Re: [wholefood] Why do we poison our soils?

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Webster wrote:

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> Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 23:08:36 -0500

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> From: Webster <ancient@...>

> Subject: [wholefood] Why do we poison our soils?

>

> Poisoning of the soil with artificial agricultual additives

> began in the middle of the last century when a German

> chemist, Justus von Liebig, known as the " father of chemical

> agriculture, " mistakenly deduced from the ashes of a plant

> he had bunt that what nourished plants was ntirogen,

> phospohorus, and potash (or potassium carbonate) - the NPK

> of today's chemical agricuture.

>

> Liebig's dicta - which he wrote profusely - led to a vast

> and profitable commercial development of synthetic

> chemicals. Lulled by propaganda, world farmers became

> dependent on German mines for supplies of potassium salts,

> known as " muriate of potash, " without which they were told

> that nothing on their farms would grow. When WWI interrupted

> exports from Germany, prospectors located deposits in the

> US, launching American companies intor rapid exploitation of

> this bonanza of unnecessary chemicals.

>

> >From the amount of phosphoric acid also found in the ash of

> his burnt plant, Liebig further concluded that phosphorus

> must be a prime requirement for the growht of plants. Since

> Roman times, farmers had been using ground-up bones to

> obtain their phosphorus. By treating bones with sulfuric

> acid Liebig created what he called a " superphosphate " When

> vast quantities of se-derived calcium phosphate were

> discovered - believed to be the skeletons of sea animals

> collected over millions of years - a whole new industry of

> artificial " mineral manures " was launched.

>

> Up until Liebig's time, it was believed that because virgin

> soils were highly fertile, and contained much humus, the

> various stages of this brown decaying organic matter must be

> the principal source of nourishment for plants. Leibig

> attacked the notion with vehemence. Of humus and of the

> humic acid derived from it, he wrote: " there is not the

> shadow of a proof that either of them exerts any influence

> on the growth of plants either in the way of nourishment or

> otherwise. "

>

> As Shestone put it in his 1875 biography of Liebig:

> " These were the facts and arguments by which, once and for

> all, Liebig rendered the humus theory untenable by any

> reasonable human being. "

>

> That the secret to fertilizing soil lay precisely in this

> organic excreta, not chemicals, Leibig only cloncluded ten

> years later. But too late. By that time the chemicals

> companies were off to such a profitable start that there was

> no stopping them in their headlong race to destroy the soil

> and all that it supports.

>

> ~p. xiv- xv, Secrets of the Soil, by P. Tomkins and C. Bird

>

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