Contribute to the global effort to restore soil functions which have been destroyed CLICK HERE Healthy, fully functioning soils will: 1. Provide highly nutritious food without the use of chemical inputs. 2. Solve the health crisis through strengthening the human biome. 3. Hold huge amounts of water and so prevent the flooding …
We’ve all heard of climate change. It is a natural phenomenon for climates to fluctuate and change, however, as most of us know, human caused atmospheric pollution is exacerbating the issue, accelerating the rate of change, making it’s impacts more abrupt and extreme. Climate scientists agree that if we surpass a 1.5 degree (the UN …
Can we do it? Is it already too late? Many of us are wondering how we can possibly turn the juggernaut of limited industrial profit-based materialism around. Time to stop wondering and worrying—yes it is possible—and we are already doing it. Although the statement “the answer lies in the soil” seems too simplistic, this time …
Article originally published on www.soilfoodweb.com/article What if we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and grow enough food to feed our ballooning population using resources we already have? Kristin Ohlson, author of The Soil Will Save Us, thinks we can do just that. And like a growing number of scientists, farmers, and good food advocates, she …
Earlier this year, US soil microbiologist Elaine Ingham, of Soil Foodweb Inc. fame, caused several gasps at the Oxford Real Farming Conference with her controversial lecture, ‘The Roots of your Profits’. I recommend anyone interested in joined-up thinking about health to listen to this and view her slide presentation.
Put bluntly, Ingham’s message is that if you are interested in health, you have to be interested in soil. This lecture, and her work in general, brilliantly explains why.
Time to take a deep breath, prepare to have conventional thinking about soil turned on its head and find out why soil biology should matter to you.
As most of us have realised, soil is not merely a prop for plants or ‘ terra firma ‘ for the biosphere; it is an infinitely complex underworld and inter-dependent web of micro-organisms such as bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes and micro-arthropods to name a few.
It is this hidden world that allows our planet and our society to thrive. It is every bit as important to our health as breath itself.
But far from nurturing the soil that feeds us, agriculture often destroys it. Every time the soil is disturbed, or artificial fertilisers and pesticides are applied, soil life is killed and soil structure compromised.
Soil erosion, the leaching of water and nutrients, anaerobic conditions, pests and diseases all follow. The system gradually collapses and eventually the soil – now bereft of soil life – is degraded so much it becomes mere dirt.
It’s a self-perpetuating cycle of destruction, and farmers then have to devote their energy to dealing with the destructive knock-on effects.
For Ingham, agriculture should be the art of nurturing soil life. It’s essential to understand what makes the life in soil tick – and conversely what destroys it – as well as how to manage soil life so it works to overcome the challenges that producing food presents. Get your soil biology right – ensuring the ‘good guys’ (aerobic micro-organisms) flourish and are in balance – and the rest falls into place.
Forget the latest farm app: the most essential piece of equipment a farmer or grower can have is a microscope. And the one skill she or he needs above all else is how to make aerobic compost and compost teas. It is these that contain the necessary microorganisms for soil health. Applied correctly, this is the only magic bullet you’ll ever need. It’s as simple as that.
But Ingham also goes further. She has no time for wasting money on soil tests, pointing out that during her lifetime the number of plant nutrients considered to be essential has increased from 3 to more than 40. Who can say what a plant needs, except the plant itself?
Applying this mineral or that fertiliser, Ingham says, is also a waste of money. Assays of plant tissues reveal that the nutrients present bear no relationship whatsoever to any soluble artificial nutrients applied. A plant requires all nutrients to a greater or lesser extent, and only it knows what it needs and when – the trick is having all those nutrients in a bio-available form in the soil at all times.
She also blows away the myth of pH, the measure of soil acidity or alkalinity. Since when, she asks, has nature said a pH 6.5 is ideal for crops, when they grow successfully in ranges from 5.5-11? Soil pH varies so widely even along a root hair that an average value is meaningless. It isn’t the soil pH that needs analysing, it’s the soil’s microbial life.
Even more controversially, Ingham points out that all soils on the planet have enough (inorganic) nutrients locked up in their mineral particles (that is, particles derived from rocks) to feed plants for the next 10,000 billion years. What?!
The only reason the Green Revolution worked is that it fed dirt, not soil. Sustainable intensification? Forget it. It won’t work because it can’t: it still relies on the chemical inputs that destroy soil life. Get your soil biology right, and you don’t need to spread manure, rotate crops or till soil. (At this point, even the organic farmers at the Oxford conference winced.)
Ingham has spent the past 40 years putting her knowledge into practice and training farmers, growers and gardeners to become soil doctors. She has achieved impressive results. Pasture grasses, for example, have increased rooting depth and protein content has gone up from 5%-25%.
But to understand why her followers achieve the results they do requires a basic primer in the evolutionary relationship between plants and soil life.
Plants use sunlight to make sugars; they then send most of these to their roots as exudates (substances that ooze out from plant tissue) – or, as Ingham puts it, they deliver ‘cakes and cookies’ to the soil for aerobic bacteria and fungi to feed on, encouraging them to amass around the roots and prosper.
These ‘good guys’ have three important functions: they form a protective army to fight off the ‘bad guys’ (anaerobic micro-organisms responsible for disease); they contain the necessary enzymes and acids to break down and transform inorganic nutrients in soil particles into organic nutrients suitable for plants; and they play a critical role in the formation of soils’ structure, which is necessary for water retention, preventing the leaching of nutrients.
Why, then, do you need an armoury of chemicals when nature has already provided a ready-made solution?
At this stage, the nutrients that plants need are still locked up in the microorganisms, and are only released when the latter die. To enable this, nature has evolved predators – creatures that eat other creatures for their food – to create food chains and thus ensure constant nutrient recycling.
In this case, the predators are protozoa, which eat bacteria, nematodes and micro-arthropods, which eat fungi. These predators then excrete the excess nutrients – now bio-available – into the surrounding soil, creating a constantly replenishing supply of food around the plant roots, where they are needed. Clever, isn’t it?
We can see why predators are necessary for plant life, and why we are better working with the fundamental rules of nature than against them. As Ingham has pointed out, Mother Nature doesn’t need human beings, but we need Mother Nature. It’s a one-way street. This is why we have to go back to soil biology to reform agriculture from the ground up. As she says, it’s the only way forward if human beings are to remain on this planet.
The evolution of plant life is intimately bound up with the soil biology prevalent during its development. The types and ratios, for example, of bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms determine what crops will flourish, and enable evolutionary succession to take place.
It follows that what grows where is a good indicator of your soil biology; and it provides clues to where the imbalances might be in the soil, which are preventing you from growing the best crops you can. Again, the simple, quick and easy way to fix this is to ‘inoculate’ the soil with the correct compost.
This is why compost is the nearest farming gets to a cure-all: it holds the key to sustaining life. It’s cheap and easy, and as soils become self-sustaining, the problems go away and crops are more productive – they become stronger, healthier and more nutritionally dense. No wonder, then, that Ingham is not popular in conventional agriculture or the chemical industry.
As Ingham’s lecture illustrates, the vital connection between healthy soils, plants, animals, people and planet is not mere rhetoric but an evolutionary truth. Patrick Holden, Chief Executive of the SFT, has also noted that the parallels between soil and human health are too obvious to ignore. Just as the ‘good guys’ in the soil promote and protect soil health, so the beneficial microbial flora in our gut (our microbiome) are essential for promoting and protecting our digestive health, and boosting our immune system.
But guess what? Antibiotics, antibacterials and antifungals impact negatively on our microbiome. One can only wonder, then, what a lifetime of food additives, junk food, pesticide residues, degraded food produced from chemical farming and even GM ingredients do to our internal ‘soil life’?
This is why the quality of the food we eat, and how we produce it, is so vital. And it is why we need to take Ingham and other whistleblowers seriously when they warn us that the quality of our soil affects the quality of our food and its fundamental ability to nourish us.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
– Arthur C. Clarke
“Magic” is how humans have customarily described the soil’s natural cycles of decay and growth. Without a scientific understanding, our ancestors relied on observation and traditional practices to grow crops.
Modern chemical agriculture has been only marginally better at understanding the soil. Unable to control the natural cycles, it bypasses them with synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Despite the outward successes of modern agriculture, its heavy-handed approach brings with it pollution, soil degradation and other ills.
In contrast, organic methods like permaculture have attempted to work with natural cycles. Despite the many insights and successful practices that have emerged, a rigorous scientific model is still lacking. Permaculture and its brethren are accused of being belief systems rather than science. It’s hard to make progress without having a common understanding of how things work.
Recently, however, soil ecology has developed to the point where we can open the lid on the black box of underground processes. We can begin to understand how micro-organisms maintain the structure and fertility of the soil. We learn that symbiotic relationships between plants and micro-organisms are not the exception but the rule.
It is no longer just compost-lovers who are excited about soil. The respected journal Science devoted an issue to ” Soils: the Final Frontier” (June 11, 2004), saying:
“In many ways the ground beneath our feet is as alien as a distant planet. The processes occurring in the top few centimenters of Earth’s surface are the basis of all life on dry land but the opacity of soil has severely limited our understanding of how it functions…. However, perspectives are beginning to change… Interest in soil is booming, spurred in part by technical advances of the past decade.”
It’s a chilly winter day at the San Mateo Garden Center in Northern California. Several dozen of us are drinking tea and coffee, waiting to hear soil microbiologist Dr. Elaine Ingham talk on the soil food web. We’re drawn by the promise that by understanding soil ecology, we can grow healthier plants without relying on pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. And in the long run, we’re told, it will be cheaper and easier.
Actually most of us don’t have to be convinced — we’re a cross-section of greenies from the San Francisco Peninsula: landscape designers, horticulture teachers, nursery owners, Master Gardeners, Master Composters and permaculture activists. We know Ingham’s reputation and are here to listen to the master.
At last Dr. Ingham steps to the front and we’re off. For the next two days we are inundated with dense, high intensity information that’s very different from the usual. It’s like having your head unscrewed.
She’s the kind of professor you wish you had in college. She loves her subject and invites you to share it with her.
Much of the talk around organics is vague — but not with Dr. Ingham at the helm. Ask a question or raise an objection, and she’ll come back with a detailed response, complete with references in the scientific literature. As we say in Master Gardeners: “science-based gardening advice.”
Ingham has been researching soil microbiology for over 25 years, having received her PhD in 1981. She taught at Oregon State University (Corvallis) from 1986 to 2001. She left academia to devote herself to Soil Foodweb, Inc, the consulting and testing service she started in 1996. She has published over 50 articles in refereed journals.
Years spent peering through a microscope have given her a perspective that is … different. As one aside, she remarked that humans, if viewed from outer space, would bear a remarkable resemblance to rod-shaped bacteria. As with many good biologists, she has an affection and respect for the organisms she studies.
She also has a gift for the apt metaphor that makes a technical concept come alive:
After several days of lectures, I had taken over 100 pages of notes and was in danger of getting lost in the details. How to summarize Ingham’s message? One attempt:
Life on earth is sustained by a complex underground ecological system – the soil food web.
Through ignorance, we’ve disrupted the food web, in particular with ill-advised farming and gardening methods.
We can return the food web to health by restoring the soil biology.
The picture of the soil food web that Ingham presents seems to be widely accepted. Rarely however are the ideas synthesized into a coherent whole. No wonder. The concepts come from many different fields — microbiology, ecology, soil science and agronomy. Specialists absorbed in their own fields often find it difficult to see the big picture.
Beyond the big picture, Ingham does differ from other scientists. She has a higher level of passion than one expects in academia. Also, some of her specific methods and recommendations are different than the usual. For example, she and her associates developed methods of assessing soil health by making direct counts of organisms under a microscope. Among the public, she is probably best known for advocating the use of aerobic compost tea.
The rest of this article gives highlights from Ingham’s presentations, then discusses the implications of the vision. To learn more, see the list of resources at the end of this article. Especially recommended is the Soil Biology Primer, which Ingham co-authored.
Learning about the soil food web is like entering an alternate reality. We see the results of the microbial world in decomposition, in foods (wine and cheese, for example) and in diseases. However this world operates with numbers and at a scale that is disturbingly alien. One handful of good garden soil can contain more organisms than the number of human beings who have ever lived: 1 trillion bacteria (10 to the 12th), 10,000 protozoa, 10,000 nematodes and 25 km of fungi, according to Young and Crawford in Science magaziney.
As far as alien-ness, let’s not even talk about bacterial sex!
I had known the numbers were high and thought that the picture was hopelessly complex. What I learned, though, is that the organisms in the soil belong to a manageable number of functional groups. These can be studied and we can make generalizations about them. Ingham’s colleague, Andrew Moldenke, says:
“All soils everywhere are comprised of the same basic critter groups. What’s different about a desert, the tundra, a rainforest or a cornfield are numbers (relative densities of critters).”
The concept that ties the different groups together is the soil food web.
Energy and nutrients are passed as one group of organisms feeds on another.
At the bottom level of the food web is the decaying organic matter in the soil that ultimately came from plants. Roots are a source of nourishment for some organisms.
Feeding on the organic matter are bacteria, fungi, root-feeding nematodes (microscopic round worms) and other organisms.
Feeding on them are the first-level predators such as protozoa (one-celled organisms like amoebae), some species of nematodes and arthropods (“bugs” with jointed legs like mites and insects).
Above them are higher level predators such as those pictured.
Even in this highly simplified diagram, you can see the multiple interconnections characteristic of a food web.
The stars of the underground are the bacteria and the fungi.
Bacteria are small bundles of protein with a high percentage of nitrogen. They’re “like power plants,” according to Andrew Moldenke. If the nutrients they need are “at the precise site of the bacterium, then bacterial metabolic rate is unequaled. But everything has to be present, just like the coal and oil at a power plant.”
In contrast, Moldenke describes fungi as being “like railroad systems. They are immensely long systems of threadlike hyphae that can mobilize carbon from one region, nitrogen from another region…”
Before learning about soil ecology, I had thought that bacteria and fungi were bit players. Some caused plant diseases, I knew, but the rest seemed innocuous and uninteresting. Several things Ingham said made me realize how wrong I was.
Among the services that bacteria and fungi provide for plants:
One of the most intriguing portion of the soil is the “rhizosphere” — the soil around the plant roots. It’s a zone of intense activity, with bacteria and fungi attracted by the sugars, carbohydrates and proteins exuded by plant roots.
As usual, Ingham has striking images to describe the process. Noting that the exudates contain the same basic ingredients as used for baking (sugar, carbohydrates (flour) and protein (eggs)), she calls them “cakes and cookies.” No wonder they’re attractive.
The bacteria and fungi attracted to the roots are “the white knights fighting off the bad guys.”
Symbiotic Fungus: Wheels within wheels… life within life. Feeder root of a plant containing the nutrient-absorbing parts (dark blue) of a symbiotic fungus. Vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhizae (“VAM”) fungi like this one colonize the root systems of most plants, providing nutrients and water to the plants, as well as protection against parasitic nematodes and root rot fungi.
Moving back from the microscopic view, the distinction between fungi and bacteria has practical consequences for farmers and gardeners. Different plant communities have different ratios of fungi to bacteria.
Bacteria dominate in early succession communities such as bare earth, weeds and vegetable. For flowers and most row crops, fungi and bacteria are in equal balance. Late succession communities such as shrubs and trees are dominated by fungi.
Knowing the bacteria/fungal ratio for the crop you’re raising, you can employ different practices to encourage one or the other. Tilling or digging, for example, favors bacteria over fungi. (Most farmland is bacteria dominated.) Ingham suggests applying compost that is right for the plants you are growing, such as fungal-dominated compost around fruit trees (very fungal around conifers) and bacterial for grass. To build soil, she says, encourage fungi.
The larger organisms play a variety of roles in the soil food web.
Many are predators who keep prey populations in balance.
Some of the large organisms, especially earthworms, are “engineers”, improving the architecture of the soil by creating air passages and hallways with their burrowing.
Micro-arthropods are “taxi cabs” for the less mobile smaller organisms such as bacteria, helping them spread throughout the soil and onto the leaf surfaces. In this way, they bring bacteria to where the nutrients are.
Andrew Moldenke points out that some arthropods shred dead plant parts, so that the nutrients become accessible to bacteria.
Beneficial nematode: Many species of nematodes (microcopic roundworms) in the soil are beneficial. This is an example of a nematode that feeds on bacteria. By eating the nitrogen-rich bacteria and then excreting excess nitrogen, the nematode returns nitrogen to the soil in a form which plants can use. Other species of nematode feed on fungi, on plant roots, or on other nematodes.
Unfortunately, scientific knowledge of the soil food web has only come in recent decades. We haven’t appreciated what the soil food web can do for us, and Ingham says that many of our common practices degrade it:
The degraded food web invites pests, disease and nutrient problems. In a vicious cycle, we attack the problems with chemical solutions which further degrade the food web.
The solution, according to Dr. Ingham, is to restore and enhance the soil biology. In her words:
“Over the last 50-60 years, the attitude has been to get rid of the bad guys through pesticides, not understanding that if you destroy the bad guys, you also get rid of the good guys. When we nuke soils and destroy life, what comes back are the bad guys.
“Put your workforce back into place. They don’t need holidays. Just make sure they’re in your soil and feed them. …. Our job is to make sure there is a diversity of micro-organisms, so plants can choose which organisms they need.”
The first step in restoring the soil biology is being able to diagnose it. Since we can’t look at the soil food web directly, we must rely on indirect methods. Some have suggested nematodes and springtails as indicators of soil health.
Ingham advocates a “direct count” method, in which individual organisms in a sample are counted under a microscope. Following a protocol, a trained technician counts the number of different classes of organisms (bacteria, fungi and protozoa, for example). The result is a report on the organisms estimated to be in the sample. The numbers indicate possible problems in the soil. For example, a high number of ciliates (a group of protozoa) suggests anaerobic conditions – harmful to plant life.
Other researchers have used plate counts. A soil sample is placed in a growth medium like agar, typically in a Petri dish. The number of bacterial or fungal colonies that grow from a soil sample are then counted.
Ingham maintains that this method grossly underestimates the number and variety of soil organisms. She says that the method was designed to detect and grow human disease organisms such as E. coli. In contrast, soil organisms need different conditions than the laboratory setting and growth media can provide. Only about .01 percent of soil organisms can be detected with traditional plate counts, she estimates.
Restoring soil biology requires a source of micro-organisms, and compost is ideal for that purpose. The compost should have a huge species diversity. Not just bacteria but fungi, protozoa, nematodes and microarthropods, as well as organic matter for them to feed on. The compost should be made locally, so that its soil biology is similar to the soil on which it is applied.
To people already involved with compost, Ingham’s discussion on compost-making should be familiar, if more rigorous than the usual. Most of her information comes from an Austrian family, the Luebkes, who developed the Controlled Microbial Composting (CMC) method. CMC is a thermal (hot) method, which involves frequent turning and close monitoring.
You can control the fungi-to-bacteria ratio of the compost by the raw materials you start with, and by your methods. Frequent turning, for example favors bacteria, since every time you turn a compost pile you “slice and dice” the fungal hyphae.
Fungal Strands in Compost: Not all the life in the soil food web is microscopic. Some fungi can be seen with the naked eye, as can earthworms and arthropods (such as insects, spiders and centipedes).
One thing you learn quickly about compost from Ingham: Aerobic GOOD! Anaerobic BAD!
Anaerobic bacteria – those that thrive at low levels of oxygen – are on her list of “bad guys.” Some are pathogens. The foul-smelling compounds produced under anaerobic conditions are bad for plants. Bad compost has foul odors like:
Just reading the list of smells is motivation enough to keep a pile from going anaerobic.
In addition to thermal compost, Ingham’s presentation covers static (cold) compost and worm compost, which she recommends highly.
A keystone of Dr. Ingham’s approach is compost tea (CT), made by soaking compost in water. It’s a convenient way to the apply organisms that have grown in compost. The effect is similar to solid compost, but it’s easier to transport, and it’s the only way to apply compost organisms to leaves (foliar application).
One disadvantage is that compost teas lack the solid organic matter contained in regular compost. Without this food for the micro-organisms, the effects of compost tea do not last as long (5 years of biology vs 5 months, says Ingham).
Compost teas are not a recent invention. Ingham says they have been used in traditional agriculture since before the Roman Empire. With the chemical era, compost tea was dropped, probably because the results were variable.
Many different kinds of compost tea exist, including leachates, manure teas, anaerobic teas and passive aerobic teas. What Ingham studies and recommends is one particular variety: actively aerated compost tea (AACT). Conditions are kept aerobic by agitating the liquid or with a bubbler.
Actively aerated teas brewed from good compost make for results that can be duplicated, she says. Traditional teas, made without aeration, have variable results. And if compost tea goes anaerobic, you’ve lost most of the aerobic micro-organisms. On the other hand, she said she was interested in studying anaerobic teas and their possible benefits.
Machines for brewing compost tea in various sizes are available from manufacturers. “Caveat emptor,” (Buyer beware) Ingham says. She encourages people to read reviews and ask for data from the manufacturers. You can also make your own brewing apparatus. Ingham wrote an article explaining how for Kitchen Gardener magazine.
Some of the hints proferred by Ingham for good tea:
To encourage bactera, add bacterial foods like sugars. For more fungi, add fungal foods like humic acid, corn meal, oatmeal and fish hydrates.
One question that puzzled me was how micro-organisms stay on plant leaves after a foliar application of compost tea. Dr. Ingham replied that bacteria quickly make slimey glue to stick to surfaces,” so they aren’t washed away.
Brewing Compost Tea: Permaculturalist Alane Weber in the middle of a compost tea brew cycle. She’s checking the smell (“Very important!” she says) and the flow in and around the mesh bags holding the compost. The brewer is a 100-gallon model from KIS, and is located at Lyngso Garden Materials, Redwood City, California. (Photo: Rick Weber / Botanical Art )
( Note: this last part of the article reflects my own point of view rather than Dr. Ingham’s.)
The part of Ingham’s approach that has aroused the most enthusiasm has been compost tea. It promises all the benefits a healthy food web can bring — resistance to pests and disease, better yields, more vigorous plant growth, etc. Many compost tea users seem to be happy with the results.
On the other hand, skeptics point to the paucity of scientific validation and are dubious of claims that compost tea is a cure-all. Some are suspicious of the commercialization of the process.
Dr. Ingham wisely points out the limitations of compost tea:
Compost tea is not a “silver bullet” for the problems in your yard. Other practices, such as organic fertilizing, soil amending, mulching, aeration, etc., are also important to build and sustain a healthy garden. The soil, environmental and prior chemical condition of your yard all play a role in its overall health.
So far, most of the evidence for the effectiveness of compost tea is anecdotal, she says. She doesn’t have replicated scientific studies, adding that such studies require money and resources. However, she does point to scientific studies which confirm the underlying concepts of the food web.
Determining the effects of compost tea may be complicated by the many variables in the process:
A second difficulty is that the effects of compost tea are probably indirect rather than direct. For example, a pesticide or antibiotic tends to have a direct action on the target, perhaps by disrupting a key biological process. In contrast, a compost tea might provide resistance to disease by adding organisms that would occupy potential infection sites.
It seems rather early in the study of compost tea to make categorical pronouncements. We should remember that many organic methods that are now accepted, such as compost and non-chemical pest controls, were derided when first introduced.
With our new understandings of soil ecology, the opportunities for investigation are wide open – not only for compost tea, but for other organic and traditional practices.
The soil food web gives a firmer scientific foundation for the ecological view of agriculture. The table below highlights the differences between the conventional or chemical model and the ecological model.
A mechanical model:
Natural cycles:
Many ecological ideas have been incorporated into conventional gardening and agriculture. For example Integrated Pest Management (IPM) has become part of many Ag extension programs. (see the the IPM website and the manual Pests of the Garden and Small Farm from University of Californa).
One can imagine a combination of the two models, in which environmental thinking prevailed but chemical solutions might be used on a temporary basis for intractible problems. Dr. Ingham, while fiercely opposed to the overuse of chemicals, admits that in a few cases they may be necessary as a first step in restoring some farmlands.
A shift to a more ecological agriculture may happen sooner than we think. And the reasons may be economic and political rather than environmental.
Modern agriculture developed during the 20th century, a period of cheap energy. Oil and natural gas have been abundant, and our current food system uses both freely. Estimates are that it takes 10 or more calories of fossil fuels to grow one calorie of food. Food writer Michael Pollan says that the American diet with its emphasis on corn and corn products is really an oil diet:
“Corn is the SUV of plants. Growing it the way we do requires it to guzzle fuel in the form of fertilizer, about a quarter to a third of a gallon of petroleum for each bushel.”
(Interview from the UC Berkeley News Service)
The basis of modern agriculture is nitrogen fertilizer manufactured by the energy-intensive Haber process. Since its invention in the early 1900s, the Haber process has helped avert famines as world population rose from 2 billion to 6.6 billion. Making this fertilizer requires 1% of the world’s energy supply, estimates Science magazine. (Natural gas is the usual feedstock for fertilizers; petroleum is the feedstock for many pesticides.)
Arguments aside about its successes and shortcomings, modern agriculture needs cheap fuels. Without them, it is in trouble.
Are we facing energy shortages? An increasing number of people think so. The followers of Peak Oil believe we will soon reach the peak of oil production, after which supplies will shrink and prices will go up and up. David Holmgren and others in permaculture are talking about “energy descent” – preparing for a low-energy future. Even members of the U.S. elite are worried about disruptions to the oil supply; their number includes ex-Fed Director Alan Greenspan and ex-CIA heads James Schlesinger and James Woolsey.
Supply distruptions can happen whether or not oil production has reached its peak. When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1989, Cuba lost its source of cheap oil and other imports required for to maintain its conventional, chemical-based agriculture. It got through the crisis by turning to organic methods and restructuring its large-scale farms.
In an era in which oil, natural gas and energy in general will probably become more and more expensive, it would seem prudent to develop an agriculture that is not so dependent on them. Soils, plants, microbes and water are everywhere. The processes of ecological agriculture may be tricky (for example, the turning and monitoring of compost), but they are do-able, and they don’t require imports from far-off countries.
Assuming the scientists are right and the soil ecology picture is correct, what next?
As a start, let’s make soil ecology a part of the culture. If people don’t know about the soil food web, they won’t value it. Are there any visionaries who can see this as a subject for science fiction or children’s books? It will take imagination, since ciliates and springtails don’t have the cuddle factor of baby mammals. The BBC had an example of what is possible, in their wild radio segment “Soil Safari” available on the Web.
Some good basic texts would be helpful. The subject cries out for photos, figures and diagrams to make the concepts vivid. The Soil Biology Primer is a good example of what can be done. Generalizations should be linked to supporting studies, so we can sort out myth from science.
A knowledge of micro-organisms and the environment will be increasingly important in public debates. Although this article has only discussed gardening and agriculture, soil ecology plays a part in global warming (a healthy soil sequesters more carbon); in trawling and disturbance of the ocean floor; in invasive organisms and restoration ecology. A few popular science books on soil ecology have been published (see List of Resources), but there is room for many more.
As I researched this article, I kept hoping to see more work by agriculture extension programs and researchers. They have the resources to do the research and education we need. Perhaps we’ll see them adopt soil ecology as a cause, as they previously took up Integrated Pest Management.
For permaculturalists and organic gardeners, the news about soil ecology should be gratifying. Many of our practices have a scientific basis and are good for the soil food web. The way is now open for more research and experimentation.
An article, a set of CDs or even a weekend seminar can do no more than scratch the surface of soil ecology. However excellent resources are available online and in print.
A good place to start is the Soil Biology Primer, an inexpensive ($15) 48-page booklet with clear explanations and vivid photographs. Elaine Ingham is one of the co-authors. You can read the book online, but the printed version is much easier to follow (and the pictures are better!).
Dr. Ingham makes much information available free on the website of her organization, Soil Foodweb, Inc.: http://www.soilfoodweb.com/. A good entry point is “The Soil Foodweb Approach”. The website also has details on CDs, classes and other services.
Most gardening books don’t cover soil ecology well. Either they skip over it completely, or speak in vague mystical terms. Exceptions include chapters in the permaculture-oriented Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke with Eric Toensmeier; and Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway.
A book to look for is Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web by Jeff Lowenfels, due out August 15, 2006.
Two popular science books give background on soil microbiology and the environment: Under Ground: How Creatures of Mud and Dirt Shape Our World by Yvonne Baskin and Tales From the Underground: A Natural History of Subterranean Life by David W. Wolfe.
To get deeper into the science, see Soils: the Final Frontier a special issue of Science magazine (June 11, 2004). More science references are available from Elaine Ingham’s website ( SFI: Recent academic and popular information sources). Several scientific journals and textbooks are devoted to soil ecology.
Many online resources are listed in the web version of this document.
Bart Anderson has been a reporter, high school teacher and technical writer. He now gardens and writes on sustainability and energy issues. He is co-editor of Energy Bulletin (http://energybulletin.net). Bart has no connection with any business or group involved in compost tea. He has made worm compost and backyard compost for his own use for years, but has not tried compost tea. 
Editorial Notes: The article originally appeared in the Fall 2006 Permaculture Activist. UPDATE (Oct 27, 2008): Added Creative Commons logo.
Super foods. They seem to be trending. So much about consuming these preciously nutritious products as part of our daily diets. Acai berries, quinoa, chia seeds, matcha, hemp seeds, raw cacao… It’s great that we are becoming more aware of the role good nutrition plays in our lives and that the accessibility of highly nutritious …
Sirius is an Educational Non Profit Ecological Community located in Massachusetts. Their goal is education and role modelling for planetary healing. Although there are eco-villages I have not yet visited, Sirius sets the bar seriously high when it comes to both ecological and social sustainability practices. This was a valuable learning experience for me and one …
Uploaded by Valhalla Movement on 2014-02-01.
This video is about Twin Oaks– Parenting and Schooling
This video is about how members of Twin Oaks Intentional Community feel about living there, why they like it and what they appreciate about the way their community works. Music: Love and Mathematics by Broken Social Scene
This video is about an intentional community in Virginia called Twin Oaks. It is one of the oldest intentional communities in the United States of America. This video discusses how they function as a unit with their shared labour for the community’s businesses and how their governance is set up.
Twin Oaks is a 40 + year old intentional community in Virginia, United States, with around 100 residents. They have managed to figure out a system in which everyone lives there without money, and where everyone and no one is in charge. They would define themselves as a confederation of anarchists and an egalitarian village. …
Abby Martin features a performance by Malachi Byrd of DC Youth Slam and Split this Rock, discussing his inspiration for the poem ‘Intelligence’ and the issues young Americans care about today.
Italian designer Gabriele Diamanti (@GabDiamanti) has invented Eliodomestico, an eco-distiller running on solar power, to provide safe drinking-water for people in developing countries: a very simple way to produce healthy, bacteria-free water. Eliodomestico is an open source project. Winner at Core77 Design Award 2012 – social impact category; Finalist at the Prix Émile Hermès 2011 competition.
Monsanto were voted the most evil corporation in the world in 2011 by readers of Natural News – but why do they have such a bad reputation? We take a look at the history of the company, including Agent Orange and Polychlorine Biphenyls – or PCBs – right up to modern farming practices and genetically modified seeds, pesticides and crops.
