Harmony with Natural Laws
An Impossible Task for Agriculture and Horticulture?

by Paul W. Syltie, Ph.D.

Biological approaches to corn production can yield excellent results by engineering microbial nitrogen release in the root zone. Note the biological program on the left.

A few short decades ago, the thought of farmers and horticulturalists returning to their “organic roots”, as it were, was somewhat of a pipe dream, for our entire generation has been conditioned to viewing soils and plant growth through chemical eyes. Universities, the agricultural extension service, farm and grower magazines, and advertising, induced nearly everyone to use the new methods: commercial fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, nematicides, miticides, and a plethora of other treatments that too often spelled trouble for the health of farm and nursery workers, the purity of ground and surface waters, and usually the pocket book.

We should not respond too harshly, however, against all of these new chemical practices. Some are reasonably innocuous, but some are downright dangerous, even when used according to label directions. Witness the recent case of Costa Rican banana workers whose reproductive lives were ended due to EDB, a potent nematicide that eventually was banned ... but not before untold damage had been thrust upon unsuspecting human beings. Few would argue against an approach that, if workable, would permit farmers, nurserymen, and homeowners to worry little about the material they use, and instead free up their creativity to solve other management problems.

One of the blatant sins of soil management is overgrazing. Controlled and rotational grazing are imperative to preserve soils of rangelands.

I was fortunate to have grown up on a Minnesota dairy farm where my family used nothing but organic methods. That was the system most farmers in the northwestern Corn Belt used to grow corn, wheat, soybeans, flax, oats, and alfalfa during the 1950’s and 1960’s. With mixed farming the rule, we would spread manure onto our fields on a rotational basis every few years, thereby recycling the minerals and organic matter back to the soil. Crop yields were less than present levels, since varieties were less productive and less responsive to fertilizer inputs as are today’s types. Even so, the nutritional value of the grain was high, soil conditions were maintained at acceptable levels, yields were consistent year-by-year, and chemical bills were nil. Most people farmed that way in our part of the world. Few farmers could be accused of pushing their soils beyond their natural limitations, since most owner-operators truly believed in stewardship: leaving the land for their children as good as, or better than, they found it.

How things have changed! The cultivator has been largely replaced by herbicides, organic manures by commercial fertilizers, and natural pest control (predaceous insects, resistant plants, etc.) by pesticides. In a very real sense, our soils have become addicted to chemicals as an addict has to drugs. Yet, natural laws do not change. Some farmers and nurserymen are rediscovering these laws of nature and using them to great advantage, much like growers have for millennia ... despite the trend toward bigness and efficiency (meaning replacing people with machines or chemicals).

To keep soils from eroding, a mulch cover can serve well to replace growing vegetation on the surface.

Perhaps it is wise and just to examine briefly the views of one of modern history’s most ardent proponents of mankind’s returning to natural laws in growing things. This proponent is Sir Albert Howard, who was knighted by the Queen of England for his work in agriculture. An ardent promoter of composting in the first half of the Twentieth Century, Howard was the friend of J. I. Rodale (former editor of Organic Gardening), Lady Eve Balfour (British author of The Living Soil ¹), and many other prominent promoters of biological soil and cropping systems of that generation. Eric Eweson, the inventor of the Eweson Digester, was also a friend of Sir Albert Howard. His digester forms the heart of the Bedminster technology for transforming municipal solid waste and sludge into valuable, nutrient-rich compost.

In one of his books, An Agricultural Testament ², Sir Albert asked the question, “Can mankind regulate its affairs so that its chief possession—the fertility of the soil—is preserved? ... On the answer to this question the future of civilization lies.” He shunned conventional forms of agricultural research in favor of practical on-farm testing and was opposed to research by teams of specialists, each working on a fragment of the whole ... each contributing an isolated splinter of knowledge. Sir Albert revealed how using compost will build soil fertility independently, as he illustrated in 25 years of practical experimentation in India. He and other farmers in India, who eschewed chemical fertilizers and used natural manures, had the best crops and healthiest animals.

Sir Albert Howard listed several “methods of soil management” which nature utilizes to conduct her affairs: ³

1.	Mixed farming is the rule; plants and animals are always found together.
2.	The soil is always protected from the direct action of sun, rain, and wind.
3.	Rainfall is carefully preserved in surface layers and subsoil.
4.	The forest manures itself , making its own humus and supplying its own minerals.
5.	Mineral matter needed by trees and undergrowth is obtained from the soil.
6.	The soil always carries a large fertility reserve.
7.	Crops and livestock look after themselves, and maintain health due to internal vitality imparted by the soil.

In another book, entitled The Soil and Health ⁴, Sir Albert Howard showed that disease is the awful consequence of abusing the soil. As he put it, “This [disease] is the punishment meted out by Mother Earth for adopting methods of agriculture which are not in accordance with Nature’s law of return. We can begin to reverse this adverse verdict and transform disease into health by the proper use of the green carpet—by the faithful return to the soil of all available vegetable, animal, and human wastes.”

He further emphasized that “... the problems of the farm and garden are biological rather than chemical.” It is to this end that Eric Eweson, the developer of Bedminster’s and Vital Earth’s foundational technology for composting, directed his efforts.

To help return the organic by-products of our towns and cities back to the land which originally grew these food and fiber crops, Bedminster Biotechnology has been utilizing the rotating three-chambered drum process to produce compost in three days from raw starting materials such as sawdust, wood chips, chicken litter, paper, leaves, food waste, plastic bags, and sludge. The material—termed OrganagrO—must be further aged for several weeks at correct moisture and temperature levels, but in due time produces a premium grade, highly fertile, pathogen and weed-seed-free compost. Input levels of MSW and sludge at the Sevierville, Tennessee, facility (four drums) are about 350 tons per day, while the volume at the Marietta, Georgia, plant is nearly double that of the Tennessee facility. The original prototype digester at Big Sandy, Texas, is still operating after 26 years, producing about 45 tons per day of premium-grade compost for horticulture.

Bedminster’s “sister company,” Vital Earth Resources, seconds the Bedminster philosophy by producing compost which is used mostly in an array of horticulture soil and potting mixes. Besides, Vital Earth produces a line of “Earth-Safe” fertilizers and plant protection products, including a high quality biostimulant called Vitazyme that, when applied to agricultural or horticultural crops, speeds growth and development, increases yields and quality, improves crop appearance, and enhances soil characteristics such as structural strength. These effects are achieved not through direct fertilization of the soil but through the activation of bacteria, fungi, algae, cyanobacteria, and other microbes in the soil...especially within the rhizosphere [root-zone], where soil biological activity is multiplied intensively.

Results with a wide variety of agricultural and horticultural crops attest to the fact that microbial inoculants are usually not needed with this biostimulant. Microbes are generally present in soils in great numbers, and it simply remains the grower’s job to provide the correct environment (moisture, temperature, fertility, and aeration) for an appropriately adjusted population to proliferate.

The fruit of following biologically-sound production principles: high yields of prime-quality produce.

Working with biological systems is a gentle blend of art and science, one that requires greater patience and a higher degree of management skill than with the use of chemicals alone. ⁵ While pesticides destroy the unwanted pests—insects, mites, nematodes, fungi, or weeds—biological materials such as compost, manure, cottonseed and other high-protein by-products, plant residues, or biostimulants encourage the buildup of beneficial insects, nematodes, bacteria, and fungi over time, thus controlling the pests through living systems. In the process, man and the environment are not tainted by toxic chemistry.

The same may be said of fertilizer. High analysis, water-soluble commercial fertilizers can quickly improve plant appearance, but the quick glut of nutrients can make plants susceptible to disease and insect attack. For instance, a high nitrogen diet produces tall, lush, good-looking plant that have thin cell walls and high free amino acid levels, and are thus susceptible to disease and weather damage. High carbon complete fertilizers of organic origin by allowing a slow release of nutrients at the rate plants need them, since when moisture and temperature conditions are prime for optimum plant growth, the rhizosphere microorganisms are also operating at their maximum, releasing nutrients rapidly to roots as they break down organic amendments. Not to be slighted in the vast array of plant hormones, regulators, vitamins, antibiotics, and other growth stimulants produced by these microbes that feed on organic additions. As a result, internal plant characteristics such as mineral and vitamin concentration, protein level, the free amino acid pool, stem lignin and cellulose content, and digestability, tend to improve as nutrients are supplied through the gentle art of biological soil and plant management.

These three great qualities of organic material—(1) timed-release, (2) complete fertility composition (including considerable organic carbon), and (3) the ability to stimulate a natural shield of plant protection (natural predators and parasites of pathogens, and internal plant protection)—cannot be matched by anything within the commercial chemical world’s arsenal. While the biological approach takes longer to view results following treatment, the approach has staying power, and completes the logic that Sir Albert Howard so eloquently voiced: we can adopt the methods of nature and transform disease into health by faithfully returning to the soil all available vegetable, animal, and human wastes. The soil --> plant --> animal --> man continuum is an inviolable principle which operates irrespective of our current paradigms of soil and crop management. Soils that produce high quality plants in terms of mineral, protein, carbohydrate, lipid, and vitamin content produce healthy, vital animals and people that consume them.

The matter of soil conservation and soil quality should be touched upon at least briefly since the soil is a nation’s most valuable resource. Any practice that benefits soil structure should be encouraged, since structure dictates the rate of rainfall infiltration and percolation, and thus runoff and that terrible nemesis of soil erosion. There remains no doubt that soil microbial activity and the abundance of polysaccharides, humic acids, and other glues and mucilages produced by bacteria, fungi, and algae are responsible for deterring soil erosion and degradation. ⁶ Recycling of organic residues to the soil is once more seen as not just a viable option, but a necessity in order to preserve our most important natural resource... the soil.

The task of improving plant growth and soil conditions of our agricultural and horticultural world cannot be achieved without conforming to the natural laws which first built the fertile soil of our land. These laws require the recycling of organic and mineral matter back to the soils that first produced our food, feed, and fiber. This challenge has been faced head-on by Bedminster Bioconversion and Vital Earth. Returning the organic residues from our cities back to the soil—not to landfills or to other useless corners of our world—will have a great impact on the overall health and productivity of this nation ... or of any other nation that determines the soil is really more precious than gold ... and organic matter is the “heartbeat,” as it were, of the soil. ⁷ Harmonizing with natural laws to build our soil resources is not an impossible task. It only takes a commitment, a will to do what is right.

Bibliography and Notes

1. Balfour, E. B. 1975. The Living Soil and the Haughley Experiment. Universe Books, New York, New York.
2. Howard, A. 1943. An Agricultural Testament. Oxford University Press, London, England.
3. See reference 2.
4. Howard, A. 1972. The Soil and Health, a Study of Organic Agriculture. Schocken Books, New York, New York.
5. The term “biological agriculture,” though widely used, may be substituted by the term “nature assisted agriculture,” which Larry Finn of Bedminster Bioconversion Corporation has termed as “...the thrust of Vital Earth Resources”
   (The Vital Earth News—Agricultural Edition, Gladewater, Texas, Vol. 1, No. 1, Summer, 1996).
6. For example, as little as 0.02% of added polysaccharides from proliferating soil bacteria and fungi can markedly stabilize soil clay aggregates (R. C. Foster, “Polysaccharides in Soil Fabrics,” Science, Vol. 214, November, 1981).
7. For an excellent discussion on the importance of soil organic matter for soil integrity, see Crop Land or Waste Land
   (R. Neil Sampson, 1981, Rodale Press, Emmaus, Pennsylvania).