the use of the refractometer in agriculture. A refractometer is a fancy name for a simple tube and eyepiece with a prism lens at one end that is used to measure dissolved solids in a liquid. It measures in the Brix scale and has long been used by professional winemakers to measure the sugar content of grapesthe higher the Brix reading, the sweeter the grapes. Now this is a simple little device that anyone can use. One could even take it with them to the fruit stand and measure the sugar content, hence the mineral content, of an orange or a tomato before buying a bagful. If that orange has a Brix reading of 16%, buy it! If its only 4 or 6%, dont waste your money on insipid, tasteless food. Pretty cool. What the refractometer measures is how much light is bent, or refracted, by the dissolved solids in the plants juice or sap. A thin, watery sap devoid of nutrients wont bend the light passing through it like a sweet, richly mineralized sap will. So a person can use a refractometer to measure the quality of their own homegrown fruits and vegetables. Q. That has to be easier than learning to interpret a soil test. Agricola: Sure. And you dont have to wait a week or two for your results to come back. Refractometers only give you a snapshot of where you are, though. They cant tell you what minerals are involved. But back to Reams. Reams was a strong advocate of Phosphorus, and he claimed that all nutrients should enter the plant in phosphate form, a claim Ive never quite understood. He lived and worked in Florida, which has vast phosphate deposits, so he had plenty of Phosphorus available to experiment with. Now, Phosphorus is sort of a mystery element in the soil. Other elements will readily leach out, but Phosphorus stays put. And no one seems to know exactly why. We know from Albrechts work that the positively charged cations like Calcium and Potassium are held by static charge to the clay and humus. But we dont know as much about whats going on with the negatively charged anions like Sulfur, Chlorine, and Phosphorus. We do know that these other anions will readily leach out, but not Phosphorus. Can you believe this? We dont really know how the negatively charged elements are stored or how they move in the soil or get into the plants roots. In the 1920's Albrecht and crew discovered the CEC connection to clay in the soil. As far as I can tell, that is the last major discovery in soil chemistrymade 80 years ago. And the last one before that was Von Liebig in 1840. And before that? Nope. Thats it. As I count it, we have exactly two major discoveries in agricultural soil chemistry, plus Reams observations about energy flow. And one from the petroleum engineers and geochemists. More about that one when we talk about Calcium. So we really dont know very much about the soil. The soil of Mother Earth, that feeds us and upholds us, has been the redheaded stepchild for most of the history of modern science. During the dustbowl years of the 1930's, when the topsoil was blowing away on the wind, people were scared and some in the government were scared so between 1930 and the

9 end of the second world war agricultural science was relatively well funded. Not, of course, funded like research into weapons of mass destruction, but at least enough to learn a few things of practical importance. This all ended as the multinational corporations took aim at the American family farm in the late forties and through the fifties. By the late 1950's they had bought every ag college and land grant university in America, bought as in Well give you a bunch of money but you have to put the people we want in charge and do only the research we pay you to do. And the foolish, greedy administrators and trustees went for it. They sold out. There has been no real research in soil chemistry since then, only research on pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, hybrids, and now GMOs. [ed. note: Genetically Modified Organisms] OK. Let me try to get back to Reams and Phosphorus. Reams said that Phosphorus is necessary for the production of sugars, particularly complex sugars, in the plant. No Phosphorus, no sugar. Phosphorus is also essential to the production of DNA. And it is also the element in shortest supply in the soil over most of the world. I dont mean that theres less Phosphorus than the trace elements, but that Phosphorus is one of the major elements required for plant and animal health. Bones and teeth are made of Calcium and Phosphorus. And its in short supply in most soils. Reams said that there should be twice as much available phosphate as potash for most crops and four times as much phosphate as potash for grains, grasses and legumes like alfalfa. Q: That disagrees with Albrecht, doesnt it? Didnt Albrecht call for an equal amount of Phosphorus and Potassium? Agricola: (smiling) I see you are paying attention. Very good. Actually, Reams and Albrecht are saying the same thing. Phosphate is P2O5, two atoms of Phosphorus and five atoms of Oxygen. Potash is K2O, two atoms of Potassium and only one of Oxygen. If you do the arithmetic, based on the atomic weights of the elements, you will find that phosphate is only about 44% Phosphorus by weight, while potash is 83% Potassium by weight. One hundred pounds of potash contains eighty-three pounds of Potassium. Two hundred pounds of phosphate contains only about eighty-seven pounds of Phosphorus. So if you want the amount of Phosphorus in your soil to equal the amount of Potassium, by weight, you will need to have twice as much phosphate as potash. Its worth noting here that the numbers on a fertilizer bag, the NPK numbers, dont actually stand for Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium, they stand for actual Nitrogen, an amount of phosphate, and an amount of potash. So if the NPK numbers say 5-10-5, for instance, there is about an equal amount of Phosphorus and Potassium. If the numbers say 5-5-5, theres only half as much Phosphorus as Potassium. I dont know why they started doing this, listing phosphate and potash instead of Phosphorus and Potassium, maybe to make it look like there were higher percentages of nutrients in the bag. I said earlier that Phosphorus stays put in the soil. If you spread Phosphorus on top of the soil, thats where it stays. What little we do know about Phosphorus indicates that it readily forms insoluble compounds in the soil that apparently can only be made available through the action of soil microbes and fungi. So you can end up with a situation like we have in the prairie soils of the great plains of Canada and the US, where there is plenty of Phosphorus in the soil, but because the soil is biologically dead, the farmers have to apply large amounts of highly soluble phosphate every year to grow a decent crop, which of course the chemical companies love. Okay, I was talking about Carey Reams. Reams had some memorable sayings. One was see what you look at. Another was well grown produce doesnt rot, it dehydrates. He claimed to have entered the same watermelon in the county fair three years in a row. Im

10 just repeating what I read. Q. That melon must have been extremely well grown. Im developing more respect for Reams and his work after what youve told me. Who else needs a mention? Agricola: Charles Walters, for sure. None of the people presently working in this field would know much if Charles Walters hadnt had the vision to start his magazine Acres USA. Walters was working as an editor for agricultural newspapers in the 1950s and 60s when he became friends with William Albrecht. The agriculture newspapers that Walters worked for were the same kind that are mailed out free to farmers today, every other page a fullpage ad for the chemical companies. Walters was intelligent enough and cared enough to realize the importance of Albrechts work, and he realized that this work would be lost if someone didnt make it available to farmers. The commercial ag newspapers wouldnt touch this info, because it showed how to grow superior crops without using any of the toxic chemicals that their advertisers were selling. So Walters started AcresUSA in the early 1970s, and it remains to this day the magazine that makes the most significant contribution to sustainable agriculture. Acres USA isnt just focused on Albrechts work, though. They are just as likely to publish an article on biodynamics or composting or herbal or Homeopathic medicine, all without prejudice. If its about natural health, sustainability, Eco-Agriculture, organic gardening, or just better and more efficient farming you will find it there. I cant speak highly enough of this magazine and the work that Charles Walters has done. Anyone interested in the subjects I mentioned owes it to themself to subscribe to it and read it cover to cover. Theres just nothing else like it. Walters also gathered together and published William Albrechts work in four volumes. Volume II, Soil Fertility and Animal Health is required reading, I would say, along with Walters own tour-de-force Eco Farm. He has also edited, written, or published dozens of other books on sustainable agriculture and natural health, many written by students of Albrecht or Reams, and all worth reading. The real reason that we have several million acres being farmed sustainably today is mostly due to the vision and work of this one man, Charles Walters. Albrecht and Reams may have laid the foundations of the science, but few would have heard their message without him and AcresUSA. One caveat, though, on reading Walters' books and essays. Somewhat like the old alchemists, he doesn't always give the information in a straightforward manner. Reading his work requires a little patience. ( a long pause.) OK, thats enough history for now. I am leaving out over a dozen people who have been and are making great contributions to the field, but if I start listing them this wouldnt be an interview, it would be an encyclopedia. Lets get back to Why Organic isnt Really Working and How it Can. Table of Content

Part II: (Bad) Science and the (Hopeful) Future

Agricola: Lets get back to Why Organic isnt Really Working and How it Can. Q. Absolutely. And after that background I think I have a pretty good idea of how it can. It has something to do with minerals, doesnt it? (Laughing)

11 Agricola: You got it. It has a lot to do with minerals and it has a lot to do with pulling all the different pieces together. Right now we have a lot of different viewpoints, a lot of different pieces of information, and, unfortunately, a lot of different sects in agriculture and gardening, all of them seemingly determined to prove that theyre right and everybody else is wrong. To a certain extent this is just human natureeveryone likes to be right. But no one that Ive talked about here is wrong. Von Liebig wasnt wrong, and neither was Rodale and neither was Reams. They all had important pieces of the puzzle. One thing I would very much like to get across is that until about two hundred years ago we didnt even have a science of chemistry. That science was unfortunately kidnapped in its infancy by the corporate industrialists, who have kept it in chains in the basement ever since. Analytic Chemistry is a tool we have never before had in the eight-thousand-plus year history of agriculture. Properly used, it can tell us what we need in our diets for optimumnutrition, and what we need to add to the soil to achieve that in our food.. That sounds doable, to me. Fertility in the soil is minerals. Minerals are elements, and elements are what this physical reality is made of. Each of these elements has its own unique structure and properties. What Iron can do, Copper cant. Iron oxidizes easily, as in rust. Copper doesnt readily combine with oxygen. So we have Iron to transport Oxygen in our red blood cells, not Copper. And neither Copper nor any other element can replace Iron in hemoglobin. Our bones are a crystalline lattice of Calcium and Phosphorus, and no other element can replace either one and still have healthy bone, even though some fools have tried to do it with Fluorine. Has anyone noticed any decrease in tooth decay? Q: Not me. Ive brushed with fluoride toothpaste most of my life and Ive had terrible problems with my teeth. Agricola: Exactly. You and just about everyone else. Each element can do things that no other element can, and each is needed in the correct proportion, in the soil, in plants, and in living things. And guess what? We dont even know what the correct proportions are. We probably should by now, dont you think? This is what science should be used for, not for thinking up new patentable poisons to make someone a buck. We dont even know how Nature issupposed to work, and instead of trying to figure that out weve spent the last century and a half trying to improve on it? How does one improve something they dont even understand? There has been some basic work done with mineral deficiencies in nutritional science; we know what happens to an experimental animal or a human if they dont get any Zinc in their diet. But we dont know what happens if they dont get any Zinc or any Copper or any Boron, all at the same time. Natural Science, and its all Natural Science, is in its infancy, an enforced, perverted neoteny. [ed. note: a term used in biology for an organism that remains in an immature state] The poor baby has been chained in the basement (or is it under the stairs?) and forced into prostitution since it was born. This is not hyperbole or exaggeration. Its a nearly perfect analogy. People are attracted to science because of their natural curiosity and love of learning. A true Scientist is inquisitive, observant, and madly infatuated with his subject. He does science because he loves Science. I knew a fellow who graduated with a PhD in Entomology from a university in Arizona. He loved bugs enough to spend eight or nine years of his life living in poverty while going to school to study them. And he loved nature. He was a

12 camper, a hiker, and a mountain climber. Along the way he got married and soon had a family to support. There wasnt much call for Professors of Entomology and what was available to a new graduate wouldnt support a growing family, so he took the only job his education qualified him for that paid well enough: he went to work for an exterminating company, spraying poisons to kill insects. Even though he was an organic gardener and a fitness freak, he died of a massive heart attack at age 49. Im sure the years of exposure to pesticides that one has to have a license to handle were a major factor, but theres a lot of heartbreak in having to prostitute ones self that has to be factored in too. I spent some time investigating a cancer research institute in the Midwestern US, so I know a little whereof I speak. With an annual budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, this cancer institute was basically a factory for spending research dollars. Whoever could write the best grant proposal and get the most money to blow was top dog. I assure you, this place had nothing to do with finding a cure for cancer. They had a seven story building as big as a hotel that held room after room after room of experimental animals in little wire cages all stacked up on roll-around carts. They had an assembly line (or should I say a disassembly line) of underpaid women who worked all day slicing up freshly killed white rats, mice, and hamsters and putting the slices on microscope slides and then putting a thin little glass cover over the rat tissue. This took up an entire floor of another large brick building and was called the department of Histology. And what happened to the slides? They were shipped out to a storage facility in the boonies where they were stacked on shelves. I was there, once, at this scientific specimen storage facility. Imagine a good sized single-story library with high ceilings and high bookshelves throughout, but instead of books there were boxes and boxes of glass microscope slides all carefully labeled, each with a little slice of animal tissue between the slide and the cover glass. Thousand and thousands of boxes of glass slides. And this had been going on for a while, and the housekeeping was none too great. When one walked down the aisles between the shelves one walked on six or eight inches of broken glass slides and had to be careful that a crumbling box full of slides didnt fall on ones head. I swear I am not making this up. And you wouldnt believe the toxic waste from cancer research they stored out there in the hinterlands. Barrels and barrels and more leaking barrels. If youre trying to give animals cancer you generate a lot of toxins. You dont want to know how awful this place was. I have to tell you one more story while Im thinking about this. That seven story building full of rats, mice, and guinea pigs generated a lot of waste. Down in the basement they had a sort of commercial dishwashing setup with a conveyer tunnel that cleaned the cages with high pressure hot water and soap, and all day long there was a constant stream of six foot high rolling racks of dirty animal cages coming down the elevator. Down in the hot, steamy, stinking cage washing area there was a crew of underpaid young black guys who spent all day emptying the mess out of the cages, hosing them off, and re-stacking them to go through the washing tunnel. The cage waste, manure, food, and bedding, most of it highly contaminated with carcinogens, was augered up to a big hopper bin. At least twice a week the bin had to be emptied, so they pulled a large open dump truck up to the hopper, filled it up and proceeded to drive it, uncovered and wafting carcinogenic rat waste, about twenty miles through the city to the municipal dump, where it was dumped right in with the household garbage. These researchers never gave a thought to the fact that they were spreading carcinogenic waste across the city and contaminating the landfill with it. They were strictly in it for the money. I swear, if you were a researcher at that place and you came up with a cure for cancer they would knife you and stick your body under six feet of cement in the cellar, where no one would ever find you. You would be putting them all out of a job.

13 Table of Content Q. Unbelievable. Thats science? Thats where the thousands of millions of dollars weve been spending every year on cancer research for the last thirty five years has been going? . Agricola: Im afraid so. And Im afraid thats where your money goes when you have a walkathon to raise money for research on whatever,-- pick a disease. If you find a cure, youre out of business as a researcher. Of course, if you can come up with a synthesized drug that affects the diseasessymptoms, some drug that is patentable and that people can be convinced they must continue taking for the rest of their life, you can be a rich hot shot too. What is so incredible to me is that this is accepted as normal, rational behavior. Its not, of course. People who dont care what the consequences of their actions are, who dont care who or what they hurt as long as they get theirs, are known in psychology as psychopaths or sociopaths-- dangerous and mentally unbalanced menaces to society. And these kinds of people are who we have running science. And industry. And government. We have to be able to do better than this. Why are the very people who shouldnt be allowed anywhere near the job running the world? Im a little off the subject, here. Q: Yeah, thats OK. I wonder about the same things myself. But you believe that we can fix this mess and get science back on track, so it would be a joyful pursuit for the good of humanity? Agricola: We have to. The human race is smarter than this. We can and we will do it. Right now the whole corporate/industrial paradigm is going through its last tango. Its on its way out, but the death spasms arent going to be pretty. The system is just too broken to be fixed. No matter who we elect, appoint or allow they are not going to be able to fix a system that cant work. Taking more than you give back is not sustainable, by any economic or philosophical theory Im aware of. It may somehow be justified or rationalized but I dont know of any sane person who would call it sustainable. What well have to do is start from scratch and build a system that does work. If there are two systems running side by side, one that is sustainable and even increasing in abundance and efficiency, alongside a system that is only interested in short term gain and the heck with the consequences, which system is going to survive and prosper in the long run? We humans are supposed to be the caretakers of this planet, for Gods sake; the gardeners and the park rangers. Instead we have behaved as thieves and poachers. And who are we stealing from? Our children and grandchildren and ourselves and every other living and non-living thing on this beautiful, generous planet. What ungrateful wretches we are. (Pause.) Lets talk about Calcium for a bit, OK? Q: OK. Youve done quite a bit of studying on that subject, havent you? Agricola: Yes, its been like following a conspiracy theory. One gets caught up in the research, and as you gather more and more facts and clues you wonder, how have they kept this hidden? Why dont people know about this? Thats pretty much how I feel about Calcium. Calcium is an absolutely wonderful element. Calcium is the buffer that keeps our blood at a pH of 7.4, so nutrients can be electrically inducted into our cells. It is also the element that carries those nutrients into the cell, releases them, and goes back for more. Calcium

14 ions are what make nerve synapses work. DNA cant be synthesized without Calcium. Calcium can bind to seven oxygen locations on a protein while still holding on to a water molecule and then release them all easily. No other element can do that. Calcium carries the heavy trace minerals like Manganese into the plant from the soil. Have you ever bought a peach or a nectarine where the seed was split open and inside you could see this little shriveled kernel instead of a plump embryo? That seed didnt form because it didnt have any Manganese. Every viable seed requires a molecule, maybe only a single atom, of Manganese to bring the electric charge to the seed and the magnetic force to draw the other elements into the seed. There may be plenty of Manganese in the soil, but if there is a shortage of Calcium to pull it into the plant the seeds will be sterile if they form at all. Or there may be enough Manganese and Calcium, but no Boron, and Boron is needed to move and direct Calcium. It all works together and each part is necessary. Biologists refer to us as Carbon based life forms, but its just as arguable that we are Calcium based life forms. Carbon in plants comes mostly from CO2 in the air, but Calcium comes from the Earth, from the soil. Heres the conspiracy: how have they (whoever they are) managed to hide the knowledge that Calcium is such an important element in all living things? In plants, animals and humans, adequate Calcium is absolutely essential for life. But just about the only mention Calcium gets in soil science is as a pH modifier. If you think your lawn or garden grows better after you lime it because you changed the pH, I have a newsflash for you:Calcium is the single biggest growth stimulant in plants. pH is a measure of free Hydrogen ions in water. It measures Hydrogen ion concentration, H+ and OH-, and thats all it does. One can change the soil pH with any acid or alkali. You can raise the pH with sodium hydroxide, which is lye, drain cleaner, or lower it with hydrochloric acid, for instance, but they arent going to give you much growth stimulus. They will probably kill the plant. A slightly acid pH of about 6 or 6.5 is ideal, because it gives just the right amount of electrical conductivity in the soil, but plants arent nearly as finicky about pH as they are about having the right balance of soil minerals. Rhododendrons, for instance, are supposed to require an acid soil. What they really prefer is a high Magnesium soil. Experimenters in Scotlandraised the pH of soil from 5.0 to nearly 8.0 with Magnesium Carbonate, and the rhodies grew better and better as the soil pH went up because theMagnesium level was going up. pH had little to do with it. So, this is a good thing to know if you are trying to grow rhododendrons in New Mexico, for instance, where the soil is frequently alkaline to start with, although there you would want to use an acid form of Magnesium like Magnesium sulfate, Epsom salts. But your garden, your farm crops and your fruits and berries wouldnt necessarily like it (except the blueberries). High levels of Magnesium in relation to Calcium are common in Organic gardening and farming, though, because people are told to lime their soils with dolomite lime, which is high in Magnesium. Carey Reams recommended a Calcium to Magnesium ratio of 7/1. Albrecht said a 65% Calcium to 15% Magnesium base saturation was about right, which is a ratio of 4.3 to 1. Once again, Albrecht and Reams are both saying the same thing in different ways. Magnesium is more alkaline than Calcium, so it has a greater ability to saturate the soil colloids, a greater ability to displace free Hydrogen. Reams was talking about a 7/1 ratio by weight, Albrecht was talking about their respective abilities to neutralize free hydrogen. If your soil test reads seven times as much Calcium as Magnesium by weight, and theres enough there to saturate the soil colloids to 80%, you will still end up with Albrechts 65% to 15% ratio. Dolomite lime, which all the Organic gardening books seem to recommend,

15 frequently has a 2/1 Ca to Mg ratio, and may even be 1/1. [ed. note: he means a 1/1 ratio of their ability to saturate the soil colloids] This is far too high a level of Magnesium to have in your soil for a couple of reasons. For one thing, when organic matter breaks down in a high Mg environment it produces alcohol and formaldehyde, both of which are harmful to soil life. Secondly, the Calcium to Magnesium ratio largely determines the looseness or fluffiness of your soil. This was discovered by the petroleum engineers and geologists/geochemists. They had to drill a lot of deep holes full of mud, clay and water. Sometimes this drilling mud was loose and liquid, even if it was mostly clay, and sometimes it was sticky or like cement no matter how much water was in it. They figured out that the stickiness or non-stickiness was mostly due to the Ca/Mg ratio of the base saturation, the Exchange Capacity of the clay. Add more Magnesium, it gets tighter. Add more Calcium, it gets looser. And the exact same thing happens to the soil in your garden, lawn, or cropland. So if you have tight soil, the most likely reason is your Ca/Mg balance. Magnesium makes the soil particles attract each other and stick together, Calcium makes them repel each other and keeps the soil loose. One can, of course, go overboard on the Calcium and the soil will lose all structure and be too loose and fluffy. (laughing) Dont ask me how I know this. But if you get your Calcium/Magnesium ratios right you can drive on your garden and the soil wont compact. Now is this a valuable piece of information or what? Why isnt this common knowledge? See what I mean when I say its like a conspiracy? Its worth mentioning here that if you have an extremely sticky soil, the kind that clumps up an inch or so thick on your boots when its muddy, you probably have a low Carbon content in your soil as well as a Calcium/Magnesium imbalance. The best cure for low soil Carbon levels is organic matter, or possibly powdered charcoal. I have made a pastime for a few years of browsing bookstore shelves for Organic gardening and farming books the ones that have Organic in the title. And I go to the index and look under Calcium, or if theres no listing for that, which there often isnt, I look under lime. I have looked at dozens and dozens of these Organic growing books and none of them get Calcium. One or two actually mention that Calcium is a plant nutrient, but most of them only relate it to pH. And all of them tell the reader to use dolomite lime preferably or to use it interchangeably with high Calcium agricultural lime (Calcium carbonate). This is just wrong. Yes, there are times when dolomite lime is needed to achieve the correct Calcium/Magnesium balance, but only a soil test will tell you when that is the case. Q: Why do you suppose the writers of these organic gardening books are so far off base? Agricola: They are simply uninformed, completely unaware of the importance and the science of soil mineralization. I also suspect that the confusion is a result of some misguided information from nutritional science that they are trying to apply to the soil. Yes, most Calcium supplements, food supplements I mean, have a 2/1 or even1/1 Calcium to Magnesium ratio, so it seems intuitive to think that thats what youd want in your soil. The Ca/Mg ratio in the human body is about two parts Calcium to one part Magnesium. In the Earths crust the average ratio is 32 parts Calcium to one part Magnesium. What we want, however, is that elusive 5/1 to 7/1 ratio in our gardens and croplands. As long as enough Calcium and enough Magnesium are stored on the soil exchange sites the soil will be loose and the plants and soil microorganisms will be happy. This is pretty simple, pretty easy to do. But you do need a soil test. Howard and Rodale didnt use or understand soil tests, except maybe for pH. I think they associated soil tests with chemical farming. In the 1940s J. I. Rodale worked, for a while,

16 with William Albrecht and another mover and shaker in the progressive agriculture movement, Louis Bromfield. Bromfield had taken over some worn out farmland in Ohio, a place he called Malabar Farm, and was restoring it to marvelous fertility. Ive never heard the details, but there was some sort of falling out between Rodale and the Malabar Farm group over the use of concentrated fertilizers, like ammonium sulfate. I believe Albrecht and Bromfield took the position that if you could use a pure and concentrated source of fertility, one that grew healthy plants and didnt harm the soil, this was just good science and good common sense. And this makes sense to me, too, for a couple of reasons. When you go to the health food store or the drugstore and buy mineral or vitamin supplements, you may want them to be from a natural source, but you dont insist that they be unrefined. For instance, you might want Vitamin E, which generally comes from soy oil, but you dont buy a gallon of soy oil and drink it to get your 400 IU of d-alpha tocopherol. If you want a Selenium supplement you dont buy a pound of ground-up rock to get a few micrograms of Selenium you might not want the other minerals in that pound of rock. It also makes a lot more sense, economically and ecologically, to ship a few pounds of a purified substance across the country than a ton of raw material. I suspect also that Rodale might have been intimidated by the science, the chemistry, like many others are. He was a journalist, after all, not a scientist. But for whatever reason, he split from the Malabar Farm group and from there on it was pretty much manure and compost for him. This had unfortunate consequences because Rodale went on to have a vast influence on sustainable agriculture, but soil chemistry, other than a misunderstanding of the role of pH, has been almost totally neglected by organic gardeners and farmers. Today, if you send in a soil sample to a State Ag College or one of the big commercial soil testing labs, chemical fertilizers are what they will recommend, and generally the cheapest, harshest, and most harmful ones to soil and plant health, like muriate of potash or urea nitrogen. Up til now there hasnt been the interest and input from organic growers that would encourage the testing labs to recommend nutrients from natural sources. Q. But this is only a problem with the recommendations, right, not the laboratory analysis? Agricola: The soil testing labs generally do a good job of analysis. If you send a soil sample to ten different laboratories its unlikely that any of them will send back identical results, but they will likely be close. There are variations in equipment and technique. But at least if you have a soil test you have a place to start, and if you send your next soil test to the same lab you can get an idea of what progress you are making. A serious grower needs to find a lab they trust, one they can contact by phone or e-mail and have their questions answered. Hopefully, find one that understands the philosophies of William Albrecht and Carey Reams. Interpreting a soil test, once you have one, isnt all that difficult, you just need tenth grade chemistry and fifth grade arithmetic. As long as you have an idea of where you are now and where you want to get to its not too hard. Up until now, though, few have had a clear idea where they want to get to, which is the reason Ive spent the last number of years putting together my best guess chart. [See The Ideal Soil Agricolas Best Guess ed.] Ive based it mostly on the work of Albrecht and Reams, along with every clue I can come up with from everybody else plus my own experience. If you follow the recommendations on the chart you wont get into much trouble. Ive been careful. And Im hoping for a lot of feedback from the gardeners out there. This soil minerals thing works, and people tend to get excited about things that really work. Many Organic gardeners and farmers wont be willing to put in the time and effort it takes to really understand the chemistry, but if they catch the vision that Im talking about here theyre going to want to know what to do with the information on their soil test. Some of the testing laboratories that advertise in AcresUSA, which is a magazine that anyone serious

17 about sustainable agriculture should be reading, are associated with Eco-Agriculture consulting firms. I dont know how much they charge for consultations, but, agriculture not being a get rich quick scheme, Im sure theyre reasonable. Ask around in your own area, too. The consultants out there so far, though, are more used to working with larger growers and farmers. Were going to have to develop some sort of grass roots organization to work with small scale and backyard gardeners. [Editors Note: and there you have the inspiration for SoilMinerals.com] Table of Content Most important, though, is that you get a soil test. A pretty complete soil test including exchange capacity and availability of a dozen or so major and minor elements only costs $20 to $30 dollars. Then you will at least have a place to start. Q: But you dont see each and every organic gardener learning about soil chemistry? Agricola: Only enough to realize its importance. The commercial growers especially. Even if one is only growing a few tomatoes and carrots for summer salads this knowledge would still guarantee the best flavor and nutrition. But I realize that many gardeners just arent going to want to learn the chemistry and do the math, any more than they are going to learn plumbing or electrical work or structural engineering. They just need to understand how the system is supposed to work, so that when there is a problem, like poor flavor or insect attack or rotting in storage they realize that it is probably a mineral problem. In times past most communities had a physician, and maybe what we will end up with is a trained soil physician in each community. (laughs) We will need a lot less experts in the field of medicine once we get the food right! One of the attractive things about Organic gardening and farming has been its simplicity just add more compost. Unfortunately, unless you happen to be lucky enough to have perfectly mineralized soil, more compost or organic matter is not going to give you more nutrition. Let me give you an example of how out of wack things can get. Lets look at the Puget Sound region of the Northwest US. A few miles South of the bottom end of the Sound is as far as the glaciers went during the last ice age, and most of the soil around there is a stony glacial till left behind when the ice receded. Its mostly formed from broken down granite and basalt, usually high in Potassium, low in Phosphorus, and any Calcium it might once have had has been leached out by sixty to two hundred and fifty inches of rain per year. You will recall that Albrecht recommended equal amounts of phosphate and potash, and Reams said twice as much Phosphorus as Potassium, four times as much for grasses and legumes. So there in the Northwest,dumping more high Potassium compost on the soil is only going to make things worse, nutritionally. Nonetheless, that is exactly what the Organic books recommend. One size fits all really doesn't work too well in gardening. Phosphate has been described as the major catalyst in all living systems. It is essential for metabolism and photosynthesis, and is, as I mentioned earlier, needed for the synthesis of sugars and the replication of DNA. If you wonder why the organically grown fruit you buy isnt sweet, its because the Phosphorus/ Potassium ratio is out of balance, the Calcium/Magnesium ratio probably is too, and more organic matter is not going to fix the problem. Another thing that happens when Potassium levels get too high is that the Potassium tries to substitute for Calcium, and though it can latch on to and take some nutrients into the cell it cant get back out again because its too big, so we end up with cell interiors loaded with Potassium and a deficiency of Calcium and Phosphorus. Excess Potassium can also become fixed to the exchange sites on the clay, aging the clay and messing up its EC and expandability. Not good. I could go on with what we do know about mineral nutrients, but anyone who has stayed

18 with me thus far is surely getting the picture. We have within our grasp the ability to grow the healthiest, best food that has ever been grown. A good part of the work has already been done for us. The rest of the work is cut out for us and laying on the table, waiting for us to figure it out and put it together. If we just take off our blinders and look around, we can take the very best from all fields of health, agriculture, and ecology, from Organics, Eco-Agriculture, Permaculture, Biodynamics, nutrition and all the accumulated wisdom of native and traditional methods, and come up with some really hot stuff. Hot stuff that is sustainable, increasingly abundant, and ecologically sound. Q: I think I hear the bugle call. So how do we go about doing it? The corporations have taken over the ag colleges and the government research stations, and they are not likely to see this as much of a money maker for them. Agricola: Thats true. Healthy food, healthy farms, and healthy people will impact things all up and down the line. What do we need drugs, chemical fertilizers, and poisonous sprays for if we have naturally healthy land and naturally healthy people? They wouldnt sell much green and purple sugar-coated genetically modified breakfast cereal if people knew that it was poisoning their children and causing disease. What people want is to feel good now, and most of the time most of them dont. Most of us are the result of several generations of malnourished ancestors. At what point were your forebears introduced to unlimited white sugar and white bread? Q: Me? Im not sure, but my grandparents who had a farm in the Dakotas were born in the late 1800s, and I never saw anything but white bread and white sugar at their place. When I was growing up there was always a full sugar bowl on the table. Agricola: Exactly. You and just about everyone else. Dr. Weston A. Price, who did a worldwide survey of aboriginal peoples in the 1920s and 30s, concluded that it took twenty years from the introduction of refined carbohydrates for the first serious wave of degenerative diseases to show up: cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Albrecht, by the way, was well aware of Prices work. I find it fascinating that the Tohona Oodham people of Arizona, the Pimas, have a 90% obesity rate and a diabetes rate almost that high, even developing in preteen children. Their relatives just across the border in Mexico dont have these problems. Why not? Because the government of Mexico isnt taking care of them. They still grow and eat their own traditional foods. They didnt grow up on government cheese and frybread with sugar. And why are refined carbohydrates bad for your health? Because they deplete your minerals. When plants or animals have been malnourished for generations, the seed starts to run out. Health suffers. Reproductive abilities decline, as does the health and vigor of the offspring. Once again, problems of deficiency and toxicity, exacerbated by the greed and lies of profit at any cost corporations with the collusion of our government. And greed equals neediness: unsatisfied, unhappy, needy people who can never get enough because theres no lasting peace in accumulating material wealth, power, and human social status. This is something we all should know at our deepest level. Its definitely time for a new model, wouldnt you say? Think of what we can do with this knowledge once we put it together, even as we are putting it together! We can analyze the soil of those places in the world where the people have been shown to live the longest and remain the healthiestthe Caucasus mountains

19 near the Black Sea, the Vilcabamba region in the Andes, maybe the famous Hunza valley in the Himalayas, if it actually exists. We can take this information and use it to recreate the exact combination of mineral elements found in any soil anywhere in the world. If a winemaker wanted to recreate the soils of Bordeaux in the leached soils of the Pacific Northwest, or if a cattle rancher wanted to recreate the mineral ratios of the buffalo grass prairie soils of the Midwest in the state of Georgia, they could do so The state of Kentucky is known for raising some of the finest horses in the world. The neighboring states, Tennessee and Indiana for instance, are not. Why? Because Kentucky soils are largely made from broken down limestone, high Calcium and probably high Phosphorus limestone, what strong bones are made of. The same goes for areas of France that have been raising strong, healthy cattle and horses since pre-Roman timesthe rocks their soils are made of contain high amounts of Calcium phosphate. We can recreate any soil we want anywhere in the world. And with a little long term vision, we might only have to do it once. The soil mineralization that has been done so far has mostly used finely ground stone. Granite, limestone, basalt, glacial rock dust, rock phosphate, trace mineral blends, all have been pulverized as finely as possible in order to make them quick acting. What would happen if we applied them in coarse gravel size and finer, and worked it out so that the minerals would be released steadily over the next five hundred years? Would that work? I think it would. Of course were talking about a lot of transportation cost here; rocks are heavy things to be hauling all over the country, but we would end up with little need for the polluting chemical industries and pharmaceutical plants, not to mention most of the whole sickness industry, so I dont doubt that the energy equation would balance out. Heres another aspect that will appeal to ecologists: with this knowledge we can grow more food, and more nutritionally dense food, on less land, instead of needing to clear more forest land and plow up more prairies. Although were not plowing up more prairies in this country anymore Were paving them over to build subdevelopments and malls. Some of that is going to be pretty hard to fix. What were talking about here, perfectly balanced soil mineralization, would not be something we could afford to do or would want to do everywhere in the world. In the Pacific Northwest, if you dont do anything to the land what you end up with is trees, so thats probably what they should be growing. But the vegetable, berry and flower growers in the valleys could balance their soil minerals one time over the course of a few years and then just replace what they took out of the soil, harvest bountiful crops of increasing quality as the soil life came on-line, and become largely self-sufficient instead of owing their souls to the company store. Those same ideas can be applied to any area. Will this happen? Im sure it will. When? Its happening right now, as you read this. There are already millions of acres in the US where the principles of Eco-Agriculture are being applied and are working very well. This is not new information, just deliberately buried and hidden information. Albrecht published most of his work by the 1940's, Reams was teaching and spreading his information in the 1950's and 60's. A few people listened and spread the word, largely thanks to Charles Walters and Acres USA. Q: OK, so how do we go about finding the answers we want, and who is going to pay for it? Agricola: Yeah, thats the right question. How will we do it? How will we answer our un-

20 answered questions: what happens to the anions like phosphorus in the soil, whats really going on with paramagnetism, what balance of soil microorganisms is best for which crop and which climate? I suggest that most of this work will and should be done by independent researchers, but Im not sure who is going to pay for it. Its tempting to say something like Just think what we could do with a billion dollars US in government money, why we could fund a thousandmillion-dollar research projects! But thats not the answer. Our governments money is corrupt; its extorted under threat of losing your property or going to prison. Taxes stolen from poor waitresses estimated tips, for Petes sake. And all the government funded research facilities are controlled by the multinational corporations. They are emphatically not interested in supporting their own demise. Besides which, most of the important work in science has always been done by independent, curious individuals, not by government funded laboratories. Hensel, Reams, and many others I havent mentioned never received a dime of government money to support their research as far as I know. Albrechts state agricultural station work was government funded, barely, but his results were either swept under the rug or appropriated without credit by the chemical fertilizer companies, while he was ignored. Hasnt this kind of stuff gone on long enough? Corporate money, just like government money, always comes with a few slimy strings attached. I say no thanks. Well do it ourselves. And yes, this is a bugle call, for all who have ears to hear. Lets get together and work together, all of us who love and believe in this beautiful emerald gem we live upon. Lets let go of our differences and find our common ground. Lets learn a little bit from each other instead of trying to prove that our way is the only right way. As I said earlier, we can bring together the best of Organics, Permaculture, Biodynamics, Eco-Agriculture, native and traditional farming and anything else that is sustainable, healthful, abundant, and works. We can grow the best food that has ever been grown, and become the healthiest, happiest people who have ever lived Its up to us. We can do this. We must do this. Q: So be it. Thank you for your time, Agricola. Agricola: You are very welcome. It has been a pleasure. Table of Content

21

Which Mineral Does What?

The Function of Soil Minerals and Trace Elements in Soil, Plant, Animal, and Human Nutrition and Health

Copper and Zinc

Copper
Copper (Cu) is element number 29 on the Mendeleeyev chart, the Periodic Table of the Elements. The other elements in Copper's specific group (group 1B, directly below it on the table) are Silver (Ag) and Gold (Au), which puts it in some racy company. Copper is the key to elasticity in the plant. It is an important constituent of many proteins like ascorbic acid oxidase, cytochrome oxidase, diamine oxidase, and polyphenol oxidase. Copper is an important nutrient for many microbes, such as Aspergillis niger. It controls molds and often alleviates perceived zinc deficiencies. Copper interacts with iron and manganese. Andersen Science In Agriculture p236 Bordeaux mixture and Burgundy mixture are two famous sprays used to control fungus in vineyards. Developed in their eponymous provinces of France, Bordeaux mix is copper sulfate, mason's lime (calcium hydroxide), and water; Burgundy mix is copper sulfate, sodi-um carbonate (washing soda), and water. The full recipes and instructions for using Bor-deaux and Burgundy mixtures are given below in the section borrowed from the Copper Development Association's web site. The story goes that Bordeaux mixture was discovered by accident. During a wet fall in the province of Bordeaux in the 1880s the grapes were being severely attacked by downy mildew. Along a road that ran past one vineyard, the owners had sprayed a mixture of copper and lime on the vines, which turned the grapes a blue green color and was meant to dissuade the passersby from picking the grapes. The French scientist Millardet, while walking along, noticed that those vines were not being attacked by the fungus, and Bordeaux mixture was born. As a part of of Bordeaux mixture in grape arbors, it functions as a nutrient and not as an insecticide as is often believed. Walters, Eco-Farm p136 [Copper's use in Bordeaux mixture is actually as a fungicide, not an insecticide, but we'll allow Charles Walters the occasional typo. This observation should actually be credited to William Albrecht, who theorized that the copper in the mixture was stimulating the plant's immune system.] Copper, vitally important to root metabolism, helps form compounds and proteins, amino acids and a host of organic compounds. It acts as a catalyst or part of the enzyme systems. It helps produce dry matter through stimulation of growth, prevents development of chlorosis, rosetting and dieback. Walters Eco-Farm p 197 The role of organic matter in Cu chemistry is also indicated by analysis of the soil solution. More than 99% of the Cu in the soil solution is complexed by organic matter. This complexing is of great importance in maintaining adequate Cu in solution for plant use. Foth and Ellis Soil Fertility p141 Because Cu is not translocated in the plant, the deficiency symptoms appear on the new

22 growth. In small grains and corn the leaves appear olive or yellowish green in color, and often the leaves fail to unroll as they emerge. Often the leaf tips will appear as though the plants have been frost-damaged, and there will be some flags. A flag is is a wilted or dead leaf or a branch with such leaves on an otherwise healthy appearing plant. Soil Fertility p157 Sul-po-mag, [also known as K-Mag and Langbeinite] applied between July 15 and September 15 up to 200 lbs per acre, seems to help in copper availability. Science in Agriculture p236 [K-Mag is available from SoilMinerals.com HERE] Table of Content

Copper in Human and Animal Health

An excess of copper results in degeneration of the liver. It causes blood in urine and poor utilization of nitrogen. A deficiency of copper is created by excess of molybdenum and cobalt. It produces anemia due to poor iron utilization. It depresses growth. Other symptoms...depigmentation of hair and abnormal hair growth; impaired reproductive performance and heat failure; scouring, fragile bones; retained placenta and difficulty in calving; and muscular incoordina-tion in young lambs, and stringy wool. Walters Eco-Farm p367 ...a largely vegetarian diet lacks the fat-soluble catalysts needed for mineral absorption. Furthermore, phytates in grains block absorption of calcium, iron, zinc, copper and magnesium. Unless grains are properly prepared to neutralize phytates, the body may be unable to assimilate these minerals. Fallon and Enig Nourishing Traditions p27 Ragweed, for example, is generally indicative of a phosphate/potash imbalance, but, more specifically, it indicates a copper problem. Copper is important in the use of manganese and iron, as well as in many metabolic reactions, Copper also seems to be important in controlling fungal disorders. Many people have allergic reactions to ragweed pollen. This reaction seems to be related to a copper deficiency in the mucous membranes. Andersen Science In Agriculture P.192 Copper: Needed for the formation of bone, hemoglobin and red blood cells, copper also promotes healthy nerves, a healthy immune system and collagen formation. Copper works in balance with zinc and vitamin C. Along with manganese, magnesium and iodine, copper plays an important role in memory and brain function. Nuts, molasses and oats contain copper but liver is the best and most easily assimilated source. Copper deficiency is widespread in America. Animal experiments indicate that copper deficiency combined with high fructose consumption has particularly deleterious effects on infants and growing children. Nourishing Traditions p43 Many enzymes incorporate a single molecule of a trace mineral-- such as manganese, copper, iron or zinc-- without which the enzyme cannot function. Nourishing Traditions p46 Graeme Sait: Can you revert grey hair with copper supplements? I've had grey hair since I was twenty-five. Joel Wallach: It's definitely a Copper deficiency, and you could revert to your former hair color if you addressed the problem. I see it every day with my clients. It can be quite humorous when a seventy year old grey-haired man returns to his former redheaded glory. Sait, Nutrition Rules p297 In Australia it was discovered that black sheep grazing on copper-deficient pastures turned gray.

23 In humans copper is stored in the liver. In cases of fever and infection, the level of iron in the bloodstream drops and the blood copper level rises as the copper reserves in the liver are mobilized to aid the immune system in fighting off invaders. This tidbit is from Andre Voison's classic Soil, Grass, and Cancer , in which the French bio-chemist and veterinarian devoted several chapters to the role of copper in human and animal health. In the 1930s Dr. Weston A. Price investigated the traditional diets of isolated peoples around the world. High in the Andes mountains of South America he discovered the native peoples relied on dried fish eggs and seaweed brought from the ocean to supply trace minerals and other factors lacking in their diet. He writes "The kelp provided a very rich source of iodine as well as copper, which is very important to them in the utilization of iron for building an exceptionally efficient quality of blood for carrying oxygen liberally at those high altitudes. W. A. Price,Nutrition and Physical Degeneration p 265. Copper functions in the body as an enzyme co-factor, formation of hemoglobin and red blood cells, protein metabolism, synthesis of phospholipids, vitamin C oxidation, production of elastin, and formation of RNA. Signs of possible deficiency are white hair, liver cirrhosis, allergies, parasites, hernia, anemia, hyper/hypo thyroidism, arthritis, ruptured disc and iron storage disease. Walters, Minerals for the Genetic Code p122. Zinc and copper have a seesaw relationship in the body, competing with each other for absorption in the gut. Both zinc deficiency and copper toxicity have increased since the switch from zinc (galvanized) to copper water pipes. We can avoid this problem by not drinking tap water. Haas, Staying Healthy with Nutrition p191 Table of Content The following wealth of information is from the Copper Development Association's web site at CDA Web Site

Uses of Copper Compounds: Copper Sulphate's Role in Agriculture

Copper sulphate has many agricultural uses but the following are the more important ones: Preparation of Bordeaux and Burgundy mixtures on the farm Control of fungus diseases Correction of copper deficiency in soils Correction of copper deficiency in animals Stimulation of growth for fattening pigs and broiler chickens A molluscicide for the destruction of slugs and snails, particularly the snail host of the liver fluke First we hear from Arden Andersen, who thinks zinc is overused in agriculture: Zinc is an essential component of many enzymes in the dehydrogenase, proteinase, and peptidase groups. It is a minor catalyst for sul-po-mag and copper and is correlated closely with copper and active nutrient systems. Zinc helps to make acetic acid in the root to prevent rotting; it is used to control blight and allows dead twigs on trees to shed off. Perceived zinc deficiency is often only symptomatic. Research has indicated that known soil-zinc deficiencies result in symptoms of plant-zinc deficiency only about 50% of the time. Zinc is much overused and promotes the growth of many weed species. Andersen Science in Agriculture p238.

24 And next from Gary Zimmer, who appears to be a big fan of Zinc, particularly for corn/maize: Zinc contributes to test weight, increased corn ear size, promotes corn silking, hastens maturity, chlorophyll formation, enzyme functions, regulates plant growth. Zimmer The Biological Farmer p109 [Zimmer also writes that zinc is "essential for corn starters" and recommends 5lbs/acre of 35% zinc to supply a corn crop and build soil levels.] And a few more experts weigh in on zinc: Charles Walters says that zinc "may act in the formation of chlorophyll.[....]It certainly stimu-lates plant growth and prevents the occurrence of mottled leaf in citrus, white bud in corn, and other disorders." He further states that "Plants do require it in the 3-100ppm range." and regarding animal health that "An excess of zinc means decreased copper availability and interference with utilization of copper and iron, bringing about anemia. A zinc excess also shows up as bald patches and skin disorders (rough skin), a deficiency is created by excess of calcium. Zinc is absolutely essential for production of sperm. It also increases the need for vitamin A." Walters Eco-Farm p366. Now a word from the more mainstream guys: " ...zinc uptake by plants declines as pH increases.[....] High levels of phosphorus in soils has been known to intensify zinc deficiency in a number of crops. The exact cause of the zinc-phosphorus antagonism has been difficult to determine....the zinc-phosphorus antagonism occurs on calcareous [high calcium] soils and may be related to iron availability." Foth and EllisSoil Fertility p142 They also show an increase from 4.2 to 19.9 bushels per acre of pea beans on one field after the addition of 25lbs/acre of zinc, quite the boost. Here's a fun one from an interview with Klaas Martens in Graeme Sait's Nutrition rules. "...we need to lift our zinc levels as our phosphorus levels increase. We always need to use zinc with our starter fertilizers. At one time, our consultant suggested that we had a zinc deficiency, simply by driving past one of our fields. He didn't need a soil test, because the presence of milkweed was an indicator of a zinc shortage. We've actually seen the milkweed disappear as we have slowly corrected the zinc." The area of South-central Washington state known as the Palouse is one of the world's great wheat growing regions. When it was first broken to the plow the production was tremendous, but by the 1920s it had fallen dramatically. The problem turned out to be zinc in-sufficiency. Zinc is easily water soluble, and this fact combined with low initial reserves of zinc in many soils has made zinc deficiency common. It was also one of the earliest trace mineral deficiencies discovered, and its sometimes dramatic effect on crop yields has led to some overuse; one book in front of me lists the results from application of 122lbs/acre of zinc! The results were quite disappointing, understandably. Both zinc and copper are well known for their need in animal nutrition, and most commercial livestock producers supplement animal feed with these minerals. For that reason, manures from commercial livestock operations are frequently very good sources of zinc and copper (and sometimes boron). The problem with these manure sources of minerals is that one doesn't know how much they are getting, or what else they may be getting that they don't want. See the article Minerals and Manure. Moving on to the human nutrition aspect, the adult human body contains about 2400 milligrams of zinc. Zinc is most concentrated in the male prostate and semen. The next most concentrated tissues are the retina of the eye, the heart, spleen, lungs, brain, and adrenal glands. Because of zinc's role in RNA and DNA synthesis and in the formation of many enzymes, zinc deficiency leads to slow healing of wounds. In some hospital tests

25 zinc supplements led to surgical incisions healing in one-half the "normal" time. Zinc is important to normal insulin activity, the functions of taste and smell, normal immune function, protein digestion, and the formation of bones and teeth as it is a co-factor of alkaline phosphatase. Fallon and Enig, in Nourishing Traditions , call zinc the "intelligence mineral". It is generally more easily absorbed from animal products than from plants and although grains may contain significant zinc, that zinc may be bound up by the phytates in the grain's outer portion. Many traditional peoples soaked and sprouted seeds and grains before cooking them, a practice that reduces or eliminates this mineral-binding by phytates. Fallon and Enig add "Even a minor zinc deficiency in pregnant animals results in offspring with deformities, such as club feet, cleft palates, domed skulls and fused and missing ribs. In humans, zinc deficiency can cause learning disabilities and mental retardation." Some of the other human nutritional and health problems associated with zinc deficiency are acne, boils, psoriasis, gastric ulcers (zinc is needed to form digestive acids), cataracts, hypertension, infertility, loss of or poor functioning of the senses of hearing, taste, and smell, weak muscles, and fatigue. The brilliant British researcher Mark Purdey, in his groundbreaking work with mad cow disease and chronic wasting disease, found in a worldwide survey that both mad cow and CWD were strongly associated with soils that had very low levels of zinc and copper, combined with high levels of manganese and sometimes high levels of strontium and silver. In those conditions copper in the melanin granules, which are transmitters of outside information to the brain, may be replaced by manganese with disastrous results. In other words, neither mad cow disease nor chronic wasting disease are caused by infectious microbes, but are the result of a mineral imbalance. For more info on Mark Purdey's important work see his web sitewww.madcowpurdey.com . SoilMinerals.com carries Zinc in the form of Zinc sulfate, a purified soil amendment containing 35.5% Zinc and 17% Sulfur. It is water soluble and is easily used for soil applications, fertilizer mixes, or foliar feeding. Table of Content

Iron and Manganese

Iron
Iron is second only to aluminum in the list of abundant metals. It makes up about 5% of the earth's crust, so it is rarely absent from soils, although it may not be present in an available form. For garden soil we like to see 50-200ppm of iron on a standard soil test. Above 250 ppm usually indicates something out of balance. What does iron do in the plant? Paraphrasing Arden Andersen, "Iron draws energy to the leaf by absorbing heat from the sun; it makes the leaf darker, thus absorbing more energy. It will increase the waxy sheen of the crop. Iron is necessary for the maintenance and synthesis of chlorophyll and RNA metabolism in the chloroplasts. It increases the thickness of the leaf, [which] increases nutrient flow geometrically, resulting in a production increase geometrically." Science in Agriculture p236 Iron is needed by nitrogen fixing bacteria. So iron is a good thing, in most cases. Below we have a couple of different views on just

26 how good it is and how much we want: Both iron and manganese become less available at pH 7 and above and in the absence of organic matter and water. These conditions are found in some arid parts of the western United States. High calcium soils also tend to have low available iron, particularly if they are also low in organic matter. In a calcareous soil, most of the potentially available iron is tightly bound to organic matter. Some plant roots have been shown to have the ability to obtain iron from these sources by chemically reducing ferric iron (Fe+++) to ferrous iron (Fe++). High phosphorus soils may also have low available iron, as any free iron will chemically bind to from iron phosphate....Correcting an iron deficiency may be difficult because the problem is not a lack of iron in the soil, but that it is chemically bound. Lowering the pH, if practical, is the surest method. Foliar iron sprays are also effective. Foth and Ellis Soil Fertility pp146-147. Here's an excerpt from an interview with Gary Zimmer "In our dairy work we are looking at phosphorus as a key element. We want phosphate uptake for sugars and energy and digestibility and plant health. If I have high iron in my soils, usually from over-tillage, excessive use of caustic materials or too much nitrogen use, I'm not happy. On a dairy farm, I scream and holler if they buy a single pound of commercial nitrogen. If they buy nitrogen, I want to know why. They had better use their manures and alfalfa and rotation, because I don't want iron buildups. Iron binds with phosphate within the plant . Many people who don't feed cattle don't notice this difference. You see, the phosphorus may be in the plant, but when you bind it to iron, it becomes unavailable. Iron has a triple-positive charge and phosphorus has a triple-negative charge, so they will bond very easily. If your feed is high in iron, then the cow is starved for phosphorus. We are fanatical about trying to get our iron down, just so we have better phosphate availability . In high iron soils I don't think our soil tests give an accurate idea of phosphate availability to the plant." [emphasis added] Graeme Sait Nutrition Rules pp187-188. Gary Zimmer works mostly with neutral or alkaline pH soils in the upper Midwestern US, and we don't know offhand what he considers high iron. The info above brings up some interesting questions about iron supplements in general, don't you think? I wonder what connection there might be between the high iron intake recommended for women and high incidences of osteoporosis? Fallon and Enig have this to say about one type of iron supplementation "Recently, researchers have warned against inorganic iron used to supplement white flour. In this form, iron cannot be utilized by the body and its buildup in the blood and tissues is essentially a buildup of toxins. Elevated levels or inorganic iron have been linked to heart disease and cancer." Nourishing Traditions p44. Charles Walters has this to say about signs of iron deficiency in plants "When iron deficiency is serious, the entire leaf will turn yellow, leaving only the veins to stand out like road maps....Chlorosis (white leaves that should be green) is possible even in the presence of iron. Lime can complex iron, and yet in the human being calcium and copper must be present for iron to function properly. In order to free iron, the farmer must complex calcium in this case, and this means using either iron sulfates or iron chelates, or substituting a proper foliar blend." Eco-Farm p196. At soil minerals.com we have seldom seen a soil test that showed a lack of iron. and as we usually are working with gardens and fields of a few acres and smaller, our approach is to bring the pH down below 7 which will make iron (as well as the other cations) more easily available. The alternative, if one cannot lower the pH with minerals because of size, expense, highly calcareous soils, or other constraints, is to increase the biological activity

27 in the soil. As noted above in the excerpt from Foth and Ellis' Soil Fertility, in a calcareous soil most of the iron is tied up with organic matter. Increasing the organic matter content of such soils will provide more holding points for iron, and increasing the biological activity, through the addition or seeding of beneficial bacteria and fungi, should make more Fe available to the plants. SoilMinerals.com carries Iron in the form of Iron sulfate, a purified soil amendment containing 30% Iron and 17% Sulfur . It is water soluble and is easily used for soil applications, fertilizer mixes, or foliar feeding. Table of Content

Manganese
Manganese is synergistic with iron; they work together in biology in ways that are not well understood, but we do know that they need each other. Good steel must have some manganese in it to impart toughness, and that manganese in the steel also absorbs oxygen during the steel making process. Perhaps this is a clue to the biological relationships of Mn and Fe, in that the manganese may slow the oxidation rate of iron in living things. We at SoilMinerals.com like to see about 1 part manganese to 2 parts iron on soil test results, up to about 50 ppm manganese. Levels above 50 ppm may be too high, particularly if the soil is deficient in copper and zinc. In wet, acid soils below pH 5 or so that naturally contain high amounts of manganese, soluble manganese can reach levels that are toxic to plant roots. The remedy for these conditions would be to drain the soil better, or, if the crop requires a wet, acid soil (e.g. cranberries), the remedy would be to increase water flow through the soil, as more water will bring more oxygen, which will precipitate the excess manganese in an insoluble state. Arden Andersen calls manganese "the element of life", and says that manganese "brings the electrical charge into the seed, creating the magnetic force to draw the other elements into the seed." (Science in Agriculture p236.) In Eco-Farm, Walters credits manganese with with aiding the oxidase enzyme in carrying oxygen, and entering into the oxidation and reduction reactions needed in carbohydrate metabolism and in seed formation; more clues that manganese has a strong connection with oxygen. Regarding manganese in animal nutrition, Walters tells us that an excess of manganese increases the need for iron, while a manganese deficiency results in leg deformities in calves, eggs not formed correctly, degeneration of testicles, offspring born dead, and delayed heat periods, and also says that an excess of calcium and phosphorus may lead to a manganese deficiency. (Eco-Farm p366) We definitely know that manganese is necessary for the development of viable seeds. The most common and obvious sign of manganese deficiency is in the almond family. Peaches, nectarines and apricots with split-open pits containing a shriveled seed are the prime example. Dan Skow has some interesting insights on this from the Carey Reams school of thought: "If there is no Manganese in the seed, it will swell up and rot [rather than sprouting]. Manganese has a high atomic weight, 54.9380, meaning it has more power than nutrients in the surrounding soil. [Manganese] puts into play the magnetism necessary to draw nutrients into the seed to feed it and its emerging root system. When there is a shortfall for manganese, the entire fertility program has to be adjusted to create enough energy to pull more manganese." (Mainline Farming for Century 21p59.) Skow recommends a foliar spray of manganese mixed with phosphoric acid to easily correct manganese deficiency problems, and tells us that manganese is what is needed to ensure

28 regular pecan crops with filled hulls. Moving on to human nutrition, Elson Haas tells us that manganese is an essential part of the superoxide dismutase enzyme found in the mitochondria, the energy factories in the cells. Manganese also activates the enzymes necessary for the body to use biotin, thiamine (B 1 ), vitamin C, and choline. (Staying Healthy with Nutrition p207). Sally Fallon writes that manganese is "..needed for healthy nerves, a healthy immune system and blood sugar regulation....also plays a part in the formation of mother's milk and in the growth of healthy bones. Deficiency may lead to trembling hands, seizures, and lack of coordination. Excessive milk consumption may cause manganese deficiency as calcium can interfere with manganese absorption...phosphorus antagonizes manganese as well. (Nourishing Traditions p44). Manganese can also be quite toxic. It has been (likely still is) used as a flux or anti-oxidant coating on arc-welding rods, and some long-time welders have ended up with chronic and acute symptoms much like those listed above for manganese deficiency: trembling hands and other indications that appear identical to Parkinson's disease. Manganese, we see,as well as being necessary, can be toxic, especially in diets or soils that are deficient in copper, zinc, and perhaps iron. The paragraph below was already posted above under copper and zinc, but bears repeating: A brilliant British researcher, the late Mark Purdey, in his groundbreaking work with mad cow disease and chronic wasting disease, found in a worldwide survey that both mad cow and CWD were strongly associated with soils that had very low levels of zinc and copper, combined with high levels of manganese and sometimes high levels of strontium and silver. In those conditions copper in the melanin granules, which are transmitters of outside information to the brain, may be replaced by manganese with disastrous results. In other words, neither mad cow disease nor chronic wasting disease are caused by infectious microbes, but are the result of a mineral imbalance. For more info on Mark Purdey's important work see his website http://www.markpurdey.com/. SoilMinerals.com carries Manganese in the form of Manganese sulfate, a purified soil amendment containing 32% Manganese and 19% Sulfur. It is water soluble and is easily used for soil applications, fertilizer mixes, or foliar feeding. Table of Content

Boron
Boron is one of the rarest elements, and one of the most mysterious. It is absolutely essential for calcium metabolism, but no one seems to know its method of action. An often heard phrase in the eco-agriculture field is "Calcium is the truck, but boron is the driver". This refers to the concept that calcium is the transporter of nutrients into and out of the cells, but it can't do its job unless boron is present. There are apparently only two commercially viable boron deposits in the world, one in Turkey and one in the Mojave desert of Southern California. Boron is easily leached out of soils, so higher rainfall areas are often deficient. In front of me is a map of the USA showing boron deficiency areas. Essentially it shows everything east of the Mississippi River as boron deficient, as well as the Pacific NW as far south as the San Francisco Bay and as far east as central Montana. Here's Charles Walters on boron: "Plants must have boron, again in the trace range. Texts quote 2 to 75 parts per million as being essential, but note that plants vary in their required

29 amounts according to species. Boron is quite lethal to seeds when used in the salt form." ( Eco-Farm p136). 2 to 75 parts per million is a huge range. At soilminerals.com we would be very concerned to see available boron above 5ppm. Our general rule is 1 part of boron to 1000 parts calcium. More on boron from Walters' Eco-Farm : "Boron is required so that calcium can perform its metabolic chore. It is essential in several other metabolic processes...it prevents such abnormalities as cracked stem in celery, internal cork in apples, black heart in beets and turnips, yellowing of alfalfa leaves. When boron deficiency is a problem, death of the terminal bud is a common symptom. Lateral buds continue to produce side shoots, but terminal buds on these side shoots fade away. Rebranching may occur, but the multibranched plant will take on the appearance of a rosette. In cauliflower, heads fail to mature properly and remain small. Reddish-brown areas become evident. Terminal buds take on a light green color.....root crops are affected by brown heart, dark spots, or by splintering and cracking at the middle in....spuds [potatoes], sweet potatoes, radishes, carrots. Boron is required for translocation of sugar, and this means boron deficiency can be spotted as a sugar deficiency. Important as it is, a 100 bushel crop of corn requires only 4 ounces of boron.......a ton of alfalfa requires only a single ounce...boron regulates flowering and fruiting, cell division, salt absorption, hormone movement and pollen germination, carbohydrate metabolism, water use, and nitrogen assimilation. In most soils boron is [found] as highly insoluble tourmaline, the supply being somewhere between 20 and 200 pounds per acre. It takes life in the soil to draw on this bank account, and the Creator has supplied this life in the form of microorganism species which simply have to have boron to live. By using the nutrient themselves and then contributing their bodies to the soil's fertility load, microorganisms change boron into an organic form. When dry weather hits, microorganisms in soil without tilth and structure go dormant. This means the boron supply is cut off. Generally speaking there is more boron in the subsoil...and roots...dig deeper...for both moisture and for this very essential nutrient. Too much boron will...restrict growth, cause plants to exhibit that sickly pale green color sometimes mistaken for nitrogen deficiency, preside over root deterioration and poor yield. In short, either a shortage or marked imbalance of boron will set up a plant for insect and fungal attack." Important stuff, boron. It also has several more esoteric uses and connections, such as remediation of radiation poisoning. According to another Charles Walters book, Minerals for the Genetic Code (based on the work of Dr. Richard Olree), boron controls all the +3 charges in the human body, and it is easily displaced by aluminum, losing three boron molecules to every one aluminum molecule. Furthermore "Boron has the ability to absorb radiation and release it without changing the neutron. The heart is the most active part of the body for which reason boron defends the heart. The story has been told that Soviet truck drivers were offered bonuses to deliver boron to the Chernobyl site, this with the knowledge that their trip would be fatal, but families would be paid. None realized that, fortified with boron [themselves], they could have made their decision with impunity. Boron stopped the "China Syndrome" from occurring in Russia." [ed. note: as is often the case, Walters is being a bit obscure here. He appears to be stating that large quantities of boron were dumped on the nuclear pile at Chernobyl to stop the out-of-control nuclear reaction, and that if the truck drivers had swallowed some of that boron they would have been protected from radiation exposure.] Continuing the quote on boron from Minerals for the Genetic Code : "Boron is known as

30 the calcium helper and for the metabolism of calcium, magnesium and phosphorus. Boron improves retention of both calcium and magnesium and elevates circulation of serum concentrations of testosterone. Boron works in the body toward brain function, activates vitamin D, promotes electrical brain activity, enhances memory, and promotes alertness. Signs of possible deficiency include ADD/ADHD, osteoporosis, arthritis, fatigue, decreased motor function, decreased short-term memory, decreased brain function, and increased loss of calcium and magnesium in the urine." As if all that wasn't enough, boron in the form of boric acid is our safest and most effective ant control, and is used in many areas to treat wood in ground contact from ant and termite damage, as well as being used to fire-proof cellulose insulation and as a flux for soldering and brazing metal. 20 Mule Team Borax, available in the laundry soap section of most grocery stores, is a pure and natural mined product containing about 10% boron. It is quite suitable for garden use in small quantities. 7 ounces of 20 Mule Team Borax per 1000 square feet equals approximately 1 part per million of boron. Take it easy. As noted above, a boron deficiency can be induced simply by dry soil. Don't add boron without a soil test that indicates a need for it. 1-2 ppm per year is maximum. SoilMinerals.com carries the Solubor brand of agricultural boron, which is standardized to 20% Boron. It is water soluble and is easily used for soil applications, fertilizer mixes, or foliar feeding.

References Cited and/or Used for the above (In No Particular Order):
Eco-Farm by Charles Walters and C. J. Fenzau Acres USA 1996 Soil Chemistry 2nd Edition by Bohn, McNeal, O'Connor Wiley-Interscience 1985 Science in Agriculture by Arden Andersen Acres USA 2000 Mainline Farming for Century 21 by Skow and Walters Acres USA 1995 Staying Healthy with Nutrition by Elson Haas Celestial Arts 1992 Nutrition and Physical Degeneration 1939/2004 by Weston A. Price Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation

Biological Farmer, the by Gary F. Zimmer Acres USA 2000 Soil Fertility by Foth and Ellis John Wiley and Sons 1988 Nutrition Rules by Graeme Sait Soil Therapy Pty Ltd 2003 Chemistry Made Simple by Hess (rev. by Thomas) Doubleday 1984 Minerals for the Genetic Code by Charles Walters with Dr. Richard Olree Acres USA 2006 Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon with Mary Enig New Trends 2001 Random House Dictionary of the English Language 2nd Edition Unabridged Hauck ed. Random House 1987 Flexner and

Table of Content

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Minerals and Manure

Compost, Manure, Humus, Organic Matter and their relation to Soil Minerals and Trace Elements
I had an interesting conversation with an organic grower a while back. This was a lady who had operated a successful organic goat dairy and CSA* for years. I was doing my usual "missionary" work, proselytizing about minerals, and she seemed interested. When I mentioned how much simpler it was to bring in a few ounces or a few pounds of the minerals that were actually needed than to pile on tons of compost and manure, she became more interested. She admitted, rather sheepishly, that her gardening operation was "addicted to chicken manure." She told me that no matter how much home-made compost or cover crops they used, they just couldn't get the growth response and production they wanted without bringing in chicken manure from one of the commercial chicken farms in the area. Not long before this conversation, I had noticed a "free manure" sign in front of a veterinary hospital that I drove past regularly. This was a large-animal facility specializing in horses, and they had a stable behind the clinic, sort of an "in-patient" wing. I thought about the drugs that were undoubtedly used in treating the equine patients, and the various cleaners and sterilants that would need to be used in a stable for sick horses, and I wondered how many "organic" gardeners were picking up this free manure and using it on their vegetables. Also around this same time, I was helping out at very large garden that was growing food for the community food bank and I offered to do a soil test and recommendations for them. The results from that soil test were a real eye-opener: One area of about 5,000 square feet had the highest levels of Copper, Zinc, and Boron that I had ever seen. I asked the garden manager just what had been used for fertilizer, and he told me a story about having had enough chicken manure delivered to cover the whole garden, but some volunteers had showed up when he wasn't there and spread the whole load on this one small area. He said that he had tried to shovel it back into wheelbarrows and spread it around better, but this one area had gotten way more than intended. Interestingly, although the Phosphorus and Potassium levels were high, they weren't exceptional. It was the Cu, Zn, and B that were through the roof. The fertilizer breakdowns of manure that I've looked at generally only give levels of Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium, sometimes Sodium. None of them tell me anything about any drugs, hormones, or disinfectants the farmer may be using, or what may have been added to the animal feed. From my reading in the ecological literature, though, I have discovered that one of the biggest dangers in water pollution is the high level of dissolved pharmaceutical drugs found in the supposedly "treated" water flowing out of sewage treatment plants. The sewage treatment plants are dealing with human waste, of course, but we all know that many if not most large livestock operations give their animals drugs to keep them "healthy" or at least alive in their crowded and unnatural living conditions. Many dairies use the rGBH growth hormone for cattle, and most feedlots for fattening cattle use large amounts of antibiotics.** Cottonseed meal is frequently fed to cattle as a cheap protein source, and cotton farmers are allowed to use all sorts of pesticides that are banned from use on food crops, supposedly because cotton is not a food crop. It's also worth mentioning that most of the cotton, corn, and soy grown in the US these days is

32 genetically modified, GMO, and most of that genetic modification is for herbicide resistance, so most of the feedstock has been sprayed with herbicides a number of times. None of the manure from these operations is treated with the care given to human waste; usually it is just piled up for a while until they can find someone to haul it away. It could and probably does have anything in it. And all of it, mind you, is accepted and used for "organic" gardening and farming. That's the bad news. There is some good news mixed in, sort of. Going back to the chicken manure with the high levels of Copper, Zinc, and Boron, where did those come from? It turns out that commercial livestock growers and feed manufacturers are well aware of the value of and need for minerals in the diet. They have a lot invested in those animals and they want rapid and sustained growth. I doubt that one could find a cow pasture in the country that doesn't have a mineral block sitting out, and those aren't just 'salt blocks", they have the whole spectrum of trace minerals in them and are specially formulated to supply the minerals usually lacking in various areas of the country. The chicken farmers know about this too, and the pig farmers. They know, or their feed manufacturers know, that Copper and Zinc added to the feed ration increases growth, and that Boron is essential for the utilization of Calcium. Those minerals are in the feed or provided to the animals "free choice" as an economic necessity. They must be added to the feed ration because the soil on which the grains and legumes and hay were grown didn't contain those minerals in the proper amounts or balance. (Meanwhile, us humans are wandering around the middle aisles of the grocery store filling our shopping carts up with food that doesn't have nearly the mineral content of what the factory farm animals are fed, and we are wondering why we are always craving something. One could say that the grocery business doesn't make money on satisfying hunger.) Whatever the motivations, most manure from commercial livestock operations contains trace minerals, and it may be those minerals that caused the lady who I wrote about at the beginning of this article to have a garden that was "addicted" to chicken manure. Zinc, Copper, and Boron are growth stimulants for plants, too. Unfortunately, that manure may also be loaded with drugs, antibiotics, hormones, and other chemicals such as dewormers, disinfectants, pesticides, herbicides, and GMOs. And we just don't know. Even if the minerals in the manure are minerals we want and need in our gardens, we generally have no way of knowing how much of which mineral is in the manure. Note, please, that I have no problem with using good quality well-composted manure for gardening. If you raise livestock on healthy organic feed, or have access to manure from someone who does, count yourself very fortunate. But don't count on it to supply the correct balance of minerals that your particular soil needs, until or unless the feed for those animals is grown on mineral balanced soil. *CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, in which the grower sells "shares" of the crop to local people. CSA members get a share of whatever crops are in season, usually on a weekly basis, throughout the growing season. **The feedlots, and confinement dairies, must give the cattle antibiotics because they are fattening them on grain, seeds, and soy, which are unnatural foods for cattle. Cattle are naturally grazers, eating grass and herbs and occasionally leaves from shrubs and trees. They have a huge population of microbes (mainly protozoans) in their stomachs to break down the cellulose in these plants and turn them into food. These microbes are not happy with grains, so the feedlot operators give antibiotics to kill off the normal microbes, and

33 also give the cattle bicarbonate of soda to deal with the resulting acid indigestion. Large feedlots buy baking soda by the carload and antibiotics by the ton. Another unfortunate aspect of this unnatural feeding is that it changes the fatty acid profile of the milk and meat so that the fats cause atherosclerosis and heart disease and other problems in people who consume them and in the cattle. Grass fed beef and dairy do not cause health problems, they confer health on those who consume them. Much more on grass fed beef and dairy at www.westonaprice.org Table of Content

Compost and Minerals

or Why Does My Garden Need a Soil Test? By Agricola March 23, 2008 We all know that a fertile soil grows better crops, just as we all know that nutritious food grows a healthier body, and the same minerals that make the soil fertile are the minerals that make food more nutritious. The lack of essential minerals in the soil will have the same sort of detrimental effect on crops that the lack of minerals in our diet has on our health. The analogy goes even further: It is largely the presence of healthy soil microorganisms that make the minerals available to the plant, and it is largely the same sort of microorganisms in our digestive systems that make the minerals in our food available to our bodies. Neither the plants nor our bodies can do much with simple ground-up rocks; the minerals first need to be changed into a form that can be absorbed. That is what a healthy, biologically active soil does for the plants, and what a healthy population of probiotic organisms does in one's digestive system. Now we begin to get into something interesting and controversial: The organic and biologique (Euro-speak for organic) gardening movements are all about creating that healthy population of soil organisms by increasing the organic matter content of the soil. Great effort is put into making biologically active compost and applying it to the garden and croplands, but little or no effort is put into supplying the microorganisms in that compost with minerals. Organic matter is vitally important to a fertile soil, but it is only one-third of the whole equation, or, one could say, one leg of a three legged stool that supports the whole food chain for life on Earth. Those three legs are biology (the living and formerly living parts of the soil), minerals, and energy (as in energy flow like a current of water or electricity). In most cases, if one gets the minerals right, the biology and energy flow will fall into line automatically; one cannot prevent life from growing in an environment that has all of the essential minerals it needs; the soil and plant life will find those spots and thrive there. This essay will address the biology and mineral aspects; we'll save the energy leg of the stool for another time. As noted, life will find those places that have all of the mineral nutrients needed for growth and reproduction, but on the other hand, one can have a highly organic soil and still not have healthy crops if the minerals are missing or out of balance. Any grower who has tried growing plants in pure, sterile organic matter, such as unfertilized potting mix, will know that doesn't work too well. The plants need more than just water, air, light, and an organic medium to send their roots through: They need mineral nutrients too. Standard chemical fertilizers supply three of those nutrients: Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium, the famili-ar NPK listed on the fertilizer package as, for instance 5-10-10. In addition, air sup-

34 plies the nutrients Oxygen and Carbon (from Carbon dioxide) while water (H 2 O) supplies Hydrogen and Oxygen. With these six nutrient elements, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen, just about any plant can be grown, but it won't necessarily be a healthy plant and it surely won't make very nutritious food. We noted above that soil microorganisms are necessary to make soil minerals available to plants, so how do the plants manage to grow when fed only a chemical mixture of N, P, K, and water? Commercial chemical fertilizers are made with highly soluble salts of NPK that the plants are able to absorb through their roots and use much as a person unable to eat can get nutrients from an intravenous IV drip. Plants are simpler in their nutrient requirements than higher animals, and able to use elements in simpler forms, so it is easier to grow large and healthy-looking plants on an IV drip than it is to keep humans healthy on one. In nature these simple forms of soluble salts are seldom plentiful in the soil. Moving to the next step in organic-matter based fertility, what happens when a plant is grown in pure, rich compost, without any mineral soil? Often it will do well, or at least appear to do well, growing large and quickly, but it also may be susceptible to fungal diseases and blights, and the food grown will often lack flavor. Compost, of course, does contain some minerals, the amount and range of minerals depending on the source of the compost. Leaf compost will contain the minerals that the leaves contained, compost made from garden waste will have the minerals that the garden crops absorbed while growing, compost made from animal manure will contain the minerals that were in the feed the animals ate, perhaps including grain imported from other areas with different soil minerals, and often including mineral supplements that the animals were fed. Chicken manure is known as the manure with the most fertilizing power, and that is largely due to the very high grain content that the chickens are fed, as well as the insects that the chickens eat whenever available. However, chicken manure is also usually a good source of Calcium, Boron, Copper, and Zinc; not because the grains in the chicken feed are high in those elements but because the chicken feed is fortified with those elements. Similarly, cattle and horses are generally given a "salt block" both in the pasture and in the barn or paddock and many times are given a powdered mineral mix "free choice" at their feeding stations. Hog feed is also fortified with minerals. Interestingly, the salt blocks given to horses and cattle are different in different areas of the USA, so that whatever minerals are usually missing in the local pastures can be supplied. The veterinarians, veterinary researchers, and farmers are all well aware that the animals need far more minerals than are normally found in their hay or grain rations alone. Think of how strange this is: Even the smallest farmers make sure that their cows and horses have a salt block, even the person with only a small flock of laying hens in the yard supplements the birds' diet with at least oyster shell grit to make the eggshells strong, yet they give little or no thought to mineralizing the pastures where their animals graze, the hay and grain fields where the feed is grown, or their gardens where they raise the food to feed their families or to sell. Nor do they give much thought to how many of these essential minerals they or their families are getting. The claim is often made that "organically grown food has more minerals", but seldom is it backed up with factual evidence, so let's take a look at that claim. Obviously if the minerals are not in the soil, they cannot be in the crops grown. What quantity of minerals are available from compost, for instance? Completely dry plant matter consists mostly of compounds made from the air elements Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen. The Nitrogen originally comes from the air, but is made available to the plants by soil microorganisms, or today by synthesized Nitrogen fertilizers. If this dry plant matter is burned, perhaps 95% of it will return to the air as some

35 combination of these four elements. The remaining 4 or 5% is unburnable ash, and that is where the soil minerals reside. The minerals in that ash will naturally vary depending on the species of plant and the soil in which it is grown. The ash from wheat straw will be high in Silica, an essential nutrient but not one in short supply in our croplands. Silica is the most abundant of all Earth elements. The ash from the wheat kernels themselves will be much richer in essential minerals, as the plants concentrate them there to feed the seeds for the next generation. If one starts with 100 lbs of fresh compost, which will likely be around 75% moisture, and then dries it to leave 25 lbs of dry organic matter, and then burns that to ash, one will end up with about 1 1/4 lbs of mineral ash total, perhaps a double handful. One can see that there is really not a whole lot of minerals in that 100 lbs of compost, and we haven't looked yet at just which minerals are to be found in that ash. Of course, there are many beneficial plant nutrients to be found in the 98 3/4 lbs of compost that we are not measuring as ash, such as humus and fulvic and humic acids, ammonia and nitrate Nitrogen, natural growth stimulants, beneficial fungi and bacteria, perhaps earthworms and arthropods, but we are talking here about the actual mineral content of the compost; there are thousands of books and articles written about that organic portion but very, very few about soil minerals. Let's look at another factor in using compost or organic matter as a mineral source: How much would we need to use to add significant amounts of needed minerals to the soil? This gets a little difficult to quantify, but going back to research done by Davidson and LeClerc in the 1930s, we find that the amount of Potassium found in ash from commercial vegetables was around 7%, the amount of Calcium averaged about 2% (they also measured 95%+ moisture content and 20% ash from dry matter, which leaves only 1% total ash, but let's be generous and stick with that 1 1/4 lbs we came up with above). 1 1/4 lbs= 566 grams 566 grams x 2%= 11.3 grams Calcium per 100 lbs compost 566 grams x 7%= 39.6 grams Potassium per 100 lbs compost Even a sandy loam requires at least 2,000 lbs of Calcium per acre for best growth. What if we measured the minerals and found that we needed to add 1,000 lbs of Calcium? How much compost would that take, at 11 grams per 100 lbs? I'll spare you the arithmetic: It would take about 4,000,000 lbs: Four million pounds of that 75% moisture content compost per acre to add 1,000 lbs of Calcium. Wait, it gets worse: While we were adding that 1,000 lbs of Calcium we were also adding almost 4,000 lbs of Potassium, far too much. Well balanced soils need about 1/7th as much Potassium as Calcium, so this soil would call for about 280 lbs of Potassium per acre; we would be adding over 3,700 lbs too much, assuming that we were crazy enough to try adding four million pounds of compost anyway. Putting that in terms a backyard gardener could relate to, one would need 90,000 lbs of compost per 1,000 square feet of garden just to bring the Calcium level up to par. It's easy to see from the example above that although compost might be a reasonable source for Potassium, if we knew the Potassium needs of that soil in the first place, it isn't going to work for most of the other minerals. Just to add 140 lbs per acre of Potassium would require 80 tons of this particular compost per acre. Note that we haven't even considered the other fifteen or so other essential plant minerals,

36 nor the other thirty or so essential minerals needed by humans and animals. As essential and marvelous as compost and organic matter are, we are not going to be able to depend on them to provide a balanced supply of minerals to the soil. The only way to know what the mineral content of the soil is, is to measure it. That's what a soil test does. Further, the only practical way to add the minerals that are needed, and to bring them into balance, is to add them in the mineral form, not as some minuscule portion of the organic matter. Agricultural "sweet" lime, which is simply ground up limestone, is about 40% pure Calcium. To add 1,000 lbs of Calcium using sweet lime would require 2,500 lbs of sweet lime per acre. That is do-able. That is 56 lbs of sweet lime for a 20' x 50' garden. To add 140 lbs of Potassium one would only need to use 280 lbs of naturally mined sulfate of potash per acre, or 6 lbs per 1000 square feet. Your garden also probably needs a few ounces of Copper, Zinc, and Boron. It may or may not need Phosphorus or Magnesium or Sulfur. How are you going to know? By getting an inexpensive laboratory soil test, and either learning how to interpret it yourself (not hard to do) or paying someone who does know how a few dollars to interpret it and make recommendations for your particular soil. Then, for the first time, you can quit guessing and know exactly what your soil needs to grow the most flavorful, healthy, mineral and nutrient rich crops you have ever had. Table of Content

37

Questions & Answers ( faq@soilminerals.com )

Q: Hi Michael, I feel totally overwhelmed with information at this point, but I'm certainly sold on the minerals approach to soil health and therefore to plant, animal and human health as well. I've got a LOT of studying to do to reach a point where I can make reasonably informed decisions as to how to handle my soil. At this point I am simply amazed at the information on your site. Who are you? And who is Agricola? You have done an amazing job of taking hold, seemingly, of the best available knowledge on soils. One question keeps occurring to me though, at this early and still quite uninformed stage of my study, and I expect the answer is probably readily available in the information on your site. I just haven't reached that point. I read that much of the available minerals in soil are locked, unavailable to plants or even to microbes I guess. I get the idea that the reason they are unavailable is deficiencies in other minerals that microbes need in order to unlock the frozen minerals. And I understand further that in general soil tests can only 'see' those minerals that are not locked. My question is, if soil tests cannot see the minerals that are locked, why do we approach correction by adding the minerals that the soil test says are deficient? They might not be deficient, only locked. Why don't we focus on adding the minerals that microbes need in order to unlock the locked minerals? Why don't we do that for two or three years before we put much stock in what the soil test tells us is deficient? Might we not be wasting effort and minerals trying to address tested deficiencies when we could instead promote microbe activity that might unlock the very minerals the soil tests show as deficient? I'm sure this is an uniformed and probably off-track question. But the way I'm looking at it, an approach to my soil situation might be to simply add either a wide spectrum glacial rock dust (if I can find such), or soluble sea minerals, or both, for two or three years, in an effort to build the microbial life in the soil, before I try to address specific deficiencies. This is based on the assumptions that what the soil most needs is microbe activity to unlock its hidden fertility, and that the fullest possible spectrum of minerals is what will best promote microbe activity. Unfortunately, I'm operating with a low budget, so I must seek the lowest budget approach that will achieve the most for the investment. I'm sure I will not be able to afford the optimum treatment, and will have to be satisfied for now with slower gains in soil health at lower cost. Any thoughts you have on these things are welcome. Meantime I'll keep studying. All the Best, A: Great questions again. Thanks for the compliment on the information at the website. Agricola prefers to remain anonymous. I found Organic Gardening magazine in the early 1970s when I was in college, and stayed up on it from then on. In the early 1980s I found out about Territorial Seed Co, and started mixing my own organic fertilizer from the recipe Steve Solomon gave in his seed catalog, trying different mixtures, and I've always experimented with various organic-type soil

38 amendments. I heard about glacial rock dust in 1990 and used fifty pounds or so of it on my 1000 sq ft garden in the Puget Sound region of Washington, which was a new garden site at that time. I didn't notice any particular results, so I didn't follow up on it. In 1999 a friend and fellow gardener gave me a newsletter written by the owner of a garden center in Olympia, WA, not far from where I lived then. The writer, Gary Kline, had been an organic gardener as long as I had, and like me had kept up on the literature. In this case he had gone way beyond where I had, and found out about the work of William Albrecht. His newsletter filled in a lot of missing links for me, in particular the link between nutrition, health, and the soil that food was grown in. It was a long-lasting Eureka! moment. I hooked up with Gary Kline, became friends, and we started sharing books and ideas and working on projects together. After seven years of reading, studying, and experimenting I saw a great need to get this information out to a wider audience. The internet appeared to be essentially devoid of real info on the subject, particularly in a form that the average gardener or farmer could use, so in July 2007 soilminerals.com was launched. Table of Content On to your questions: You wrote: " I read that much of the available minerals in soil are locked, unavailable to plants or even to microbes I guess. I get the idea that the reason they are unavailable is deficiencies in other minerals that microbes need in order to unlock the frozen minerals. And I understand further that in general soil tests can only 'see' those minerals that are not locked. My question is, if soil tests cannot see the minerals that are locked, why do we approach correction by adding the minerals that the soil test says are deficient? They might not be deficient, only locked. Why don't we focus on adding the minerals that microbes need in order to unlock the locked minerals? Why don't we do that for two or three years before we put much stock in what the soil test tells us is deficient? " There are some good points in here, particularly about minerals being in the soil but unavailable unless made available through microbial action. Dr. Arden Andersen, a physician and PhD Agronomist who I respect greatly, argued in his book Science in Agriculture that several tons per acre of Calcium he had added to a Wisconsin farm did not show up on the standard soil test. However, it has not been my experience that minerals in the soil do not show up on soil tests. The various acids and extraction methods that a good lab uses will usually pull out most of what the microbes would find available. They won't show what's locked up inside a grain of sand or a small pebble, but it would take a very active soil life quite a while to get to that anyway. Much more common is a soil test that shows good or great reserves of some minerals but the plants are still starving for those very minerals. Around 1987 was the first time I saw a soil test and recommendations from a county agent that indicated phosphate reserves above 2000 lbs/acre, yet called for the addition of 200 lbs/acre of phosphate fertilizer. At the time I didn't know what to make of that; now I do. The three reasons for minerals being in the soil but unavailable are as follows: 1. Mineral imbalance or deficiency, e.g. there's Calcium there, but it's out of balance with Magnesium, or there's plenty of Calcium and it's balanced with Magnesium but there's a Boron deficit so the soil life and plants can't utilize the Calcium. Or there's plenty of Zinc but no Copper, or there's too much phosphate and both Copper and Zinc are tied up by that. The above are all common problems.

39 2. The soil life is either non-existent or malnourished or the wrong kind. 3. The soil energy is out of balance; there's either too high an energy level or too low. In the case of worn-out soils, such as abused farmland or the continent of Australia, it's usu-ally low energy. In the case of overfertilized soils, especially those with too high a level of Nitrogen from either chemical or natural sources, or those where Potassium chloride (KCl) is being used, the energy is just too high and the plants either produce lush vegetation and overproduce low quality crops, or they burn themselves up trying. It follows that the remedy for these problems is to balance the minerals and provide those that are missing, encourage the existing beneficial soil life to grow and do its job, and ad-dress any soil energy problem by cutting back on strong fertilizers if the energy is too high, or increasing energy flow by adding amendments that will kick up the energy level without taking it over the top. In the Interview With Agricola he likens the soil energy to a battery, and notes that a dead battery and a fully charged one have the same chemicals in them in the same amounts. The point is that energy flow and movement is what life is all about, and life and our physical creation are largely electrical processes. Chemical reactions are electrical processes: sugars stack up behind Calcium ions and are transported into living cells, plant or animal, due to an electrical potential difference between the sap or blood and the cell interior. The negatively charged sugars are attracted to the Calcium ion because it is positively charged. In a living soil with a full complement of minerals in balance, various living things metabolize the nutrient elements, go through their lifespan and reproduce, then die and decompose, re-releasing the nutrients for another life form to use; all energy in motion. In a soil that has too much water, from rainfall or irrigation, the nutrients can be lost to leaching. In a soil with too little moisture, the life never gets started strongly enough to metabolize many nutrients in the first place. We of course want a happy medium, but we are not always able to control the amount of moisture. We can irrigate dry land if we have the water available, but there's nothing we can do about excessive rainfall. We can increase the exchange capacity of the soil to give it a better ability to hold onto the minerals that are there, usually by increasing the soil's content of humus and living organisms. We can also increase the soil's ability to retain water by increasing organic matter or Magnesium, or decrease it and improve drainage by adding sand or Calcium. Neither increasing the energy level in the soil, increasing the soil life, optimizing the soil moisture, nor increasing the exchange capacity will do anything to replace or restore missing minerals. Your suggestion of letting the soil micro- (and macro-) organisms work to release tied-up nutrients has great merit and is the approach we use daily. This is why we recommend and use beneficial cultures of both fungi and bacteria. However, what you appear to be suggesting is to add large amounts of rock dust in order to accomplish this, assuming that the reason the soil organisms aren't making minerals available is because they are lacking certain micronutrients that the rock dust contains. My question would be, if one doesn't know the mineral composition of their soil, or of the rock dust they are applying, or the soil life that is already there, why would one think rock dust alone would solve the problem? There is a soil test called the Reams/Lamotte test that is used by some growers and agronomists. This uses a very weak extraction solution, more like what plants have available themselves, and is meant to give an indication of what soil minerals are readily available to

40 the plants. I think it would be an excellent experiment to take a soil that was low in soil life activity and had low readings on the Reams/Lamotte test, inoculate the soil with beneficial organisms, then re-test to see what minerals they had released. Adding a quantity of rock dust to the soil with or without the added soil life would also give interesting results. None of these approaches would tell you anything if you didn't know what you started with. In your earlier letter you mentioned that there were limestone quarries in your area, so it might be assumed that your soil has a good supply of Calcium and possibly Magnesium. On the other hand, I have read that much of southern Indiana is severely Magnesium deficient. Magnesium deficiency makes Iron unavailable. Depending on just where you are in the state, you may have high Calcium with low Magnesium, high Magnesium with low Calcium, or a deficiency of both. Due to the rather high rainfall, much of Indiana is severely deficient in Sulfur, as are most soils everywhere. Agricultural Sulfur (90% S) is cheap and readily available, as is gypsum, Calcium sulfate. Agricultural soils need at least 100 ppm Sulfur, and most soils require more than a ton of Calcium per acre. You will not find significant quantities of them in glacial rock dust, and if they are what your soil needs glacial rock dust is not going to solve many problems. One cannot grow high-quality crops unless the soil's cation exchange capacity is saturated to at least 60% with Calcium, period. What is your soil's CEC? If one starts adding quantities of an amendment of unknown composition to a soil of unknown composition one is purely hoping to get lucky, and even if one does get lucky, one won't know why. Apologies if I'm being a bit blunt here, but soilminerals.com is based on cutting-edge science, not on luck. There are already dozens of websites telling one to add this or that and expect miracles; that's not science and in our experience simply isn't true across a broad spectrum of soils. One is unlikely to hurt anything by adding, say, 400-800 lbs per acre of glacial rock dust. It will almost certainly help most soils; even if the rock dust doesn't contain the minerals your soil needs, the sharp edges of freshly ground rock will boost conductivity and soil energy. It's my considered opinion that those sharp edges are more responsible for the results that people have reported from using glacial rock dust than any minerals it may contain. The sharp edges are also easier for the various soil acids and enzymes to attack. In the ten thousand years since the glaciers retreated from Indiana, the sharp edges they left behind have mostly eroded away. In places that haven't known glaciers for a few million years, especially those with high rainfall, the sharp edges are long gone as well. If one is looking for trace mineral sources one is better off using a source whose trace mineral content has been analyzed. Sea salt is one example of that, or a rock powder whose mineral analysis is known, such as Jersey Greensand, Gaia Green rock dust, Azomite etc. Perhaps there is a source close to you that has had their rock analyzed. It's worth noting here that a standard "complete" soil test only measures the amounts of 11 or 12 minerals which are known to be essential. Many other minerals are known to be essential for optimum health, but no soil lab measures all of them. Some labs offer additional tests for minerals such as Molybdenum, Cobalt, or Selenium, but each additional mineral they test for usually costs as much as or more than the basic test costs. All we generally require at soilminerals.com is the basic "complete" soil test for these twelve along with CEC, pH, and organic matter content. If the test shows that the minor nutrients such as Copper, Zinc, or Boron are deficient, it's safe to assume that other minor and trace elements are lacking too and we will recommend a good dose of a known trace mineral source such as sea solids, kelp, or one of the rock powders mentioned above. Another point you raised was: " I must seek the lowest budget approach that will achieve

41 the most for the investment. I'm sure I will not be able to afford the optimum treatment, and will have to be satisfied for now with slower gains in soil health at lower cost ." I understand this well. In general, agriculture is not a get-rich-quick proposition, and I encounter few people willing to throw unlimited money into improving their soil, even if it's only a few hundred square feet of kitchen garden. The approach I recommend is this: 1. Find out what your soil needs, and/or whatever it already has too much of. This means get the soil tested . I can't overemphasize the importance of knowing where you are start-ing from. Even if you don't know enough about the science yet to make fully informed de-cisions, you will never regret having that baseline information. 2. Find the closest source and the best price for the amendments in the quantities you need or can afford. 3. Depending on the budget and what is needed, decide whether you can approach the ideal on all of your acreage, or whether you are better off fully mineralizing a smaller area and doing the rest as the budget allows. Table of Content