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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Early Roots of the Organic Movement

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: Daniel Conine <dconine@bertramwireless.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Early Roots of the Organic Movement
  • Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:50:20 -0600

Ironically, Dieter, I read a book called "Our Second Brain" which describes
our gut as analagous to holding an ecosystem outside of our actual bodies because it is
isolated by another skin which forms the alimentary canal, and that our intestines draw
nutrients from the foods and activity of the gut like plants draw nutrients from the
soil. We should treat the gut like we take care of a garden, in other words. Dumping
poisons (alcohol, antibiotics) or indigestible stuff or too much of any one thing isn't
good. We could go into a whole book of analogies about meat alone....(attracting pests,
etc.)

Things to make you go "huh".

Dan C.
Belgium,WI



From: Dieter Brand <diebrand@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Early Roots of the Organic Movement
To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing
<livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID: <409773.73881.qm@web63407.mail.re1.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Thanks Paul, that is pretty exhaustive as far as thinking
on soil and plant nutrition is concerned. There is one item, though, that particularly appeals to me that isn't included here.
According to a text I read recently, Aristotle considered that
_soil is the stomach of plants_ in the sense that soil performs
many function like the mechanical and chemical breakdown of organic materials which needs to occur before plants can access these materials as food. These functions are performed in the
body by the teeth, the digestive tract and other body organs.
In fact, it is possible to see the root system of plants as a digestive tract turned inside out. Both are colonized by bacteria needed for processing food.
This, to me sounds like an explanation of plant nutrition as
intelligent as any provided by modern science.
I don't know were Aristotle is supposed to have said this and
the text from which I cite is in German.






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