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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Feed the Soils That Feed Us
  • Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 20:06:55 -0700


Feed the Soils That Feed Us
by Anna Bond, 1997
http://www.championtrees.org/topsoil/feedsoil.htm
by *Anna Bond*, 1997
**
So long as one feeds on food from unhealthy soil,
the spirit will lack the stamina to free itself
from the prison of the body.
—Rudolf Steiner


Our planet's topsoils are tired, hungry and depleted. We've overworked
them, poisoned them with synthetic chemicals, and stripped them of their
green robe. In turn, we find ourselves tired, depleted and malnourished,
despite being overfed. Degenerative disease and crime are at an all time
high. Growing numbers of people and children depend on addicting
drugs--recreational and prescription--to survive life. Violence has
become routine in families, neighborhoods and continents.

How do we get to the roots of such pervasive disharmony? Over eighty
years ago, the eminent Nobel Prize winning scientist Dr. Alexis Carrel
cut to the heart of the matter: diseases are created chiefly when we
destroy the harmony reigning among mineral substances present in
infinitesimal amounts in air, water, food, and--most crucially--soil.

/I entrust myself to earth,
Earth entrusts herself to me./
--*Thich Nhat Hnah*

Today, scientists report that our topsoils contain less than sixteen of
the sixty plus minerals needed to create vibrant plant--and hence animal
and human--life. This demineralization is partially caused by over a
century of petrochemical agriculture, but also by another less well
known factor: the earth has reached the end of the current
demineralization cycle.

Over thirty years ago, *John Hamaker* (1914-1994), engineer, farmer,
ecologist and true polymath, did what is undoubtedly some of the most
significant original thinking of the century. As a farmer then in his
50's, John was critically aware of chaotic weather, temperature
extremes; greater incidence of storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods,
droughts, and exponentially rising curve of atmospheric CO_2 in recent
years.

He puzzled over the paradoxes of the Greenhouse Effect and the clear
scientific evidence Earth has gone through at least thirty 100,000-year
cycles of glaciation. Major ice ages have occurred with great
regularity, each cycle encompassing 90,000 years of glaciation followed
by 10,000--plus or minus 2000--years of warm, interglacial periods. And
climatologists confirm, we are presently 10,800 years into the current
interglacial period.

But, if we're due for an ice age, why were we experiencing distinct
warming in some parts of the world? By the 70's scientists had grouped
in two camps: warming theorists, who gave us a hundreds years to prepare
for global warming with its impending rise of Earth's oceans on one
side, and the cooling theorists, who focus more on the
three-million-year record of recurring ice ages and the increasing mass
of the polar ice caps. Not wanting to curtail global deforestation and
the burning of fossils fuels, the U.S. government threw its support
behind the warming theorists, so that by the late 1970's, those whose
research tended to support the Cooling received no funding.

Drawing from advanced research in many disciplines botany, nutrition,
soil microbiology, glacial geology, forestry, paleoclimatology, and
more, John focused his highly-gifted and disciplined mind to understand
the principles of nature operating on Earth, and specifically to grasp
the mechanism behind glaciation. "Why," he asked himself, "if carbon
dioxide is to trees as oxygen is to us, arent our trees in superb
health?" Research showed that toward the end of the previous two
interglacial periods, deciduous trees had become as diseased as our
elms, chestnuts and maples are today.

Studies also showed that during ice ages, the tropics were hotter and
dryer than usual--the very direction our climate is now moving in. And,
amazingly, just before the onset of the previous ice ages, atmospheric
CO_2 levels rose exponentially, again paralleling today's global trend.

/Everybody talks about the weather,
but nobody does anything about it./
--*Folk saying*

What could have caused such a rise in atmospheric CO_2 100,000 years
ago? We weren't burning fossil fuels back then.

John reasoned that if the trees' health was somehow compromised, they'd
be less able to perform their function of removing CO_2 from the
atmosphere. He looked at which trees were first affected by blights or
disease near the end of previous interglacial periods. Like today, they
were always those with the greatest leaf area. Chestnut trees have been
measured at sixty acres of leaf area per tree; elms at about forty! Of
course, trees with the large leaf area require more minerally abundant
soils to sustain their massive feeding.

The puzzle pieces were fitting together perfectly. Topsoils become
demineralized over the course of a 10,000 year warm interglacial period.
Stressed and weakened from demineralized soils, trees are no longer able
to remove excess CO_2 from the air, causing a build-up of what we call
"greenhouse gases."

Hamaker saw what no one else seemed to have seen: that the greenhouse
effect is not equal over the globe, but occurs differentially--primarily
in the tropics, where the sun's rays are most intense. In the past few
decades we are already seeing the tropics heating up and drying out, as
in the extreme drought and famine in Africa.

As greenhouse gases heat up, they cause tropical ocean water to
evaporate, forming moisture-laden clouds. Then, because of the
temperature and pressure differential between northern temperate and
equatorial regions, warm tropical air rises more quickly, leaving a
vacuum that sucks down cold, heavy, northern polar air, creating high
winds, hurricanes and tornadoes in the process. (Statistics show a 900%
increase in tornadoes, for instance, between 1920 and 1986.)

In the mid-latitudes, these tropical clouds precipitate out as rainfall,
resulting in increased flooding. In the higher latitudes and polar
regions, their moisture falls as ice and snow, adding mass and weight to
the polar ice caps. By the way, that cloud mass can now be seen from
satellites covering Canada and Russia during the month of August, often
preventing those countries from maturing their grain crops.

Hamaker was not alone in suggesting that some source of increased energy
would be required to transport poleward the huge amounts of moisture
that make up glaciers. Many climatologists now agree. But until John
grasped of the complementary/antagonistic nature of the forces that
characterize glaciation, no one could figure out where such an enormous
amount of energy would come from. Understanding the cosmic Law of
Polarity--that at the extremes, opposites create each other--John
comprehended that the greenhouse effect of the tropics is the ice age of
the northern regions.

Increased weight on polar icecaps causes shifts and slips in Earth's
tectonic plates, triggering major earthquakes and volcanic eruptions
that spew CO_2 and sulfuric acid into the atmosphere. Volcanic eruptions
spark forest fires, which destroy more trees and release more CO_2 into
the air. Rather quickly, the heating/cooling cycle gathers irreversible
momentum.

Eventually--and based on Greenland ice core studies and pollen counts in
northern France that reveal the succession of trees through the last
glacial cycle within less than 100 years from the decline in forest
health--the growing weight of the polar sheets triggers the onset of
glaciation. To the scientists examining this transition to glacial
conditions, the current worldwide decline of forests already signals the
beginning of that relatively short cyclical shift in vegetation.

As the glaciers inch their way over thousands of square miles of Earth's
crust, they slowly grind the mountains and rocks in their path into a
powder-fine mineral dust which is carried by 200 mph winds and deposited
over the surface of the Earth in some places as deep as 80 feet! Moving
at only a few feet per year, glaciers take some 90,000 years to
remineralize the Earth's soils. Like a giant bulldozer pulverizing
rocks, glaciers create new parent material for soil formation--deep
black humus, rich in colloidal minerals, reminiscent of our midwest
prairie before the demise of the buffalo.

Vegetation responds lushly to the presence of life-giving minerals in
the glacial rock dust, thus initiating another 10,000 year period of
warmth and fertility. Fossil evidence indicates that early interglacial
vegetation is unbelievably healthy, with oak trees, for example, having
their first branches at 75 feet.

/The forest is a peculiar organism of unlimited kindness and benevolence...
It affords protection to all beings,
offering shade even to the axeman destroying it/.
--*Gautama Buddha*

In the year 900, 90% of Earth's land was still covered with forests. By
1900, only 20% still had forest. That the forests--and especially the
rainforests--are the lungs of the earth has become blatantly clear to
us. Clearcutting as we continue to do, we suffocate the Earth and
ourselves. But an even more significant threat to the forests than
mindless logging and clearcutting is soil demineralization.

As early as 1929, forest ecologists recognized that--as in disease among
humans--insects, parasites and blights target already weakened, diseased
(read "demineralized") trees. The Harvard Forest Bulletin (1947)
reported trees growing on calcium-depleted soils were susceptible to
gypsy moth attack; those growing on calcium-rich soils were highly
resistant.

The degree to which we all--micro-organisms, plants, animals,
humans--suffer from soil demineralization is gradually, but forcefully,
hitting home. As we learn how empty our Green Revolution harvest is, how
direct and immediate our demineralized diets affect not only our bodies
but also our ability to think and act on our intent, how ignorantly and
mindlessly we're polluting environments from rainforests to oceans,
waterways to atmosphere, we see how fast our window of opportunity to do
something about the weather is closing.

In 1982, Hamaker published a profound synthesis of insight and principle
in his classic book, *The Survival of Civilization.* John's far-ranging
perspective on the interconnectedness of planetary ecology, the health
of individuals, and the rise and fall of civilizations, coupled with his
feisty compassion for humans, makes *Survival* a true-life,
high-suspense, ecological thriller. Only, in this story, the end will be
written by us, the readers.

Being the resourceful humanist that he was, Hamaker found a possible
solution that could slant the story toward survival rather than
destruction--toward Eden rather than another ice age. Today *Survival*
is regarded by a growing movement worldwide as a blueprint for restoring
ecological balance.

Briefly, that blueprint calls for a moratorium on the burning of fossil
fuels (which, John estimates, have hastened the onset of the next ice by
about 500 years), a ban on the clearcutting of forests, global planting
of fast-growing hardwood trees and--most important and
innovative--worldwide remineralization of forests, farms, orchards, and
gardens with gravel and rock dust, just the way the glaciers do it.

Adding finely ground rock dust to soils makes organic agriculture viable
by adding up to a hundred elements and trace minerals needed by all
life, and especially by soil micro-organisms whose protoplasm is the
basis of all living things.

Nearly forty years ago, a large land-owner in Europe discovered by
accident the regenerative power of rock dust when developers blasted
rock near his property, showering fine dust onto his already diseased
trees. Horrified, he raced to the site accusing the workmen of giving
the final blow to his forest. But what could they do? The deed was done.

The next morning, he saw to his great amazement that those trees which
has been most heavily covered with the rock dust had more vibrant green
leaves--were in fact healthier.

Such was the beginning of a large and continuing remineralization effort
in the Black Forest and elsewhere in Europe. In Germany,
remineralization has become highly sophisticated, with labs analyzing a
given garden soil sample, then supplying a mixture of the appropriate
metamorphic rock dust types to bring that soil back into vital balance.
Yes, remineralization is reversing the Waldsterben ("forest death")
plaguing the Black Forest, and could do the same here in North America
with our maples dying of acid rain and acid soils.

Remineralization does indeed create super trees out of dying ones,
dynamic garden soils teaming with micro-organisms and earthworms, and
fruit and nuts trees so healthy they don't attract disease or insects.
Two years after working rockdust into our garden, we noticed crowns on
our carrots grew twice the diameter they had previous years, their
orange was a saturated full orange, and their sweetness reminiscent of
my childhood carrots fifty years ago. The deep nourishment felt after
eating one of those carrots was subtly, but undeniably present.

To do the work of the glaciers feels like holy earth-honoring work, and
we want always to do it but, sadly, too many millions of acres of
forests are already gone, razed or charred, and more stand in line on
the loggers tally.

If Hamaker is right--and it certainly appears he is--the opportunity to
save the planet from the next ice age by planting trees has slipped us
by. Daryl Kohlman, Founder and President of Cell-Tech, producer of Super
BlueGreen Algae, sees the United States as the only country with the
power and the influence to lead the world into a massive environmental
and economic cleanup. With the help of the rock dust and algae
fertilizers we can succeed in doing the work of the glaciers
remineralizing our gardens, farmlands and forests.

"/The first order of business is to get the people of this country healthy.
That means cleaning up our agriculture and restoring health to the soil/."
--*Daryl Kollman*





  • [Livingontheland] Feed the Soils That Feed Us, TradingPostPaul, 10/31/2006

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