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Understanding Biological Farming: A Simplified Understanding of ‘Compost Tea’ a Plant and Soil Probiotic
UNDERSTANDING BIOLOGICAL FARMING: A SIMPLIFIED UNDERSTANDING OF ‘COMPOST TEA’ A PLANT AND SOIL PROBIOTIC
In ideal soil ecosystems, we would have dramatically different soil and certainly a dramatically different level of ‘made made’ toxins. In an ideal soil environment, we would expect our topsoil to contain 10% organic matter, and would also expect to have literally thousands of species of bacteria and hundreds of species of fungi. In most soils today, we often have a humus content of less than 1% with just a few hundred species of bacteria (including plant pathogens) and less than 100 species of fungi (including plant pathogens) this is often due to poor soil management including the use of chemical fertilisers, pesticides, fungicides and herbicides. Poor soil management is simply a matter of misunderstanding the importance of building living soils.
The lack of a large diversity of bacteria and fungi in our soils affects plant health and production dramatically because plants naturally have a very close symbiotic relationship with the soil biology. Plants depend on bacteria, fungi, worms, bugs, and beetles, and larger animals to help provide and digest their food for them. Plants don’t digest minerals by themselves; they either depend on a complex relationship of soil biology to provide their nutritional and health needs or they depend on often toxic ‘artificial’ soluble fertilizers and pesticides to provide for their food and health needs. The first is natural and depends on natural processes, the second is increasingly expensive, more difficult to manage and defeats natural soil fertility processes.
In healthy soil with good organic matter and a healthy biology, a soil food web is created. How this works is that the plants exude ‘exudates’ from their roots, these are simple sugars, proteins and carbohydrates in many different forms, which then trigger responses from the soil biology. The bacteria, protozoa, beneficial nematodes and fungi respond to these triggers to provide the plants with nutrition and to protect plants from disease.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Give Back to the Garden
GIVE BACK TO THE GARDEN: PAUL TAYLOR TEACHES “LIVING SOILS”
For far too long, mankind has viewed soil as a dead substance, something to be sucked dry of its remaining vitality before moving on to cultivate another patch of land. At the same time, we’ve also viewed anything other than what we’ve defined as the harvest to be waste—something to also be discarded and left behind.
Living Soils for Vital Food, a five-day (January 18th-January 22nd) workshop taught by organic soil management specialist Paul Taylor, is designed to change that. This course will transform the way that participants view soil and fertilizers while giving them the necessary knowledge to put these new perspectives into practice.
Taylor is an experienced educator, with Australian Federal Government FarmReady approval. He also holds a Certificate IV in Education, Training, and Assessment which qualifies him to teach under the federal Vocational Education and Training guidelines. For more than three decades, Paul has been studying and practicing organic farming methods and using them to restore degraded agricultural land, and he thrives on sharing those years of experience with his students.
LIVING SOILS: COMPLEX, CRUCIAL
“Dirt” is spoken of derisively; it’s easy to trample all over it without a second thought. Yet, soil is one of the essential ingredients for supporting life on Earth. And speaking of our planet, we didn’t name it after water, or the light of our sun, or even ourselves: We named it after the humble soil beneath our feet: earth.
To understand sustainability, to put good food growing practices to work, and to usher in an era where we stop treating our planet like something disposable, we must—literally—start from the ground up, transforming our former understanding as we go.
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How The IMF Can Save Greece And Itself
How The IMF Can Save Greece And Itself
There’s a Reuters article by Paul Taylor today that’s thought provoking, but not along the same line of thought that the writer follows (or the twist he gives to it). Taylor concludes that the IMF would love to wash its hands off Greece, but can’t because it’s subservient to German and Brussels interests (a junior partner). However, he also describes, without realizing it, why and how the Fund can rectify that.
Not that we’re not under the illusion the IMF is prone to latch on to the following, but that it would nevertheless be an extremely wise move for the Fund, and especially for its reputation. Which, no matter how you see it, is under threat from its Asian ‘competitor’, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), not in the least because the non-western world has long found that the west has far too much power in the IMF, which after all is a global organization.
In that vein, let’s start off with an article the FT published in April 2013, by Ousmène Mandeng, who also features in Taylor’s piece. This former IMF deputy division chief pointed out what unease the IMF role in Greece caused, and how that role undermined its role as an international institution. Today, nothing has changed.
The IMF Must Quit The Troika To Survive
There are many victims of the eurozone crisis but one loser is seldom mentioned: the IMF has suffered considerable collateral damage. It has been dragged along in an unprecedented set-up as a junior partner within Europe, used as a cover for the continent’s policy makers and its independence lost. The monetary fund was set up as a technocratic institution. That, indeed, is why it was brought into Europe: it was felt that a neutral broker was needed to fix the eurozone’s problems.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
