>I added the word nutrient back into the title, because I think it
>important to have regard for the manner in which a healthy,
>colloidal soil provides minerals in molecular form to the plant,
>rather than simply as ions of elements. We can look on the ways
>this stuff gets into plants as dumb or smart processes. If you
>put enough soluble ions around a plant root yes, sure, poisonous
>or nutritious, they are likely to be taken up - a dumb process.
>But I suspect that much smarter processes are at work in
>molecular transfers between roots and a healthy environment and
>these are what is critical.
that's what i do expect, too. it would be a big simplification
(and in fact soil scientists - and also our consultants have the
most problems with single results from different tests) to reduce
soil quality to properties, which can be measured (and even more
problematic: combined to a recommandation) in the lab. some are
known, but quite confuse or nothing more than practically useless
academic ivory tower definitions. i only know the german
expressions, but i'm almost sure, you also heard and know them,
too.
so what are usual the tests for "fertility" and "activity"?
a) humus content
b) ion exchange capacity
c) dehydrogenase activity
d) carbon dioxide production
each of them gives an indication, but everyone has it's problems
too much of humus will result in cultivation problems, mineral
binding, exchange capacity gives false indication (example: the
down under soils you mentioned or tropical soils with high
aluminium contents, c) and d) give an indication for high
activity, but there the question: is it useful, if the activity
is so high, that the organic matter is depleted and destroyed TOO
fast ?
so i wonder, why in our 5000 years history of soil cultivation
noone came up with a simple test (i have s.th in mind like the
cress test or an earthworm test, which also have their limits -
they for ex. do not show mineral content), which gives the grower
an indication IN ADVANCE. when you have finished your harvest,
you know better and do not need scientific tests anymore...
i do not expect a perfect test for every species, but a test,
which will give a ROUGH indication for every larger treatment of
my fields. example: how does liming influence soil "fertility"
on MY special fields ? test should be done with MY soil, not the
GENERAL results. these are known to everyone! is there really
nothing on the horizont??
next (as soil "quality" will influence food quality)
how can we measure food quality ? here i also find it highly
reductionistic to reduce quality to mineral content or vitamins.
enzyme activity, fatty acids, coenzyme-a metabolites or enzyme
inhibitor content might be much more important. we even do not
know most of the components of our food, consequently we do not
know their value! a rude bean has high mineral contents,
nevertheless it is TOXIC to humans!! molded food has the same
mineral content as fresh food ! vitamin usually is even higher
due to the bacteria! does that mean, that we should eat molded
food? certainly not.
what means fresh ? taste and smell often fail: the more "tasty" a
raspberry, the more toxicants it has! apples with a nice smell
may have much lower vitamin contents. wine with too high copper
contents taste best! protein content is highly useless, because
the biological value depends on the TYPE of protein ("amino acid
value" i.e. folding) and not so much on the total amount. in rat
feeding tests total rye amino acids have shown to be much more
valuable that the same amount of total wheat amino acids. if you
treat leak with E605, you will only find 54 instead of 59 amino
acids in untreated leak. if you fertilize potatoes with rising
amounts of nitrogen, rat feeding tests show a decrease in the
amino acid value (while vitamin c, carotin and overall protein
content rises). is it more useful to breed apples with lower
amounts of vitamins, but which can be well stored and eaten in
winter, when no fresh food is at hand or apples with a lot of
vitamin c, which boost your blood serum level to unknown heights,
but begin to foul almost on the tree? should we breed for high
vitamin contents, if cultivation of these varieties might be a
disaster for the grower due to low resistance? and so on and so
on....
and there is even another problem, i see: i know of NO treatment
for a special improvement of fruits, which does not have at least
another setback in another special field. so whatever i do as
farmer, it will also have at least one disadvantage! result:
confusion all around...
but there is hope: people themself. example: there is a tribe in
southern india, which "knows", what is good for them to eat. once
every year some of them walk to a place more than 100 miles away
from their home. there they collect clay, roll them to pills,
bake them in fire and carry these pills home. at every meal they
eat one or two of these pills. ethnobiologists asked the elder of
them, why they did it. they didn't know, they just told them that
the parents of their parents did so and that they did well.. now
the biologists took home samples of these pills and analysed
them. result: this clay corresponds to the IDEAL ultramodern
recommandations for mineral uptake and they told us, that this
"primitive" tribe shows the ideal behavior for mineral
supplementation. i would say it the other way round. modern
scientists proved nothing more, than what these "primitives" knew
long before.. other "primitive" societies are also quite used to
eat pure soil from time to time, they are used to eat their
vegetables often unwashed with all the soil bacteria on them (and
thus with the b-vitamins of these bacteria). eat afaik the
aborigines are also in the habit of eating soil. when indian
people moved to the usa, they soon developed several illnesses,
which are known to be based on food deficiencies. when some of
them moved back to india, the illnesses disappeared. researchers
found, that american food is washed and with that washing soil
and bacteria are removed. they added soil to the food -> the
illnesses disappeared.
i sure, everyone here has an almost same experience (so this is
not restricted to cows or goats): suddenly you develop an immense
desire for a special (and maybe unusual or even strange) kind of
food. after sport you have a desire for salty food, when ill, you
dislike meat and so on. consequence: people have something like
an inner warning system, what is lacking and they try to get out
of their deficiency. unfortunately this system is beginning to
disappear in modern society.
> Szent-Gyorgi:
>"One particle, plus one particle, put together at random, are
>two particles, 1+1=2; the system is additive. But if two
>particles are put together in a meaningful way then something new
>is born which is more than their sum: 1+1>2.
exactly. liebig's law: 10 essential minerals out of ten (and one
totally lacking) do not make 10, they just make : ZERO !!!
in the following mail (a bit long, sorry in advance to those, who
do not like it) i post a text i think highly interesting.
and this is confirmed by an old (1956) article about the history
of "soil and nutrition" by prof. albrecht at the "department of
soil", college of agricult., u. of missouri, columbia/mo, who
showed, that yields began to decrease in missouri in the 30ies
down to an uneconomic level. result: farmers imported new fruits,
which showed higher yields, but with lower nutritional
value. the plants had higher carbohydrates than before, but
lower contents of protein with less amino acids. corn breeding
resulted in more bushels per acre, but 30% less proteins!!! that
has changed today, but still modern varieties lack some amino
acids, the old varieties had. (source: 8. sonderheft
Landwirtschaftliche forschung, pflanzenqualität -
nahrungsgrundlage,j.d. sauerländer verlag, frankfurt)
same with glucosinolates, which were bred out in rape. today
medical literature shows, that exactly these ingredients, which
restrict the amount of rape seed in animal feed, are highly
effective heart protectants, important for the coronary system
and pass over to meat and milk..
so what the hell is food quality? (in the end we certainly are
not interested in soil quality, but in FOOD quality, which is
nothing more than the result of soil quality...)
we're just working on a test with photon emissions. first results
show a correlation between feeding tests and photons. these
photons are mostly the result of total energy received by the
sun. you doubt ? me too, but nevertheless it's worth a try. btw:
stanford has its own "bio-photon lab", which just does the same
tests... but what might be the correlation between photons and
nutritional value ??????
klaus
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