Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Dieter Brand <diebrand@yahoo.com>]

Mark,

 

The “mining of humus”. That is exactly what’s wrong with modern

agriculture. In mining you keep on taking things out of the ground

until nothing is left. For agriculture to be sustainable we need to put

something back in, i.e., the return of organic matter.

 

Scientists have never been able to agree on a definition for humus.

We are not going to settle things here and now. In Germany, thinking

regarding organic farming has for a long time centred around the concept

of two types of humus. The “nutritive humus” is short lived, while the

“stable humus“ comprises strong colloidal bonds of clay-humus-complexes

which are supposed to last for up to a thousand years. P.-H. Rusch,

in his biological study on soil fertility (1968) talks about “Zellgare” (cellular

tilth) and “Plasmagare” (plasma tilth) and considers that only the

latter can be called “humus”.

 

Dieter

activism98201@verizon.net wrote:

I was under the belief that humas isn't any final product or can be in any state of suspended animation, but that it's constantly evolving, breaking down.

If this were not the case then I'd think that we'd be mining humas (from "humas mines").


-Mark Nagel
Everett, WA

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