[Terrapreta] You Are What You Grow

[Sean K. Barry]

Hi Lou, Lewis,

The over-use of industrial fertilizer is lethal to soil microorganisms and leads to the degradation of agricultural soils.  The soils become degraded because they have less soil organic matter in them.  The soil, without a healthy soil micro-flora, loses the ability to hold onto vital plant nutrients;  C HOPKINS CaFé Mgr.  The soils lose the ability to hold water and the water soluble plant nutrients.  The soils are left having no nutrients (without continued fertilizer applications) and no soil microorganisms to deliver the nutrients to the plants.  This is what soil "fertility" is (or was)!

There are many other documented ill-effects from the use industrial fertilizer in soil, e.g., reduced Cation Exchange Capacity, undesirable changes in pH, stiffer "tilth", making in impossible to plow without larger equipment, the unceasing need for increases in continued "fertilizer" applications, and the nitrification of water tables, stream, rivers, and oceans.

Sometimes, more fertilizer washes or leaches away, than is ever used by the plants.  Farmers pay more to pollute, than they do to improve their crops.  Specifically, liquid anhydrous ammonia (the most inexpensive and commonly used nitrogen fertilizer in the USA) is very toxic in soils.  It has very rapidly degraded the native fertility of large swaths of soils in this country already.

The use of industrially made, fossil-fuel based fertilizers is a shameful gluttony that Industrial Agriculture has done for this country.
It may be one of the worst things that we have ever done to the land.

SKB
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: lou gold<mailto:lou.gold at gmail.com> 
  To: MMBTUPR at aol.com<mailto:MMBTUPR at aol.com> 
  Cc: Terrapreta at bioenergylists.org<mailto:Terrapreta at bioenergylists.org> 
  Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 10:25 AM
  Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] You Are What You Grow


  Lewis,

  I believe that the question is focused on modern industrial agriculture.
  Do you have doubts about its impact on soils? Do you know of any studies that show this form of farming as having either a neutral effect or improving soils? 

  lou


  On 9/9/07, MMBTUPR at aol.com<mailto:MMBTUPR at aol.com> <MMBTUPR at aol.com<mailto:MMBTUPR at aol.com>> wrote: 
                   to   Terrapreta List               from  Lewis L Smith

    On the issue of whether or not farming degrades the soil in the long run, I think we need more research, although I do recall enough of the "Dust Bowl" phenomenon of the 1930's to assure you all that sometimes it does, and does so badly, with some help from Mother Nature. 

    I spent many years working on and off with the sugar industry in the Caribbean. A relative was a cane planter in Louisiana in the 19th Century who was forced to sell out, leaving my grandmother to be raised as a "de facto orphan" by other relatives in the North. [ She was pretty upset and would never go back or talk about it with my mother. ] 

    So I do recall there are places where cane has been planted for several hundred years. In some the soil has been damaged. In others not. Moreover, the sugar industry  has much better and much older statistics than most other agro sectors. So it might be a good place to start. 

    Cordially. ### 


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