We offer these opinions in the hope of increasing awareness by stimulating the thought process. We welcome your thoughts and feedback. Send them to tom@acmewormfarm.com
Beware of products that claim to be plant food. “Plant food” is usually a fancy name for chemical fertilizer. The truth is that plants manufacture their own food from air, water, and sunshine. They take almost none of their nourishment from the soil. The nourishment they do get from the soil is made available by microorganisms on an as need basis. When a plant is force-fed water soluble chemicals, its hormone and enzyme systems are thrown out of wack. The plant becomes susceptible to disease and insect attacks. Protein synthesis isn’t fully completed. The soil microbial life is disrupted, which results in less mineral availability to the plant, which results in food that tastes like cardboard. This bland tasting food isn’t much more nutritious than cardboard either.
After a few years of this so-called plant feeding, the mineral availability of the soil has decreased to the point that people are starving on full stomachs. It has been reported by researchers that they have found a link between mineral deficiencies and criminal behavior. This is no surprise. How can a person act rationally when his brain chemistry is altered by malnutrition?
Actually, “chemical fertilizer” is a misnomer. Chemicals do nothing to increase the fertility of the soil. The plant takes up the chemicals it can whether it wants to or not. The rest is leached down into the groundwater or washed into the watershed. But not before rendering the soil less fertile because of the effect on soil organisms. After a few years of this, the soil is ruined. The Chinese have managed to keep their soil fertile for over three thousand years while we have managed to ruin most of ours in less than one hundred years. At the same time we’re poisoning our lakes and streams.
There are hundreds of books and thousands of papers and articles citing indisputable scientific evidence that that proves conclusively, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that chemical fertilizers are ruining our soil and our health. So why are they still so widely used? Does the government have a right to step in and try to educate these people who are ruining land that, in a sense, belongs to us all? You bet they do! It’s not only their right; it’s their responsibility.
