Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Harvey Ussery <harvey@themodernhomestead.us>]

On 08/20/2010 11:22 AM, mdnagel@verizon.net wrote:
> Energy != minerals.  Energy can affect minerals, mineral "production" 
> (breakdown), but these are two different things.
>
> When things leave the farm you lose both minerals and energy.  The energy is readily 
> replenished via the sun.  Minerals, well... they come from existing "stock," 
> or, as most often the case, are imported from outside the farm: you can assist the 
> breakdown of minerals, but there's a point at which one can over-mine the soil.
>
>
> -Mark

That's a good point, Mark--minerals are in fact removed from the soil 
and exported off the farm when food crops are sold. Their replenishment 
can come from a couple of sources: Deeply rooted cover crops can bring 
them up from the deep subsoil (I read somebody's estimate that there is 
enough mineral fertility at that level for 100 thousand years of 
farming) and making them available to more shallow-rooted crops.

And there are ways we could return unused minerals to the soil--recycle 
humanure. Unfortunately, we simply mix our own doo-doo (good) with the 
doo-doo from our industrial production system (with its load of heavy 
metals and other toxics). Using the resulting witch's brew and calling 
it "fertilizer" is possible only in a context where the vast majority of 
citizens are asleep at the wheel.

~Harvey

--
Harvey in northern Va
www.themodernhomestead.us

The industrial mind is a mind without compunction; it simply accepts that 
people, ultimately, will be treated as things and that things, ultimately, 
will be treated as garbage.  ~Wendell Berry