PHOSPHORUS AS A WINDOW INTO CORRUPTION, PILLAGE AND LAND DEGRADATION
All plants need phosphorus. So the delivery of phosphorus is big business. “Researchers” want to make it an even bigger business. But what if our soil already has all the phosphorus it needs?
Agribusiness corporations make the profits, while most farmers struggle to pay the mortgage and the high costs of “inputs” such as seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and water.
This article is an invitation to farmers and gardeners to stop buying nutrients that already reside in your soil.
All plants need phosphorus. So the delivery of phosphorus is big business. “Researchers” want to make it an even bigger business, via genetic engineering, but there is a MUCH better way that involves the resurgence of a common sense and nature-based approach to soil.
HOW WE CURRENTLY GET OUR PHOSPHORUS
Since the 1950s, and before, farmers and gardeners have been taught to add phosphorus to the soil, in mineral form. Phosphorus in mineral form originates from mines in Florida, North Carolina, Morocco and China, for example. But worldwide supplies are dwindling.
This article from Phys dot org proposes genetic engineering as a solution.
https://phys.org/news/2023-03-phosphorus-soil-deplete.html
According to the article, scientists from Michigan State University and the Carnegie Institution for Science are seeking patents on a genetically engineered solution to phosphorus deficiency. The patents involve “Arabidopsis root-specific kinase 1 that regulates the target of rapamycin, or TOR, complex, which is the key developmental regulator in plants, fungi and animals.”
Ok. But nature can solve phosphorus deficiency without genetic engineering or expensive inputs. Gabe Brown is a regenerative farmer in North Dakota and author of “Dirt to Soil: One Family’s Journey Into Regenerative Agriculture,” which has been a top selling agricultural book since its release in 2018. “Dirt to Soil” features the Five Principles of Soil Health. Gabe encourages farmers to nurture natural soil fertility and thereby save money on expensive inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides and tillage.
YOUR SOIL IS DEFICIENT IN BIOLOGY, NOT PHOSPHORUS
I distinctly remember Gabe Brown saying that soil always has enough phosphorus. Your soil has millions of years of phosphorus left in it, without adding any. You just need the soil biology that can deliver the phosphorus to the plant. I can’t remember exactly where he said this, but it’s consistent with the message of renowned soil scientist Dr. Elaine Ingham: that all soils have all the nutrients your plants need, if you will nurture the soil biology, the soil food web, the living underground ecosystem.
This might be a bit overstated. It might not be 100% true that your soil contains ALL of the nutrients your plants will ever need. But it’s clear that living soil can deliver nutrients that dead soil cannot. And living soil can utilize nutrients more efficiently, partly because the living soil delivers nutrients in biological, plant-available form.
BIOLOGICALLY-BASED NUTRIENTS ARE MORE “PLANT AVAILABLE”
Nitrogen (for example) can come from a bag or from the proteins and enzymes contained within soil-based bacteria, protozoa, fungi and nematodes (etc.) along with their excretions and carcasses.
Plants can utilize nitrogen and other nutrients derived from biological processes more efficiently than nutrients derived from chemical applications. This makes plants more resilient and indeed more nutritious.
HOW TO GROW BADASS PLANTS
Plants allowed to thrive amid rich soil biology tend to become impervious to disease because they advance through the four stages of plant health as illustrated in the “Plant Health Pyramid” a concept developed by Ohio farmer John Kempf of Advancing Eco Agriculture.
According to Kempf, plants that thrive in good soil tend to develop 1) complex carbohydrates, 2) complete proteins, 3) complex lipids and 4) plant secondary metabolites, which together form an arsenal of defenses that protect plants from opportunistic pests and pathogens.
The key is to nurture the soil biology.
HOW TO NURTURE SOIL BIOLOGY
Nurturing soil biology involves avoiding tillage, avoiding chemical fertilizers and avoiding pesticides, and at the same time armoring the soil with organic matter, keeping plant roots in the ground at all times and employing a diversity of plants, to support a diverse, thriving soil ecosystem. Also, allow the participation and engagement of “animal engineers” to enrich and aerate the soil.
These principles and practices make up a world that is foreign to the farms in which most of our food has been grown for the last seventy years. And we have the health problems and the land degradation to show for it. We also have toxic drinking water and plummeting wildlife numbers, phenomena largely attributable to criminally negligent mismanagement of soil, which goes hand in hand with the mismanagement of on-farm biological diversity.
FARMS AS STEWARDS OF OUR WATER
Biologically diverse farms tend to be the home of happy animals, nutritious plants and soil that is able to capture rainwater, avoid drought and prevent flooding, while allowing water to percolate gently and naturally through the ground and into streams and aquifers.
This is also a scenario that could prevent the massive annual loss of freshwater which (arguably) is the main cause of both drought and sea level rise.
Additionally, living soil acts like a sponge, soaking up rainwater and holding onto it for “just-in-time” delivery to the plants, while lowering irrigation costs and thereby widening farmers’ profit margins. And living soil also soaks up carbon from the atmosphere, holding onto it in the form of soil organic matter, an invaluable lattice of complex organic molecules in which soil biology lives, moves and has its being.
LEGITIMIZING CORRUPTION
The “scientists” developing patented genes are not incentivized to know or care about this living web of natural processes to which we owe much of our planet’s abundance, resilience and riotous diversity. Farmers like Gabe Brown and scientists like Dr. Elaine Ingham see this abundance, resilience and diversity as compatible with--and essential to--profitable, productive farming.
PhDs posing as objective, erudite scientists, sell their skills to a military-industrial-agricultural complex that has never been good for the average farmer or the average eater. It’s not the fault of the “scientists”, who are good people just trying to make a living and put the kids through Princeton.
CONCLUSION
For seventy years we have been sold a version of farming and land (mis)management that has enriched a few while billions of farmers and eaters needlessly struggle. The life of this planet groans and suffocates, under the weight of bad policy. The farming sector could serve as a haven for wildlife and a buffer against flood and drought, as well as a source of life-giving--even medicinal--food. We have millions of examples worldwide.
An ecological revolution awaits if we demand--at every level--fundamental change in our relationship to the soil.