Many people have difficulty in comprehending the fact that the soils are running out of minerals. Perhaps the following discussion will help to explain our dilemma.
About 25 miles northwest of Lansing, Michigan, (one mile west on Price Road from Francis Road,) there is a portion of a drainage ditch called the Wandell Drain. (Fig. 5.1 and Fig. 5.2, p. 94)
The pictures show a streak of gravel, sand, and clay on both sides of the ditch. Gravel and boulders strewn on the bank and in the bottom of the ditch simply fell out of the backhoe bucket as it was drawn up the bank. I followed the ditch for about four miles and the gravel streak was continuous. The visible streak is a cross section of a layer of gravel which lies about 6 to 10 feet below all the land drained by the ditch.
The gravel layer averages about a foot thick, varying above and below this dimension.
Below the gravel layer is a very dense clay with a very slow rate of water penetration. Above the gravel layer is typical worn-out subsoil. The ditch is in a natural stream bed.
Consequently, there is much more organic matter in the subsoil than there is on the crop land in the drainage basin. When there is water in the subsoil, numerous small streams of water flow out of the gravel layer. The streams of water have, in a few weeks, cut many small ditches in the dense clay below the gravel layer.
The information in the ditch ties into something learned from a backhoe hole dug on my 10-acre plot in a vain effort to satisfy the asinine septic system requirements of the Michigan State Health Department. They require that a septic field be connected to an underlying bed of deep sand, presumably on the theory that sewage improves the nutritional quality of well water.
On the sidewall of the backhoe excavation close to the bottom, there was an oval area of sand about a foot wide, through which a stream of water was flowing. The sand was a rather large-grain size, making a porous vein through which the water could flow toward the ditch.
In retrospect, it is apparent that the depth of the gravel layer now exposed in the ditch is about the same as the stream of water close to the bottom of the backhoe hole, and that the water was flowing to the ditch through the gravel layer. What the backhoe brought up at that depth was mostly subsoil with a few pieces of large gravel and a little sand.
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The above observations are very instructive. They permit our drawing two significant conclusions:
1. The thin drainage layer of gravel is all that is left of the approximately 6 to 10 feet of glacial till which was deposited by the last glacial advance in this area.
2. This bottom layer of that glacial till constitutes the natural drainage system which prevents the land from becoming saturated and turning into a vast swamp. It also supplies water for the deep roots of plants in dry weather.
The thickness of the layer of glacial till immediately following glaciation 10,000 years ago can only be guessed at. We know that erosion has removed some of the worn-out rock residue; we do not know how much, since we do not know if the present elevation of the gravel layer is at the original elevation. Furthermore, water filtering down from the topsoil and flowing horizontally in the drainage layer of gravel and sand keep this layer cleared of the fine particles of worn-out material. Above the drainage zone, the worn-out particles, carried by percolating rain water working in conjunction with the soil expansion and contraction, flow under the larger particles of unused material and gradually displace them upward to the topsoil. One thing is certain. On my 10 acres, the only significant amount of unused glacial till is in the drainage layer and in the topsoil. In the topsoil I found a total of 21/2 inches of unused material, and it has been so badly leached by the acids of chemical agriculture that four of the trace elements (zinc, tin, strontium and lithium) found in glacial gravel by spectrographic analysis did not show up at all in a similar spectrographic analysis of my soil.
Virgin forests take in 100 percent of the rainfall. A couple of hundred years ago, Michigan was largely covered with virgin forests. At that time, the amount of water flowing in the drainage layer of till was undoubtedly enough to keep the entire layer flushed out and in place. The land was converted for farming and, as a result, the bank of fertility, instead of being recycled as in the virgin forest, has been converted to crops and shipped out. The remaining forested land has been harvested repeatedly, thus removing soil minerals.
The lack of soil moisture has become a major problem. Under natural conditions, a drainage basin stream tends to fill with sediment up to a foot or two above the graveled drainage layer, thereby slowing the discharge of water from the drainage basin subsoil. This holding back of the water in the drainage layer causes streams and rivers to run at about the same level the year around instead of being dry or flooding.
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Ten years ago, there was a shallow pond plus 4 or 5 acres of marshland behind my 10-acre plot. This water-saturated area exerted a constant pressure of about 10 feet of water on the slowly-permeable dense clay below the gravel layer. It must have been a prime source for the underground water supply. When the drainage layer under the drainage basin was full of water, it also greatly enhanced the penetration of water into the underground reservoirs.
Now there is a ditch about 15 feet deep through the marsh. The marsh and pond have been drained. In the pond area, there is about 10 feet of peat exposed above the drainage layer of gravel. The underground reservoirs are obviously being depleted.
Five acres of marshland have been made available for agriculture, but the underground water has been pulled out from hundreds of acres of cropland subsoil. No wonder the crops are in trouble after a couple of weeks of dry weather! The crops are almost entirely dependent on a thin topsoil that is low on organic matter and contains too few available minerals to support a soil organism population adequate to prepare the soil for good water storage.
There is another effect taking place. The base of the gravel drainage layer is a sharp line, but the topside of the layer is up-and-down, as seen in the picture (Fig. 5.2). When the trees were cut down, and the moldboard plow sealed the subsoil clay, the water started moving laterally on the hardpan into the low areas of the field. My four-and-a-third acres of soil mineralized with 46 tons/acre of gravel crusher screenings is still doing that after four years, although to a much lesser extent than when the first crop was planted. Throughout the world, soils similar to my ten acres have only enough water reaching the drainage layer to keep small streams flowing at intervals of 6 or 8 feet. The rest of the gravel layer has become infiltrated by clay, and the gravel has begun to rise toward the surface. We are in the process of losing the drainage layer on a worldwide scale.
The destruction of the drainage layer has been further intensified because some farmers have listened to “experts” at the ag schools and have installed toxic plastic drain pipes a few feet below the surface in order to short-cut the percolating water and thereby further dry up the drainage layer.
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About 25 years ago, in East Texas, I dug a pond. The cut ran about 250 feet along the base of a hillside. In all that length, there were only two or three sand channels where the water was still coming down the hill. All the rest had been sealed up by clay long ago. The water simply penetrated the 8” sandy loam to the dense clay beneath it and drifted downhill
— an ideal set-up for sheet erosion if anyone tried to plow the land. Even the weedy growth on the hillside did not prevent some of the topsoil from eroding during heavy rains.
There is a penalty for failure to maintain the drainage layer.
Michigan’s County Drain Commissioners are trying to outdo the ag professors in destroying agriculture in Michigan. Does anyone know of anything sensible that the agricultural establishment has done for the soil?
If drain commissioners were to do what makes sense, they would fill the ditches to the bottom of the drainage layer, put in a foot of gravel to reestablish the drainage layer, and let the stream take over. In order to refill the drainage layer with water it is necessary to obtain nearly 100 percent penetration of rain. A soil remineralization program must be maintained.
In about 50 years, there would develop a deep organic topsoil that would take in all the rain that falls and hold it until the excess water could sink into the subsoil to refill the drainage layer. With water in the drainage layer, the increased flow would eventually remove the clay, consolidating sand and gravel as it should. The water in the drainage layer would induce deep root growth to sustain the plants in times of drought.
If we assume that in this particular area there was a mixture of 10 feet of coarse gravel and sand 10,000 years ago, then 1 foot was consumed every 1,000 years, or .1 foot (1.2
inches) every 100 years. There is still left 21/2 inches, or theoretically enough for 210 years.
This is a rough figure, needing a lot of interpretation, but it does give some perspective about what has happened in the approximately 200 years in which the land has been farmed.
Two hundred years ago, we can estimate, there was about twice as much rock in the topsoil as at present. Since weathering affects the surface area of all the particles of rock equally, the loss of rock is partially due to reduction of particle size of the rock which is still there, and partially due to the change of smaller particles into demineralized subsoil. As the percentage of rock still containing useful elements decreased in the topsoil, the quantity of fine particles (produced by weathering of larger material) must decrease. When the glacial mix was still feeding up from the subsoil, the balance of particle sizes could be maintained by new material. That is no longer true, and probably has not been true for at least 400 years.
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The significance of the loss of small particle-size rock is, of course, a huge percentage loss of rock surface area. The weathering* of the total surface area of rock determines the rate of exposure of elements useful to the microorganisms in the soil. The plant roots feed on the protoplasm of the microorganisms; thus, the amount of plant life growth is dependent on total rock surface area in the soil.
*The term “weathering” is a poor description for the process of reducing rocks in the topsoil to minute particles stripped of minerals of value to the life process. “Weathering” over-emphasizes such factors as freezing and thawing.
If weathering were a significant factor, no gravel would ever reach the surface in the northern states where freezing of the ground extends to depths of 3 or 4 feet. The gravel would be reduced to the very fine particle sizes in worn-out subsoil before it ever got to the topsoil. It doesn’t happen. Gravel does not break down until it reaches the aerated topsoil. Furthermore, if weather factors (freezing, thawing, moisture, and weak acids in the rain under natural conditions) were significant, then the more vulnerable rock would disappear from the total glacial mixture long before the mixture is exhausted in the 10,000 years after glaciation. This process does not happen. The balance of soil elements remains the same right down to the time of exhaustion.
The only explanation for this breakdown of rock is the expenditure of energy by microorganisms. The crystal structure of the silicate rocks (about 2/3
of all the rocks) is mostly useless to the organisms. However, the minerals between the crystals of silicon oxides or aluminum silicate are useful to the microorganisms. The organisms simply cut the crystals loose by working down the sides of the crystals and across the bottom. Only at this point can the weathering factor have any effect in removing the crystals from the rock particles.
The microorganisms can not break down some rocks and neglect others because if they did, the topsoil would be filled with undesirable rock that in time would result in starvation of the microorganisms. But nature in the infinite wisdom which constitutes “the balance of nature” has provided organisms which prefer the combinations of elements found in each type of rock so that all of the rock is consumed in accord with the needs of the total microorganism population. The microorganisms swap minerals (probably as organic compounds) so that all get the exact balance of elements they need. Then nature has provided plants which prefer the protoplasm of specific organisms, so that all the organism protoplasm is brought to the surface and the minerals therein ultimately go into the rivers, mostly as leaf mold, where they may go through many more life cycles before coming to rest as sedimentary deposits on the ocean floor.
“Weathering” is an obsolete word.
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A ton of ground gravel will make something on the order of 16,000 acres of surface area available to the microorganisms. The minerals exposed on the surfaces of the ground rock do not need weathering to make them available. This is what makes soil remineralization practical.
The mathematical statement that there is enough rock left in the soil to last 210 years is just the sort of silly figure we often get from statisticians.
When lands begin to fall off in yield, they cease to have useful productivity in a few decades. That happened in East Texas in roughly the period from 1930 to 1950. Now it has about run its course in the glaciated area of Michigan in which my ten acres are located. The
“thumb” area of Michigan saw its white bean yield drop from 2,000 pounds per acre to 1,300
pounds in the decade of the 1960’s. No amount of agricultural chemicals can bring that production back or keep it from dropping to a lower yield.
What has happened, of course, is that the unused, fine rock material has stopped coming up from the subsoil because there isn’t any more. During the few decades when the soil collapses in yield, the fine material is used up and the major part of the surface area of rock in the soil is gone. Or to put it another way, the availability of the elements has all but ended.
The discussion of the gravel and sand drainage layer in one area of central Michigan applies to all the land. All underground water eventually drains into a stream bed, or lake; it then comes up in springs at a lower elevation or runs directly into the ocean. The point is that the capacity of the subsoil drainage layer in any area has been geared to the annual rainfall and water penetration under natural conditions. When we alter the amount of water reaching and being maintained in the drainage layer, we are in trouble. If we decrease the amount of water by losing it to surface run-off, we will lose water and therefore sand and gravel from the drainage layer. This sand and gravel cannot be replaced. Arid soils have very little drainage layer left, simply because a drainage layer which is not kept full of slowly flowing water will clog up with fine, worn-out particles which will eventually displace the drainage sands and gravels and lift them to the topsoil. The sea salts carried in by the infrequent rains have generally accumulated in the soils for lack of sufficient water to establish drainage systems and thereby flush the salts back to the ocean. When dry lands are irrigated, they tend to become waterlogged for lack of drainage. The salts dissolve and are left on the surface when surface moisture evaporates.
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The best use of arid soils is to put them back into grass, the way most of them were when the land was settled. With remineralization more and better grass can be grown than was there originally and the land can be used by grazing animals. The water that is left in the underground reservoirs should be reserved for people and livestock. The refill rate of the reservoirs is much too slow to support irrigation, as shown by steadily falling water tables in most exploited areas.
In spite of the excellent mixing and selection of the types of rocks in a glacial mix by the tectonic and glacial systems, soils vary somewhat in their ability to supply the elements useful to the microorganisms. The sea solids are a back-up system for supplying minerals to the microorganisms. When the sea solids fall with rain, they are either in solution or of an extremely small particle size. On well-drained soils they pass through the soil with the water and go back into the ocean. All of the elements are in the sea solids. This makes it possible for the microorganisms to choose what they need as the elements pass through the topsoil.
Where the supply of sea solids is adequate, the sea solids are an important factor in the quality and quantity of microorganisms and hence the crops which grow there.
The mineral requirements to support the growth of soil organisms (and hence plants) are a natural balance of the available (to the microorganisms) elements in the total mixture of the rocks on the top layers of the earth’s crust, and the natural balance of elements dissolved and suspended in sea water brought with the clouds.
The mineral balance of salted soils must be restored by remineralization and by allowing large quantities of plant refuse to go back into the topsoil. The plant refuse would provide the carbon requirements of the microorganisms; the gases in the air and water complete their food requirements.
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The lands which have adequate rainfall and salvageable drainage systems must be used for food and fuel crops. The latter will have to be mostly wood plantations grown on mineralized soil. The wood, grown where people are, can provide firewood, alcohol, and methane gas. With small local alcohol and methane power plants serving local needs, the very heavy cost and energy requirements for transportation of energy supplies can be minimized.
The Decline of Soil Minerals
and the Rise of Malnutrition
The true measure of the annual mineral supply coming from the soil is the state of health of plants, animals, and people living on the land. Now the record shows that everywhere one looks, there is malnutrition and death. It is a time for dying, and the reason is quite clear.
The following is quoted from Hunza Health Secrets by Renee Taylor: In December 1945 in the United States Soil Conservation publications the following statements were made:
“The U.S. produces more food than any other nation in the world, yet, according to Dr. Thomas Parran, Jr., 40 percent of the population suffers from malnutrition. How can this be true? The majority of people get enough to eat. Evidently the food eaten does not have enough of the right minerals and vitamins in it to keep them healthy. What causes food to lack these necessary elements? Investigators have found that food is no richer in minerals than the soil from which it comes. Depleted soils will not produce healthy nutritious plants. Plants suffering from mineral deficiencies will not nourish healthy animals. Mineral-deficient plants and undernourished animals will not support our people in health. Poor soils perpetuate poor people physically, mentally, and financially.”
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Parran’s observation was in 1945. In 1950, the USDA put out a handbook, Composition of Foods; revised it in 1963; then put a new cover on it in 1975 and called it Handbook of the Nutritional Contents of Foods. To my knowledge, there has been no revision as of 1980. The agricultural chemicals industry, which has been running USDA for decades, probably wouldn’t like to see an updated mineral comparison with the 1963 figures. However, the protein content is high or low in just about the same proportion as the minerals. This is so because just about all the minerals are used in the proteins called enzymes, which in turn are catalysts which assist in making all the other protein compounds. So with the protein in corn down from the poor protein content of about 9 percent in 1963 to 6 percent now, the mineral content must also have dropped about 33 percent. Malnutrition of 40 percent in 1945 has risen to about 100 percent in 1980.
The malnutrition which Parran observed in 1945 is a reflection of the fact that many American soils were collapsing in crop protein yields (soil microorganism protoplasm proteins). William Albrecht (The Albrecht Papers, page 276, published by Acres, USA) noted that Kansas wheat dropped from a range of 10 to 19 percent protein in 1940 to a range of 9 to 15 percent protein in 1949. In 1940, the western half of Kansas produced wheat ranging from 15 to 19 percent. In 1949, only 5 counties had wheat as high as 15 percent protein. Almost the entire state wheat crop had dropped below 13 percent, and most of it was below 12
percent protein. U.S. wheat averages 8 to 12 percent now—about half what it ought to be.
The best land in the corn belt produces wheat around 15 percent. We are being robbed of our food supply by our profit-hungry financial rulers and the government they have bought and paid for. So Johnny can’t read, crime is on a rampage, the cost of disease is staggering, absenteeism from the work place is 14 percent in the auto industry, the army can’t use half its applicants because of physical or mental reasons, etc.
Year by year, as the last of the soil minerals disappear, our strength and vitality are being thrown away. What better example than the 35,000,000 of us who are handicapped by arthritis. Basically the problem is that one member of the body, such as bone or muscle, rubs against an adjacent member without sufficient lubricant between them. The body’s mucus is supposed to do this job. However, if the intake of zinc is too little, the mucus will lose its lubricity and viscosity and turn to the consistency of water.
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Personally, I don’t need documentation for the foregoing because I experienced it. First I was hit hard by the domestic version of Agent Orange, Ortho “Weed Be Gone” (2,4-D 2,4,5-T). One of the many afflictions which followed was that of continuous sinus leakage. In about 6 months, the mucus turned to water. Obviously I was not making the necessary compounds as fast as I was losing them. I developed arthritis in the right knee. I had it for no more than 2 months when I read about zinc being necessary in at least 27 enzyme systems. I knew that zinc was required in relatively large quantities for that of a trace element. Under normal conditions there is a steady loss of mucus from the body. It seemed an obvious relationship, so I obtained some zinc sulfate pills from the health food store and took 6 or 8
pills a day for a week. At the end of that time, the mucus was more viscous than it had ever been. In 30 days the painful arthritis was gone. Within 6 weeks the shoulder muscle that simply would not heal was repaired and the various hyper-sensitive areas in the sinuses and respiratory tract were de-sensitized by the protective mucus.
It is the function of the mucus to lubricate and protect virtually every part of the body.
Therefore, when it loses its ability to function, there is a great variety of physical as well as probable nerve and brain problems which result. The American people are forced to suffer this pain and handicap because the USDA and the land-grant colleges have for decades been controlled by the agricultural chemical companies who insist on selling chemicals even if it kills us all.
Zinc is not a cure-all. It takes a lot more than that to produce high-quality mucus. In excess, it can inhibit the beneficial effects of other elements. It is known that copper is suppressed by excess zinc, and copper is required for heart function. Therefore, those who take zinc should take it only when the mucus loses its viscosity and lubricity or when pain indicates a need.
Obviously, there is no way to maintain good health by taking some of this and a pinch of that. We aren’t smart enough. The only answer is to make sure that the soil contains an abundance of available elements from the total natural mixture, and let the microorganisms pick and choose what they want, so that the natural balance of nutrients comes up through the plant life to us. There is no legitimate excuse for continuing to degenerate in mind and body. We can have the best health the world has ever known.
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Our Forests Are Dying
In the March 1969 issue of American Forests, Hugh Fosburgh has written an eloquent article, “All Is Not Well at Baker.” Baker is a tract of forest in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. It seems that within a span of only a few years, the dying of all varieties of trees has taken place, except for two of little value—the hemlock and tamarack. At the same time, the insects which attack the various trees have greatly multiplied.
It is clear enough what happened to the Baker Tract, and it is in process in all of the forests and jungles. For instance, “The rate of forest growth in the White Mountains of New Hampshire has declined 18 percent between 1956 and 1965. . .” (“Acid Rain,” The Amicus Journal, Winter 1981, National Resources Defense Council) The last of the minerals have come up in the forest lands, as in the croplands. Over the last 3 to 6 decades, the finer fraction of unused rock has been turned into subsoil with a consequent great reduction in surface area and hence protoplasm production. Since these are the compounds which impart health, and resistance to disease and insects, the trees have become easy prey to the parasites. Acid rain, so heavy in the northeastern states, has wiped out the last of the carbonates, resulting in excessive acidification of the soil, as it has done to the lakes of that region. When the acidity of water and soil drops below about pH 5.5, it begins to kill off various kinds of microorganisms. Only a few acid-tolerant organisms can survive, and only a few acid-tolerant trees and plants can survive on the poor quality and quantity of protoplasm which the soil provides. No amount of pesticides can arrest the dying in the Baker Tract; only an immediate aerial remineralization program can save what is left of it.
In September 1961, W. Schwenke presented a paper on “Forest Fertilization and Insect Buildup.” The paper described work done in the previous nine years at the Institute of Applied Zoology at the Forest Research Center, Munich, Germany.
The work was based on the observation that forest parasites had greater population density on poor forest soil than on more fertile forest soil, and on the observation that forest soils can be improved by fertilization.
The fertilization consisted of 1/2 to 11/2 tons per acre of limestone plus a light application of NPK. This minimal soil remineralization cut parasite populations on the order of 30
percent to 50 percent. On some of the soils the effect was still observable nine years after the application. They also found that the increase in growth rate produced a value which far exceeded the cost of fertilizing the soil.
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Limestone probably has a broader range of elements than any other single type of rock.
That is because it is formed from the shells, bones, and organic matter which falls to the ocean floor. It is not, however, a complete balance of elements to support living organisms.
This is shown by the observed fact that the lasting effect of the fertilization depended on the minerals that were in the soil before fertilization.
This minimal experiment can be compared with a real mineralization project which has been going on for about 3,000,000 years; that is, all during the present glacial epoch. Two dozen glaciers can be counted in the Himalayan Mountains at the headwaters of the Mekong and Red Rivers of Vietnam. Every year the rivers flood the two river deltas. Every year a rice crop is grown. For as long as anyone remembers, the two deltas have served as the “rice bowl of the Orient.” They will continue to be productive soils as long as t