Klaus Wiegand wrote:
> hello dennis
>
> >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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