From ps@erinet.com Tue Oct 12 14:41:26 1999 Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 07:59:27 -0400 From: Paul Schmitmeyer To: Sanet Subject: Organic & Mineralization [ The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] Hi Dennis and all, Just thought I would put in my two cents worth here. As I have farmed my whole life, I was first trained that you need all the chemical fertilizer and micro's and all that. Of course recently I have started to switch over to the organic ways of doing things. Now I have been VERY fortunate to have some great mentors who not only think as I do but also very successful for several years as organic farmers. Here is what they have relayed to me. Through proper rotation the soil balances itself. After 3-4 years, all without exception, have reported that their soil test have started to go back up without any outside fertilizers. The crops pull what they need out of the nutrient rich subsoil and brings it to the surface where it can be used. Their crops continue to improve. All the farmers use someform of compost, primarily off threir own farm. Anyone care to coment on this? Thanks, Paul To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From bluestem@webserf.net Tue Oct 12 14:46:11 1999 Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:21:40 +0100 From: Bluestem Associates To: "sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu" Subject: Re: Organic & Mineralization On Tue, 12 Oct 1999 07:59:27 -0400, Paul Schmitmeyer wrote: [and the Argalls made a similar point] >back up without any outside fertilizers. The crops pull what they need out >of the nutrient rich subsoil and brings it to the surface where it can be >used. Their crops continue to improve. Nutrient pumping (by crops) can be a valuable buffer against topsoil mineral loss to down-profile leaching in high rainfall areas. It can even recover some minerals that would otherwise have been lost, particularly calcium, magnesium, and potassium. It can also be a form of mining the soil, especially in dryer areas. That is how something like 60% of all the phosphorus in the top two metres of Prairie soils in the Canadian west has been exported in the form of wheat over the last 80 years or so. Phosphorus is not mobile in the soil, so even in a wet climate any phosphorus being brought up from the subsoil is being mined. All the nutrients exported from the farm must ultimately be replaced, or the system is not sustainable. Conventional wisdom uses large annual inputs of generally inefficient fertilisers --- only about 20% of the phosphate applied is available to the crop, for example --- to compensate for annual crop removal of NPK. Modified hydroponics, IMO. Agronomically effective organic production creates a substantial organic matter buffer against loss to leaching and erosion. Minerals are periodically replaced in the form of more slowly-released materials, made available to the system by an enthusiastic and healthy microbial community, living in the organic matter and regularly fed with green manure ploughdowns. Biological farming combines the best elements of conventional and organic approaches by supplementing the organic approach with judicious applications of very modest amounts of carefuly selected soluble fertilizers for improved crop response. Whatever the model, however, the nutrients exported (or lost) must be replaced, either by closing the loop (applying feedlot manure and human sewage to crop land) or by mining geologic deposits of those minerals and using them to replace what has left the system. Personally, I'm not real excited about the sewage option, so I'd opt for mined minerals. Fortunately, for most mineral nutrients this is not a problem. Calcium and magnesium are available in virtually unlimited supply in the limestones and dolomites found all over the world. At current inefficient use rates ,the Canadian supply of potash alone is sufficient for 4000 - 7000 years, depending on how the deposits are measured. Micronutrients are used in such small quantities that they are also not a problem. The real long-term weak link in the system is phosphorus. At current use rates (extraordinarily inefficient !), world supplies would last another 80 - 350 years, again depending on whose numbers you use. The only thing that mitigates the situation is the general immobility of phosphorus in the soil --- it doesn't leach downprofile like the cations. There's a lot I could say about improving the efficiency of phosphorus use --- but won't --- because this is already a long post, and since because this whole thread is in my area of expertise I've already been showing my electronic face around here a lot in the last couple of days. Bart To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From bluestem@webserf.net Tue Oct 12 14:51:31 1999 Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:50:00 +0100 From: Bluestem Associates To: "sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu" Subject: Re: fertigation-grade rock phosphate? On Mon, 11 Oct 1999 22:43:55 -0600 (MDT), Nathan/Rachna Boone wrote: > Can anyone help me compare the following two methods of applying >rock phosphate: > >1) Using micronized rock phosphate fed into irrigation lines at 25-100 lbs >per acre. ($30 for 25 lbs) > >vs. > >2) Field broadcasting of one ton/acre of granulated rock phosphate ($140/ton) > > >A local farmer has asked me what makes more sense, and I'm not sure how to >compare them. Any ideas??? Golly, I just can't get away from this, can I ? Actually I don't think a lot of either method. Micronized rock phsophate is still *suspended* in water, not dissolved, and it seems ready made for plugging something somewhere. Irritation systems (excuse me, irrigation systems) are enough trouble without giving them another excuse to act up. $30-120/ acre is an outrageous cost for 5 - 20 lbs of *total* phosphate, of which only 10-20% will be available the first year. Field broadcasting is a better option, but still not a good one. If it's Idaho phosphate the granulation is usually pretty good, but if it's from Florida what they call "granules" are really small clumps that didn't fully break up when they dried and ground the old slime-pond residues. Your biggest challenge in New Mexico --- or most anywhere west of about 98-W longitude --- is that the soils are usually alkaline. The stable form of phosphate in those soils is calcium phosphate, which is the same stuff you'd be adding and expecting to have released. Doesn't work very well. Phosphate rock needs an acid environment (preferably below pH 6.3) to break down. Your best bet out there is to mix phosphate with manure, compost it, and apply the compost to the land. The organic acids in the manure will release much of the phosphate, and the phosphate will stabilise much of the manure nitrogen against loss during the composting process. What's going on chemically is that much of the nitrogen in manure is in the form of ammonium carbonate (unstable). That reacts with the calcium phosphate to form calcium carbonate (limestone) and mono-ammonium phosphate (stable). This is the same MAP sold as 12-50-0 at the local fertilizer plant, but if you 'make' it this way it's allowed for organic production, while the stuff in a bag will get you busted. Go figure. You can add about 50 lb of phosphate rock per cubic yard of manure, and if moderately composted and applied at about 5 tons/acre it will add about 200 lb/ac of phosphate to the system, including phosphate from the manure. Most of it will be reasonably available, so your client should get a crop growing quickly to transfer the phosphate to the living fraction of the system. Otherwise it will eventually react with the soil and revert to calcium phosphate, which gets you back where you started. To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From grargall@alphalink.com.au Wed Oct 13 21:08:32 1999 Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 18:07:11 +1000 From: Argall Family To: sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Subject: Organic & Soil Nutrients and Mineralization [ The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] Thanks those several thoughts. Here a parcel more. On biodynamic and seaweed application, it would seem to me that the actual and intended effect is less in provision of micronutrients than in stimulation of 'soil life' - to use an expression to capture a lot of things, without a list, also to suggest that the whole of soil life might be more than the sum of the parts (see below). And that thus these are potentially beneficial in terms of the increase in soil nutrient and mineral quality. I agree with Bart's comment on absolute depletion of some elements. In Australia, the ubiquitously low level of phosphorus, for geological reasons, is reflected in the altered ATP processes in Eucalyptus trees; and in a century and more of grazing, much phosphorus has departed in wool bales, as well as in grain and meat. No wonder in such circumstances the arrival of superphosphate produced miracles. And 'super' is still an article of faith, despite hard pan effects, lowering of pH and evidence that there is a pretty quick lock up of the fertiliser. Heavy (calcium) liming to adjust declining pH is no doubt altering availabilities of a number of elements, especially Mg, which may be [I speculate] another factor contributing to the rise of osteoporosis. Widespread use of superphosphate has also produced widespread dieback in native plants, including Eucalypts, which eventually comes back to bite the farmer as tree losses raise water tables. There are limits to which the basic factors of geology and climate can be disregarded for the sake of growing exotic plants. Bart is not attracted to the use of sewage, but it seems to me that there needs to be public policy development, in the first instance to encourage the redevelopment of sewage systems (a big need in many cities anyway), over time (a period relevant to the decline in phosphate rock reserves), to ensure separation of potentially toxic chemical waste streams from recyclable sewage. I do know some organic vegetable farmers who keep pigeons - let loose during the day to forage - to collect high phosphate droppings to add to compost. Pigeons require a diet around 27% protein. Their droppings, in my experience, will eat paint on a Ford more quickly than anything else. 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. I have been trying to find my copy of Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions, Penguin 1990 [still in print] which has a useful review, chapter 4, of the debate, as regards the origins of life, on the issue of whether 'the cell', protein or RNA came first. The current overwhelming preoccupation of biology is on genes, but there is quite a case for arguing that the cell and protein may come first. Whereas the 'origins of life' hunt is carried out mainly in geology, it seems to me that a whole lot of it is happening all the time under our noses in the soil, particularly in the formation of coacervates associated with clay microcrystals. I agree with Ronald that this ain't magic, unless you define magic as biological processes which, for lack of understanding, some people prefer to give supernatural explanation. Carl Lindgren discusses the coacervate issue in 'Cold War in Biology', Ann Arbor, 1966. So, I think it is important to think not only about assays of elements, or the idea of "deep rooted plants to bring them up again from the subsoil and deposit them in the top soil in leaf litter and other residues" [Nigh] It may have not been Ronald's intention for this to sound a mechanical process, but it can be read that way if we don't get a focus on the intensity of soil activity. Also the additive accounting view of elements requires me to quote again the Nobel Prize winning physiologist, 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. This is the most basic equation of biology. It can also be called organisation." Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Bioelectronics: A Study in Cellular Regulations, Defense, and Cancer, Academic Press New York, 1968, p4. Unless we regard the matter of mineral management as organisational rather than additive we are likely to treat plants the soil and plants disruptively. Ronald and Steve offer the anecdotal evidence of smarter animals knowing the good from the bad. They are talking about mammals. But what about insects? The evidence of observation is that insects are attracted to the nutritionally deficient. Some fresh observations: I have recently been pruning citrus trees neglected for several years. These have been attacked by leaf miners and by borers. I am struck by the nifty way that the leaf miners trimmed the top and edges and by the way the borers have ring-barked the trees where I thought it sage to prune - some of the borer work was obvious with leaves yellowing, but in some cases the borer work was very recent, no die back apparent, and as I reached in with the pruners, exercising my big-front-brain genius, there was the saw-dusty ring-barking where I planned to cut. Fukuoka, in one Straw Revolution, notes the pruning and thinning effect of one particular rice pest, and observes that leaving that pest in the rice field actually increases crop yield - he emphasises the selection of stronger plants in the process and the provision of more light and better heading to plants, but there would seem also to be a prompt sheet composting effect of both vegetable and insect wastes.. So, presence of insect pests (I am not talking of grasshopper plagues, though there are broader management issues no doubt there) represent both signs of nutritional deficit, and adjustment requirements for the plant. So, another bag, another dollar? My point is that there are ways of seeking to minimise inputs to the farm, and that these should come first, and that where there are inputs they should be soil nutritional rather than either force feeding or allopathic in effect. And I suggest that for the long term the focus ought to be on recycling the losses from the farm. Put all those odd wool socks in the compost, unwashed, perhaps, to hasten degradation. Which, of course, raises the entirely irrelevant but nonetheless intriguing question: why are all odd socks clean? Dennis [maybe if I put my tongue in my cheek earlier in the message I might bite it sooner...] To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From WIEGAND@lufa-sp.vdlufa.de Fri Oct 15 14:09:47 1999 Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 11:27:37 +0200 From: Klaus Wiegand To: sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Subject: Re: Organic & Soil Nutrients and Mineralization [ The following text is in the "ISO-8859-1" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] 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 To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From grargall@alphalink.com.au Fri Oct 15 14:10:29 1999 Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 18:07:11 +1000 From: Argall Family To: sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Subject: Organic & Soil Nutrients and Mineralization [ The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] Thanks those several thoughts. Here a parcel more. On biodynamic and seaweed application, it would seem to me that the actual and intended effect is less in provision of micronutrients than in stimulation of 'soil life' - to use an expression to capture a lot of things, without a list, also to suggest that the whole of soil life might be more than the sum of the parts (see below). And that thus these are potentially beneficial in terms of the increase in soil nutrient and mineral quality. I agree with Bart's comment on absolute depletion of some elements. In Australia, the ubiquitously low level of phosphorus, for geological reasons, is reflected in the altered ATP processes in Eucalyptus trees; and in a century and more of grazing, much phosphorus has departed in wool bales, as well as in grain and meat. No wonder in such circumstances the arrival of superphosphate produced miracles. And 'super' is still an article of faith, despite hard pan effects, lowering of pH and evidence that there is a pretty quick lock up of the fertiliser. Heavy (calcium) liming to adjust declining pH is no doubt altering availabilities of a number of elements, especially Mg, which may be [I speculate] another factor contributing to the rise of osteoporosis. Widespread use of superphosphate has also produced widespread dieback in native plants, including Eucalypts, which eventually comes back to bite the farmer as tree losses raise water tables. There are limits to which the basic factors of geology and climate can be disregarded for the sake of growing exotic plants. Bart is not attracted to the use of sewage, but it seems to me that there needs to be public policy development, in the first instance to encourage the redevelopment of sewage systems (a big need in many cities anyway), over time (a period relevant to the decline in phosphate rock reserves), to ensure separation of potentially toxic chemical waste streams from recyclable sewage. I do know some organic vegetable farmers who keep pigeons - let loose during the day to forage - to collect high phosphate droppings to add to compost. Pigeons require a diet around 27% protein. Their droppings, in my experience, will eat paint on a Ford more quickly than anything else. 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. I have been trying to find my copy of Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions, Penguin 1990 [still in print] which has a useful review, chapter 4, of the debate, as regards the origins of life, on the issue of whether 'the cell', protein or RNA came first. The current overwhelming preoccupation of biology is on genes, but there is quite a case for arguing that the cell and protein may come first. Whereas the 'origins of life' hunt is carried out mainly in geology, it seems to me that a whole lot of it is happening all the time under our noses in the soil, particularly in the formation of coacervates associated with clay microcrystals. I agree with Ronald that this ain't magic, unless you define magic as biological processes which, for lack of understanding, some people prefer to give supernatural explanation. Carl Lindgren discusses the coacervate issue in 'Cold War in Biology', Ann Arbor, 1966. So, I think it is important to think not only about assays of elements, or the idea of "deep rooted plants to bring them up again from the subsoil and deposit them in the top soil in leaf litter and other residues" [Nigh] It may have not been Ronald's intention for this to sound a mechanical process, but it can be read that way if we don't get a focus on the intensity of soil activity. Also the additive accounting view of elements requires me to quote again the Nobel Prize winning physiologist, 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. This is the most basic equation of biology. It can also be called organisation." Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Bioelectronics: A Study in Cellular Regulations, Defense, and Cancer, Academic Press New York, 1968, p4. Unless we regard the matter of mineral management as organisational rather than additive we are likely to treat plants the soil and plants disruptively. Ronald and Steve offer the anecdotal evidence of smarter animals knowing the good from the bad. They are talking about mammals. But what about insects? The evidence of observation is that insects are attracted to the nutritionally deficient. Some fresh observations: I have recently been pruning citrus trees neglected for several years. These have been attacked by leaf miners and by borers. I am struck by the nifty way that the leaf miners trimmed the top and edges and by the way the borers have ring-barked the trees where I thought it sage to prune - some of the borer work was obvious with leaves yellowing, but in some cases the borer work was very recent, no die back apparent, and as I reached in with the pruners, exercising my big-front-brain genius, there was the saw-dusty ring-barking where I planned to cut. Fukuoka, in one Straw Revolution, notes the pruning and thinning effect of one particular rice pest, and observes that leaving that pest in the rice field actually increases crop yield - he emphasises the selection of stronger plants in the process and the provision of more light and better heading to plants, but there would seem also to be a prompt sheet composting effect of both vegetable and insect wastes.. So, presence of insect pests (I am not talking of grasshopper plagues, though there are broader management issues no doubt there) represent both signs of nutritional deficit, and adjustment requirements for the plant. So, another bag, another dollar? My point is that there are ways of seeking to minimise inputs to the farm, and that these should come first, and that where there are inputs they should be soil nutritional rather than either force feeding or allopathic in effect. And I suggest that for the long term the focus ought to be on recycling the losses from the farm. Put all those odd wool socks in the compost, unwashed, perhaps, to hasten degradation. Which, of course, raises the entirely irrelevant but nonetheless intriguing question: why are all odd socks clean? Dennis [maybe if I put my tongue in my cheek earlier in the message I might bite it sooner...] To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail