On the vital importance of soil health!

Traditional farming relies on stripping the earth bare to pant the seeds that will be harvested in a few months time. In the temperate regions these bare fields are left as such to overwinter. This may be its saving grace since it allows the earth to rest until the next growing season and regenerates to some extend the soil biota.

In the tropics however there is a whole different story. Farmers try to emulate the farming in temperate regions with often devastating consequences.

The advantage of farming in the tropics is that one could potentialy use the land all year round. The disadvantage is that the soil horizon is highly unstable due to torrential rains in the rainy season, high heat and sun and drought in the dry season. Soils get eroded quickly and the most of the fertile portions of the soil gets washed away into rivers when left exposed.

Regardless of the climate however, I fear that conventional farming has completely ignored the biological factor of soils, as being vitaly important in not only the health of the soil but consequently the health of the people connected to the soil. As the Biochemist Rene Voisin has stated last century already, Human health and illness is directly dependant on soil health. Nowadays farmers are primary concerned with 3 nutrients NPK. Nitrogen, phosphorus and Potassium. How naive we must be to believe that an organism as complicated as a plant has needs so simplistic that we can round it up into three letters!
Of course some other micronutrients are occasionaly considered by farmers, however often when fertilizers are concerned NPK becomes the norm.

When is soil organic matter ever considered? How igonrant we are that we simplify nature som nuch so that we may consider oursleves master tamers of "the beast".

Nature is vastly more complicated than we give it credit for. And soil organic matter must be nurtured constantly since it is the "breastmilk" of our plants. Soil Biota are which allow soil organic matter to thrive. A complex cocktail of bacteria, fungi, yeasts, molds, worms, ants, and so many other insects are involved in nutrient cycling in the earth. This small biosphere must bu protected and nurtured at all cost. Now if we put a caustic chemical sucha as urea (a nitrogen source) onto the soil, would it not damage the sensitive balance of organisms that exist? Now imagine pesticides, herbicides, the entire agro- farmaceutical arsenal at the disposal of the farmer. We are poisoning our own nutrient sink of which all our well being depends. Because that is exactly what our soils are to us. Everyting we need to live, to thrive to function, is contained in the nutrient sink of our soils. Plants are the builders of the molecules that we need. But the building blocks come from nowhere else but... soil.