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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] more on soil organisms

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: Terry Wereb <frosted-acres@sbcglobal.net>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] more on soil organisms
  • Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2006 14:38:33 -0700 (PDT)

okay-- I treated my yard, many years ago, with
something called "beneficial nematodes' (my mother
shuddered at the thought that a nematode could be
beneficial) in order to keep the flea population down.
Did this product go off the shelves because of all
this licensing paperwork?
Shoot, if something is there, naturally, and one can
prove benefits with it's presence, and a need to
"fertilize" without their presence, seems to me,
saying "beneficial whatever" would be justifiable.
There is a reason I dislike the politics one has to
play in this area. If I am reading an article on
something, and it is not trying to shove something
down my throat, by saying "X is the ONLY thing needed
to achieve..." then I am reasonably sure that X is a
part of Nature's grander scheme. And with the
patenting of genetics, ideas, etc-- to me, that just
indicates a desire to 'claim' that one thing that is
just a small part of a huge puzzle. these peole who
would remove that puzzle piece for their own profit
are not concerned about the overall health of nature.

Terry W

--- Soilsecrets@aol.com wrote:

>
> 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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>
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>





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