“ScienceDaily (May 7, 2011) — Those vegetables you had for dinner may have once been protected by an immune system akin to the one that helps you fight disease. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the Netherland’s Wageningen University found that plants rely on a complex community of soil microbes to defend themselves against pathogens, much the way mammals harbor a raft of microbes to avoid infections.” See: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110505161001.htm

I believe that this is great dialogue and gets us all thinking, what I am very much looking forward to is using a combination of bio-fertilizers with compost tea. If we can ‘get off the drip’ altogether and make our own compost, our own compost tea, and our own bio-fertilizer, then we can ‘go to the shed’ rather than ‘go to the shop’, become extremely self reliant and have valuable tools to teach, use and share.

In the 70’s we made ‘manure teas’, ‘comfrey teas’, and compost, and we got mixed results, now, because work of Dr. Elaine Ingham, Dr. Christine Jones and others, I have a new perspective of what we were actually doing scientifically and that makes me look again and change some of my practices.

We now have the science, the technology and the experience to use agriculture as the path for regenerating degraded soils, let’s ‘connect the dots’ and join methodologies so that this can be achieved. It is the sharing of knowledge that makes the difference in the long term and this is why I am so pleased with the regenerative agriculture initiative.

Many thanks: Paul Taylor

G’day,

The efficacy of compost teas or rather extracts has come under some question more recently in this forum and on the home website following Rob Avis’ article, and now that we are offering these RegenAG ‘BioFertile Farms’ workshops across eastern Australia and NZ. I have seen both great and nil results from using this technique, just as I have seen good and horrible results from using a whole range of other ‘therapies’… we see the evidence of campesino farmers in Mexico who are getting great results actually raising a crop of corn when their neighbours have not….They and others are the proof of success where others perhaps are not taking the care that they should.

I would also add that I am a synergist and encourage the practice of understanding the whole rather than looking for single silver bullets, bullets that often work like ‘Russian Roulette’! That is the essence of the RegenAG series…that we look at the wholes and work accordingly. By understanding this and looking at the palette of techniques and approaches accordingly a producer can make his or her mind up about which of these they will apply and do so without risking the farm. Holistic Management helps us to determine what we actually need and provides a list of ‘Testing Decisions’ to refine more effective decisions. That is why HM is at the top of the RegenAG program of modules.

The other element of this particular course is that of farm-based ‘BioFertiliser’ manufacturing. This is Bayer (the Chemical Giant) technology that has been refined (in Latin America: particularly in Columbia, Mexico and Brasil by the COAS group – http://www.coas.com.mx/) such that farmers can do it themselves using locally available materials. I would have to say that this has been a more effective and pervasive technology than Compost Tea (in those countries), in the main because it is so much less technical and requires a lot less training etc.

Agriculture, whether its organic, biodynamic or otherwise is in the business of mining minerals and so these need to be dealt with somehow where mineral cycles aren’t more closed (such as in a more ideal Permaculture). Therefore BioFertiliser’s are a key to doing this whilst not creating a strong dependency on off farm products. The resistance to adopting the more scientific ‘Soil Food Web’ array of approaches in developing countries (and to an extent here in Australia) is because it requires so much more in terms of understanding and ultimately technology, as opposed to the BioFertilisers which are basically anaerobic ferments, requiring simple available vessels & materials. Plus its less difficult than the primary fermentation in beer making!

We are encouraging producers to make their own minds up by being informed as to the possibilities as experienced by other producers rather than it all coming from someone with something to sell. Of course this will to an extent be difficult (to stop people greasing their own wheels) but its better than the alternative: rolling on with whole industrial ag approach be it conventional or organic.

All the best,

Darren

Keep up the fantastic work!

Teaming with Microbes,

jeff Lowenfels
Anchorage, Alaska

Thanks for this excellent article. For the commentators discussing the merits of composts and teas, you guys might be interested in this discussion I had with Paul Taylor from Trust Nature and the work he’s doing. Despite what some studies may say it’s hard to argue with the results he’s been getting. http://permaculture.org.au/2010/05/27/great-soil-biology-the-silver-bullet/

cheers,
Pat

On the subject, Paul Taylor will be presenting along side Eugenio Gras (visiting from Mexico) on an Australia tour for the upcoming RegenAG BioFertile Farms workshops.

http://www.regenag.com/workshops/biofertility/

A first ever, double bill intensive 3-day soil biology workshop covering the soil food web, compost teas and then exploring the exciting field of ‘bio-fertilisers’. Eugenio through the dynamic COAS group in Mexico, have developed a sophisticated array of biological soil stimulant ‘brews’ made from common farm materials using simple, but specially constructed fermenter bins.

These workshops are intended as the ultimate primer in soil biology for those looking for practical, immediately useable information and it’ll be great to see these complimentary approaches over the three days. Visiting Tas, Vic, Nsw Qld & Nz.

Ben Falloon

In response to “pebble” yes, the effect of chemicals does depend on soils, practices, and time. What we do know is that some important species are lost when we apply chemicals and when we lose species, we become increasingly more dependent on chemical inputs to the point where we are totoally reliant on chemicals for production (and not necessarily profitable even then).

When we deal with lack of soil moisture and compacted soils, we can be pretty sure that we have lost important species. When we have increasing reports about how we are losing production while we are increasing chemical inputs, we are pretty sure that we have lost important species that plants depend on for productive health.

From my point of view, we need to remember that term ‘Bio-Logical Farming’, ‘Bio’ means ‘full of life’ and ‘logical’ means that ‘it makes sense to you’. One important thing to remember is that chemical farming relys on the ability to kill things, where bio-logical farming depends on the ability to give additional life to systems in order to aid production.

Just noticed I didn’t address your point about if we stop abusing the soil that “micro-herd will adjust species ratios and populations all on their own.” Yes, they will do this but the speed at which they bounce back could be considerable and beyond our lifetimes. I think I’ve heard Geoff say once that as we humans are the only species that has been able to unleash such massive global environmental damage, we are also perhaps the only species that can also repair the damage quickly enough (for us): “we are the weeds that can repair the earth” Geoff said (or something like this).

When I teach about biological agriculture and the soil food web one of the most important things I stress is to get people to stop doing a bunch of things (some that you mention) that kill certain soil microbes. A lot of what we do in both conventional chemical agriculture and organic agriculture (including dare I say some permaculture techniques) degrades soil from a microbiological standpoint. There is an ecological succession pattern that exists in the soil where microbes in partnership with plants will “heal” on there own the land by evolving or succeeding into more complex and healthier ecosystems. I mentioned the microbial succession pattern in a comments sections of another PRI post here: http://permaculture.org.au/2010/03/23/compost-soil-fertility-a-shitty-topic/

So, the question is how bad is our particular soil and how much time do we have to bring things back?

If you want to dive more deeply into this and you’re not doing too much on a Saturday night you could read Eldor Paul’s contemporary classic soil microbiology text “Soil Microbiology, Ecology and Biochemistry.”