45
Fine sand
0.25-0.10
46,000
91
Very fine sand
0.10-0.05
722,000
227
Silt
0.05-0.002
5,776,000
454
Clay
Below 0.002
90,260,853,000
8,000,000
Note: The smallest three diameters listed will all pass a 200-mesh screen.
Table 2.1 Characteristics of soil separates
In addition, from experiments to date, it seems likely that most river gravels will give good results when ground to dust.
Any non-river deposit of mixed gravel is likely to be of glacial origin and highly active when ground.
All present gravel pits where crushing of gravel is done have large amounts of discarded fines which can be economically ground.
In all probability these sources of raw materials are adequate anywhere in the world for many years to come. Sometime in the future vertical cuts in gorges and mountainsides may be necessary.
An average spectrographic analysis of Michigan gravels can be used as a rough standard for gravels. The spectrograph will show between 25 and 35 of the elements, depending on the skill of the operator and the quality of the machine. If the principal elements are there in roughly the same quantities as in glacial gravel, and if the other elements are present, the gravel will be useful. An even simpler test is to grind a little gravel, mix it with an organic soil, and grow some radishes to compare with those grown on untreated soil. They should show a major difference in size, taste quality, and texture. Any mixture that will give good growth and is found locally is what we must use.
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T H E S U R V I V A L O F C I V I L I Z A T I O N
In 1893, a German named Julius Hensel published a small book called Bread From Stones. He had demonstrated that a mixture of ground stones representing a cross section of all the types of rocks would produce good yields of top-quality crops. The only reason he could not compete with the agricultural chemicals was the lack of a good grinder. Such a grinder has been patented and a small prototype built by the writer. It is far more efficient, far less expensive in initial cost and maintenance, than conventional rock grinders and it can be mass-produced in a size suitable for individual farmers or big enough for gravel pits. It was offered to the mining industry in the mid-1960’s and refused unanimously. It would have cut the mining grinder business to a fraction of its then-and-present gross income. In this monopolistic economy, “the better mousetrap” concept is dead if the better machine will adversely affect a significant amount of invested capital and earnings. The grinder is not being built now because it would render obsolete the very non-competitive agricultural chemicals industry. [2002 DW Note: My separate volume, To Love And Regenerate The Earth, also on this website, includes an Appendix I titled “More on the Hamaker-Designed, Patent-Free, High-Pressure Autogenous Grinder”.]
If remineralization is to be effective in the short time left to us, some form of small, efficient grinder must be mass-produced. We need millions of units both here and abroad.
Improving soil fertility means feeding the microorganisms. Availability of the rock elements is one food factor. Another factor is sea solids. They come with the clouds whipped off ocean whitecaps. They are highly available near the coast and not sufficiently available far inland, where goiter problems indicate that iodine and many other elements, most of which are highly water soluble or water suspendable, are in short supply and should be added to the soil at 5 percent or 10 percent of the weight of gravel dust added.
The microorganisms in a rich soil build the soil to take in rainwater and hold it in storage.
The proper proportion of water in protoplasm is 90 percent. It is important that protoplasm be maintained as a dilute solution. The sun evaporates water from the leaves of the plant, concentrating the protoplasm solution. It is characteristic of water solutions that the water of the more dilute solution will pass through a membrane into a more concentrated solution.
This force of osmosis is very powerful. It is the force that moves the water to the top of a sequoia. Water is of course necessary to all cells in order for them to function. Cells have a way of opening up and engulfing the very large molecules of protoplasm. Since the cells are alive and expend energy, they probably pass the molecules or its components from one cell to another until it reaches the part of the plant where it is needed.
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F O O D , E N E R G Y A N D S U R V I V A L
If dry weather depletes the water held by the soil and the microorganisms to the concentration of the water in the leaf cells, all protoplasm feeding stops and growth is arrested.
Irrigation is not the answer to water shortage problems. If all farmers irrigated, the underground water supplies would soon be depleted (as they are in the process of becoming now). The answer is to keep feeding the microorganisms until the aerated zone is 18 to 24
inches deep and capable of holding all of the rain that falls until the excess can seep into the subsoil and reach the underground aquifer, instead of running off the surface and taking the soil with it. It will take a decade or two for roots and earthworms to deepen the topsoil significantly below plow depth.
Nitrogen from the air is the ultimate source of most of the nitrogen in the protein compounds of the microorganism protoplasm, the solid matter of which is about two-thirds protein. It is not, however, the principal source of crop-growth nitrogen, as will be discussed later.
The same is true of carbon, which is the dominant element in all organic matter. The leaves take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen, retaining the carbon for the necessary carbohydrate construction and for energy requirements. When the plant dies, it goes into the soil or on the soil where it is utilized as a part of the food supply of various soil organisms.
Eventually it is all carried into the soil, principally by earthworms as they combine leaf mold with minerals ground in their gizzards to produce microorganisms. Their castings are almost all microorganisms, and a source of protoplasm not overlooked by the hair roots of plants.
Since the rye plant has been estimated to have a root system seven miles long, it is apparent that plants can do a lot of searching for protoplasm. The root tips grow a lot faster than microorganisms can move, so the microorganisms are easy prey to roots. When in intimate proximity to the cell, the flow of protoplasm begins.
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T H E S U R V I V A L O F C I V I L I Z A T I O N
The root cannot take in the cell membrane of the organism. The membranes are held against the root by the pressure of other cells forced against the root by the diffusion pressure between the microorganism cells and the root cells. Soon the older root cells are all plugged with microorganism cell membranes, which subsequently turn the brown color of all mature roots. The root functions simply as a pipe, while the rapidly growing white root tips continue to devour cell protoplasm.
If the protoplasm of the root cells gets too dry, then the protoplasm intake must stop because osmosis requires that the more dilute solution in the microorganisms must flow toward a more concentrated solution in the plant cells. For this reason the root tips (which can take in soil water) constantly remove water from the zone where they are feeding, and the water is moved upward to the leaves, keeping the cells saturated and evaporating the excess.
The intestinal tracts of all animals work essentially the same way, except that the microorganisms and their food supply are inside intestines and the protoplasm compounds feed into the intestinal wall where they are picked up by a blood vessel system for sorting out in the liver. Excess water passes readily through the system and is ultimately evaporated from the sweat glands or extracted by the kidneys and excreted in the urine.
Nature has used just one basic design for all the living organisms with variations as required by each type of organism.
It should be noted that plant and animal digestive systems will readily pass water into the plant or animal. If toxic compounds are in solution in the water, they too will pass readily into the plant or animal. Therein lies the great danger of water-soluble chemicals used in the soil and in foods and beverages. Any toxic substance can enter the plant or animal with the protoplasm if it has been taken in by the microorganisms. Thus, anything other than the natural balance of elements and the natural organic compounds produced from them by the microorganisms is damaging to the entire chain of life. In particular, the continued buildup in the biosphere of non-biodegradable synthetic organic compounds is now in the process of destroying humanity by alteration of the genetic compounds.
We see, then, that the rate of production of microorganisms will be high if the soil contains: a large surface area of available elements; a large supply of plant residue for carbon and a little nitrogen; the nitrogen that many organisms can take from the air as the air breathes in and out of the soil with temperature changes; water and the other necessary factors from the air.
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Since the life of a microorganism is only a few hours whether or not it is used by a plant root, a huge number of cell membranes ( hereafter “skins” ) will be produced in a growing season. The skins are proteins, meaning that they constitute a ready supply of carbon and nitrogen and a few elements, which are highly available to grow microorganisms in the presence of available elements from the soil stone particles. Skins start accumulating as the soil warms up in the spring, and continue to build up until the crop root system starts removing carbon and nitrogen as protoplasm, thus depleting the soil of both live microorganisms and skins. As soon as the frost comes, the tide is again turned and the dead root system supplies carbon and small amounts of other elements to again build up the supply of skins.
It appears that the carbon and nitrogen of fresh skins are not available to microorganisms until the skins go through whatever changes are involved in turning black. Apparently, a colony of organisms working around a stone particle soon produce so many fresh skins that the colony is sealed off from the black skins and must therefore use nitrogen from the air.
Thus the intake of atmospheric nitrogen goes on from the time the ground warms up in the spring until it gets too cold in the fall. When the plant roots start feeding in the spring, nitrogen and carbon are available in the black skins for rapid production of microorganisms.
Earthworms can use both fresh and black skins to quickly produce microorganisms in their castings. In a natural soil, the earthworms contribute very heavily toward rapid plant growth.
After a soil is mineralized in depth, tillage should be limited to weed control to avoid excessive worm destruction.
Obviously, from the preceding discussion, soil needs a rest period if large yields are to be obtained. It would also be desirable to lightly disk crop residues into the soil to provide a winter mulch and to make the crop stalk easily available to the soil organisms for rapid breakdown.
It is also implied that a maximum amount of plant residue be returned to the soil if maximum yields of grains, vegetables, fruits and trees are to be produced. The reason is the proximity factor. If one ton of gravel dust per acre is added to the soil, the available elements are there only at one part per 1000 in the top seven or eight inches by weight, and even less by volume in a predominantly clay (subsoil) soil. If there is not an abundance of skins present, the skins may not be close enough to the available minerals to be useful to the local colony of microorganisms. High yields depend on loading the soil with both a large surface area of available minerals and organic matter; the combination is turned into live microorganisms which then yield more skins. Note: others call the skins humus, not knowing what humus is.
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T H E S U R V I V A L O F C I V I L I Z A T I O N
If my ten acres were farmed chemically, the organic matter (skin supply) would be constantly depleted. The small overall surface area of unused stone in the soil provides an insignificant amount of available elements. The chemical fertilizer would release enough elements to grow sufficient microorganisms to feed a weak crop, but when the chemicals are used up (and on weak soil this often occurs before the crop has matured if the chemicals are inadequate in quantity or too fast in dissolving), the production of microorganisms would virtually stop. There would be no significant buildup of skins either in late fall or in the spring. Taking the stalk along with the grain, etc., as is often done, would limit the utilization of the very few available minerals in the dwindling supply of passivated stone particles still in the soil.
What I have been saying about how the soil really works to provide food (and fuel) can be easily proven. Mostly it can be done by simple experiments which, of course, can be verified by sophisticated microscopic equipment and other techniques.
Protoplasm can be extracted from soil either by centrifuge or simple mechanical working of the soil to burst the cell walls. If the soil is then flooded with water, stirred to put the protoplasm in the water, and soil particles allowed to settle, the solution of protoplasm water can be drawn off as a clear fluid.
The few microorganisms which live through the experience, plus those which are in the air, soon repopulate the solution. You can’t see them because they are colorless, but if a plant’s roots are placed in the solution, you can see the flocculated mass of skins which collect around the root. You can also see the color of the roots change as the skins seal off the cell walls of the root. Plants grow luxuriantly in protoplasm solution. Fortunately they don’t know they are supposed to indulge in an ionic exchange with the rock particles of the soil.
And they don’t have any oddball ideas about following microorganisms around to consume any waste products they may discard. They just sidle up to an organism and take all the protoplasm it has.
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F O O D , E N E R G Y A N D S U R V I V A L
Professor William Albrecht of the University of Missouri, some 50 years ago, decided to centrifuge soil to see if a single component of the soil was responsible for plant growth. The centrifuge inevitably broke all the organism cell walls and delivered the clear protoplasm off the top. It did give excellent growth to the plants. Unfortunately, he did not recognize that it was protoplasm, although he found carbon and nitrogen with repeated testing. He called it a soil colloid or soil solution.
As mentioned earlier, a water solution in the soil cannot stay there because it would diffuse into rain water and run off the surface or percolate into the subsoil. The only way it can stay there is inside a cell wall. This is clearly shown in the low spots in fields with a slow subsoil percolation rate. If water stands in such a spot for about two weeks, the cell wall of the aerobic organisms lyse, i.e. rupture, and spill the protoplasm into the water where it can diffuse into the pond. The sun dries the pond, leaving a hard protoplasm cake on the surface of the soil. The crop in the low spot will be badly stunted throughout the growing season and the soil will not be productive until the protoplasm cake is cultivated back into the soil.
Dr. Albrecht did a great deal of experimentation with various rock elements, relating them to plant growth and plant and animal health. Had he but realized that the elements were feeding the microorganisms which in turn fed the plant, the world might have been spared the crisis which is in the process of destroying us. On the other hand, the agricultural chemicals establishment has shown a remarkable ability to quash heretical statements of fact.
It is interesting to note that a highly organic soil can be turned to a sand color simply by adding a heavy application of gravel dust. What happens is that the availability of elements is so high that skins cannot exist in the soil without being consumed by live microorganisms.
As soon as a microorganism dies, its protoplasm is consumed by live microorganisms. Since live microorganisms and fresh skins are colorless, only the color of the soil minerals is seen.
The fertility of such a soil is at a maximum until additional plant residue is added to the soil. Sufficient residue will permit the development of skins, and the soil will turn brown indicating a good balance between available elements and available carbon and nitrogen. A black soil indicates more carbon than can be used. Soils should show black in the spring, and brown in the fall. This color change phenomena, indicating the relation between available elements and the carbon-nitrogen supply, cannot occur if chemical agriculture is practiced because the skins would never build up in the soil to turn brown and then black.
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T H E S U R V I V A L O F C I V I L I Z A T I O N
Understanding how the factors in the soil work together makes it possible to tailor farming practices to the feeding requirements of the microorganisms. However, the elemental requirements for high yields are simply to load the soil with as much plant residue and available elements as the increased rate of production (hence income) will support. The upper limit of soil fertility (crop yields) is not yet known. A few examples of the application of the natural principles will both verify the accuracy of the principles and give some idea of potential crop yields.
Organic Gardens
Old organic gardens are invariably loaded with skins. Garden produce is not high in protein and hence does not remove the quantities of protoplasm removed by grain crops. The gardens are kept bare of grass and often mulched with crop residue taken from outside the garden. The available minerals spend most of the growing season just turning plant residue into skins. Thus, when ground gravel is added, the availability of carbon and nitrogen to the organisms working a dust particle is excellent. Given a good water supply, the microorganisms multiply prolifically.
One such garden was treated with about 11/4 tons of ground glacial gravel per acre; a squash plant crawled all over a nearby tree, making it look like a squash tree. The next year an additional 11/4 tons per acre of gravel dust was added, but owner George Haynes sold his house, and the garden grew up in weeds. It was rather awesome when one considered how to go about getting that mass of organic matter worked back into the soil so a garden could be planted the next year. The plants were 6 to 12 inches apart and grew to 11 feet in height. (See Fig. 2.2) In that massive woody growth, one could see the potential for wood plantations producing eight-inch diameter cordwood in about four years with fast-growing tree varieties (such as poplars, cottonwoods, eucalyptus, willow, locust, southern beech, etc.) One can also see how foolish it is to spend research money on photosynthesis. If the protoplasm is in the leaf, photosynthesis booms.
The same kind of weeds growing outside the Haynes garden on land which had not been farmed for at least 30 years were about four feet tall and widely spaced. On my farmed-out ten acres, the same plants were growing two to three feet tall. Three different soils with three different levels of organism-feeding capacity. It makes a clear picture of why all the living things on Earth have been slowly starving to death—needlessly.
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Fig. 2.2 “George Haynes grows the best crop of weeds in Michigan.”
Another organic garden gained its necessary proximity factor in a different way. It was on a natural deposit of ground glacial gravel dust. The reason such deposits can remain almost as deposited is that they are so dense that plant roots and earthworms cannot penetrate them. The zone of aeration therefore remains very thin and the aerobic organisms cannot penetrate. A grass turf had a root zone of about two inches. Undaunted, the gardener dug it up and mixed all his leaves and grass clippings with the dust, and soon had it booming. In a garden only about 30 by 40 feet, he supplied the vegetables to raise a family. After a frost there were more tomatoes and melons on the ground than a lot of gardeners grow in a whole season. Carrots, still growing, were a foot long and 11/2 inches in diameter.
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T H E S U R V I V A L O F C I V I L I Z A T I O N
Another organic gardener grew potatoes up to three pounds. I saw his plants recently.
They were three or four times as big as my garden plants and I grow respectable potatoes.
This gardener happened to be the owner of a gravel pit, so when he added crusher screenings, he did not stint on the amount. About one-sixth of the screenings are 200-mesh dust.
Screenings have considerably less surface area than ground gravel on a weight basis, and there is certain to be more demineralized stone skin in the crusher fines. Screenings are nevertheless quite active when used in sufficient quantity.
Finally, I have in my garden 11.2 tons per acre of dust on one end and 8 tons per acre on the other end. I also have peat where there is the most dust. When there was adequate ground moisture (which has not occurred too often between 1976 and 1979), flowering and yield have been excellent. With a long “Indian summer” in 1978, carrots grew to three inches in diameter and 11/4 pounds; cabbage heads to nine inches in diameter.
The garden was started on the worn-out ten acres. It has been mineralized to some degree since 1974. There has been a huge improvement in the soil. At both ends the soil continues to darken, indicating a buildup of skins. Yields have increased accordingly. The garden is 55 ’
by 135 ’. In spite of the dry summers (and no irrigation), it provides the two of us with all of our winter vegetables as well as a surplus for our two daughters.
A more important experiment is the four and one-third acres of my ten acres which were mineralized with 46 tons per acre of crusher screenings in late 1976. The cost was $820. Not a cent has been spent since nor will be for the next 10 or 15 years. A farmer works the field on shares. After spreading the screenings on the weedy growth, it was plowed to get available elements in deep. Those elements at the bottom of the furrow probably did not become very useful until this year’s crop because the zone of aeration had to be developed from the top down in the heavy clay soil.
In this third crop year, the soil seems to be well mixed and much darker in color. In 1977
a corn crop was grown. At 65 bushels per acre it was a good crop in an area of sparse rainfall.
In 1978 a soybean crop of 25 bushels per acre was obtained. Local crops just dried up and quit in late August of that year, leaving most of the beans in an immature state. In spite of this the protein was up to 321/2 percent — all protein, no false nitrate fertilizer reading. High yields cannot be obtained when precipitation is 6 inches short of normal by the first week of September.
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The weather pattern in 1979 changed from the previous three dry years. That year a cold dry spring carried to the 25th of June when frost damaged some crops. At one local point in lower Michigan, the temperature dropped to 28 degrees F. and killed all crops. Shortly thereafter we had a slow 3-inch rain which saved a lot of crops. Then it was dry again. But by mid-August 1979 we had adequate rain and were running only 21/2 inches below normal. We were 450 temperature degree-days below normal, which ought to make all Michigan legislators do a lot of thinking about what it will mean when all of Michigan’s farmers are faced with frozen crops some crisp summer day in the next few years.
The 1979 crop on the four and one-third acres was scheduled to be oats, but the ground did not warm up soon enough, so it turned out to be corn. A substantial part of the corn was 8
feet tall and a good proportion of the stalks made two ears. In spite of the two dry periods in the growing season, it was a good crop.
The mineralized organic gardens clearly show that there is a potential for increasing present yields by a factor of four. When this is accomplished across the land, we will have about twice the capacity we need to provide the present amount of food and all of our energy supplies. The problem is the time scale in which we must work in order to survive.
A small area of the ten acres was mineralized but not plowed. In the third growing season (1979), there was evidence of penetration of the available elements into the soil. Young trees which had seeded themselves were healthier-looking and growing faster than those on the rest of the ten acres. Crimson clover multiplied. From this meager information on a soil which had been too dry for perceptible growth during half the growing season, it appears that grazing lands and forests which have decaying plant litter on the ground will begin to show the remineralization health factors within two years, and the growth rate will increase year by year.
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T H E S U R V I V A L O F C I V I L I Z A T I O N
In the case of cropland which has been worn out and compacted like the four and one-third acres of now-mineralized soil, a heavy application of available elements has produced crops equal to or better than similar crops in the same rainfall area. For instance, the 65
bushels per acre corn in the first year compares very well with yields of under 25 bushels per acre experienced by a number of local farmers. In 1975, the last year of good soil moisture, 60-day golden bantam corn in the garden gave an excellent yield having 2, 3, and 4 ears per stalk. With a full growing season of good soil moisture, the present four and one-third acres of field corn would have done as well, for a probable yield of around 200 bushels per acre.
The onset of glaciation has sent too many summer-time cold waves over Michigan and precipitated the clouds over areas to the south and west, leaving most of Michigan too dry.
However, from Iowa east and south, corn has never had it so good. The same treatment I have used, if given to those areas, would now be producing super yields of over 200 bushels per acre of high-quality corn. Every year of adding back the stalk will produce a substantial jump in yield as shown by the organic gardens’ performance and numerous single-plant experiments.
The yield limit is uncertain but the factor of 4 appears to be minimal. It is this great potential which gives us a chance to get enough plant growth and convert far enough toward biomass solar energy to arrest and begin to reverse the flow of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the six or eight years in which it must be done. The 1979 June and mid-August frosts lacked only a few degrees of temperature drop to have caused major crop losses in the top tier of states and Canada. We can expect much damage to these areas, and to almost all of Eurasian grain areas, before the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is arrested and reversed. It is therefore imperative that those areas where crops can still be counted on, be made to produce at a maximum.
Needless to say, no pesticides nor herbicides should be used, because they all kill microorganisms as well as the target insects and weeds. Only biological controls and quickly-biodegradable natural insecticides such as pyrethrins, rotenone and B. thuringiensis should be used. Money spent for chemical fertilizer will give more yield if spent instead for more gravel dust.
When widespread production of ground gravel dust is set up, the ground product will be substantially lower cost than crusher screenings. I estimate that the 46 tons per acre of screenings is just about as active as 10 to 12 tons per acre of gravel dust. Any transportation of stone is expensive, but transportation cost for dust is only one-fourth that for screenings.
Distribution costs for screenings are also higher. However, either one is a far better buy for the farmer than agricultural chemicals. If the dust is applied heavily, it does not need to be applied again for a period of years; each ton per acre applied will last somewhat more than one year, unless it is desired to raise the production level. After 5 years my garden is still increasing in yield. The rate of yield will vary the requirement for minerals, of course, and with a