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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] more on soil organisms

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Soilsecrets@aol.com
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] more on soil organisms
  • Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2006 13:12:13 EDT

In a message dated 4/7/2006 9:36:23 A.M. Mountain Standard Time, tradingpost@riseup.net writes:
 

 
 It's interesting the metamorphosis of thinking when it comes to Soil Biology being an important link to the health of plants and its application in agriculture.  For decades we innovators of this information have battled with our government entities such as the USDA, the BLM and the NRCS on the significance of this stuff.  When I wrote and published the paper, 'Soil Ecology and the Soil Food Web' in 1974 I was ridiculed and called a Doctor of Snake Oil by just about everyone.   In those days, the presence of biology in the soil such as fungi and bacteria was treated as a problem that needed to be solved.  The only accepted and recognized science of that time was that of chemistry.  Balance the pH up or down and add N-P-K to get maximum growth.  The only biology that was given credit was that of nitrogen fixing bacteria with legume crops such as alfalfa.  
 
What a change in attitude today, but now we have the government agencies taking all the credit for this wonderful stuff.  With the private sector getting screwed once again in more ways then one.  For example, there are many hundreds if not thousands of papers of research published in peer review science journals showing that the mutualistic and symbiotic microbes of the soil can help reduce the impact of root disease and parasitic nematodes on crops.  Yet the growers of these organisms cannot make the claim of those benefits on labels without getting the microbes registered as a Pesticide.  This requires redundant and expensive research over and over again on the same genus and species of the subject biology by the private sector proprietor of the product in order to get a state by state approval for calling the product a Pesticide.  You cannot just say, we are growing and offering Glomus intraradices - a endomycorrhizal fungi that is noted for its ability to reduce or even eliminate root disease such as Phytophthora nicotianae var.parasitica in Tomato plants. You must pay and pay and pay again for research in order to get label approval and registration.  Then you must pay a tax, label registration once per year per state and tonnage fees in each state. 
 
To top it off, many of the Ag Schools today are doing gene modification research on these poor mycorrhizae in order to have a patentable product.  I wonder about that!
 
Michael M. Melendrez



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