Herbmountain
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From Healing Power of Minerals book by Paul Bergner
Soil Mineral Depletion.
So where did all the minerals go in the eighty years? They disappeared from the soil. In a stable ecosystem, minerals are drawn from the soil into the plants as they grow and bear fruit. When the plant dies, the minerals return to the earth for other plants to use. However, if the farmer hauls away the plants or their fruits and grains with a harvest, the minerals in them are removed from the cycle. The soil then becomes gradually depleted of its minerals, unless more are added to it in the form of fertilizers. Most soils will support only about ten years of intensive farming before the land becomes so mineral-depleted that it will no longer produce healthy plants.
Knowledge of soil depletion is as ancient as agriculture itself. About then thousand years ago, hunter-gatherers began to plant food crops, perhaps in cleared areas of the forest. When the land began to fail, they would simply clear a new plot and plant there, letting nature reclaim the original land. Some primitive agricultural people still practice these methods today. They cut and burn away plots of the forest to grow their crops. The ash from the burned plants acts as a mineral fertilizer to enrich the soil until it eventurally becomes barren.
Herbie's opinion.
The old methods of farming are not used much anymore. Commercial fertilizer is not the same as when the old plants are tilled back into the soil for the next generation of food crops. It lacks trace minerals that are needed for our bodies.
Methods That Maintain The Soil
As farmers settled on permanent plots of land, they developed ways to restore the mineral content of the soil. They woul duse plant or manure fertilizers on the soil to restore some of the nutrients. Plant matter used for fertilizer replaces the plant matter taken away in the crops, keeping a balance in the mineral cycle of the soil. The manure of grazing animals returns some of the minerals from the forage crops where the animals graze. In some cultures, farmers ground up the mineral-rich bones of dead animals to enrich the soil. For centuries in Asia, even up to the present day, farmers have returned animal and even human waste to the soil. In some areas, such as the Nile River valley, periodic flooding covers the farm land with new mineral-rich soil from up stream. This phenomenon has made the Nile valley a source of the most highly nutritious foods in the entire Mediterranean region since ancient times. The love story of Anthony and Cleopatra takes place during the Roman conquest of the rich agricultural regions of Egypt after theier own farmlands became depleted.
Crop rotation is another method for remineralizing the soil. Medieval English farm communities allowed one-third of the crop land to lie fallow each year, and all the manure from the grazing animals was put into the soil of that land. Another third lay fallow the next year, and crops were planted in the soil fertilized the year before. This system slows the mineral decline in the soil, but does not stop it completely. Pasture land also eventually becomes mineral-depleted, as the animals use the minerals and as the manure is systematically hauled away. The herd eventurally thins, the forage plants become mineral-depleted, and the fallow land ultimately becomes barren as well. In Britain, the pastures were wasted, the cows became scrawny, and their droppings ceased to fertilize the gardens. This agricultural decline was one of many factors the movement from the farm to the city in Britain over the last two hundred years.
Farmers may also plant certain non-cash crops on their fallow land and then plow the crops under. Some farmers today plant alfalfa in their fallow fields every four years. Alfalfa has deep roots that may extend more than twenty feet down into the soil. These roots bring up minerals from the deeper layers of the soil, which are returned to the top soil when the crop is plowed under. This method also eventurally fails, perhaps after centuries, when the deeper layers of the soil also become depelted of minerals.
This traditional method of crop rotation with plant and animals fertilizers today is called Organic farming . It is the traditional farming using the same method for many centuries to produce nutrient-rich foods.
Soil Decline in American History
With subsistence farming, where the family or community takes only what they need for personal use from the soil, the process of depletion may take hundreds or even thousands of years. With the advent of urbanization and the demand for food crops by city dwellers, commercial rather than subsistence agriculture becomes predominant, more plants are being hauled away from the soil, and the soil mineral loss accelerates. The urbanization of the United States in the last century has contributed greatly to the dramatic soil depletion indicated by the mineral data for apples. At the turn of the last century, about 85% of the popoulation liveed on farms, grew much of the food they are, and practiced crop rotation. Today, more than 85% of the population lives in cities and requires food from the land cared for and tended to by someone else, and to which the consumers themselves do not return their wastes. The mineral cycle of the land is broken. Instead of being returned to the land, our mineral wastes now go into landfills and sewers. Plants whose minerals were so carefully guarded and returned to the soil by subsistenve farmers for millennia are now shipped overseas at the fate of more than 100 million tons per year (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1996)
The burned-out farm has been a part of American history since well before the first Europeans arrived here. Anthropologists think that soil depletion may have been responsible for the decline or disapperance of some corn-farming communities in the Southwest. Weston Price, the dentist who studied the effects of traditional diets introduced in Chapter 2, also found anthropological evidence of progressive soil decline in the lands of Southwestern Indians. He examined skeletons from a period of more than a thousand years and found an increase in arthritis, tooth decay, and degeneration of bone structure in progressive generations. These communities hunted but also grew corn, and Price speculates that it was the progressive depletion of minerals in the soil the corn was grown in that caused the gradual decline in health.
Soil depletion also fueled the historic westward expansion of the United States. As the colonists' land became depleted, they abandoned it to look for new land to the west. This phenomenon also influenced the movement from rural areas to cities. A few cultures--those that used wise agricultural methods--did not have to leave their land. In areas of Pennsylvania, Germans, the Amish, and other groups still farm land today that their ancistors settled more than a hundred years ago. These groups believe that the soil they leave their children should be healthier than the soil they inherited. Some German settlers even took over burned-out farms and retored the soil to health (Ebeling, 1979). Weston Price noted the general decline of minerals in the soil by 1938.
In corresponence with government officals in practically every state of the United States I find that during the last fifty years there has been a reduction in the capacity of the soil for productivity in many districts, amounting from 25 to 50 %. Price, 1938.
Price also found a correspondence between soil depletion in specific areas and an increased incidence of heart disease and pneumonia in those areas.
The Rise Of NPK Fertilizer
Soil depletion continues to play an important role in the unfolding history of the family farm in the U.S. Traditional farming methods have been abandoned in favor of intensive use of chemical fertilizers in the last 30 years. NPK-named from the chemical symbols for nitrogen, phosphours, and potassium-has largely replaced maures, organic plant material, and ground up animals bones as fertilizer on commercial farms. Of these, the primary nuturients nitrogen, phosphours, and potassium are most responsible for the growth, size and productivity of agricultural crops, and this they are the primary elements of modern fertilizers like NPK.
Continued
The deficiency of a few nutrients-sulfur,and iron, for example-will cause discoloration of plants, affecting their marketability. The other elements are less crucial to productivity or appearance, although they are extremely important to the nutritional value of the plants to humans. If the secondary nutrients or trace elements become so depleted that it affects the productivity or appearance of a crop, these nutrients may be added to the soil. For instance, iron is often added to fertilizers for commercial potatoe crops, which rapidly deplete the soil of the iron essential to the growth and appearance of the potatoe. The U.S. Department of Agriculture assists farmers in determining whether additional nuturiens need to be added to soil to support plant growth, productivity , and appearance. The nutritional value of the food is not considered in such analyses. Plants remove all these nutrients from the soil, but contemporary farmers add only three or four minerals back in. You will see how, of the five minerals listed, phosphorus, and potassium have declined the least in foods since 1963. This is because these two minerals are standard ingredients in modern fertilizers. NPK fertilizer was developed in the 1830s before we understood the mineral requirements of either plants or humans. We are using an outdated technology, despite what modern scientific knowledge has taught us about the nutritional value of miinerals.
The effect of chemical fertilizers is more complex than simple mineral loss. The addition of chemical nitrogen depletes both the vitamin C and the iron content of plants that grow from fertilized soil (Harris, 1975). In addition, the potassium in NPK fertilizer is added in the form of potassium chloride, which means a ton of chloride is added along with every ton of potassium. The high levels of potassium inhibut plant absorption of magnesium. Chloride leaches the soil of magnesium, zinc, and calcium (Hall, 1976). Potassium chloride also alters the mineral balance so that selenium becomes bound in the soil and cannot be absorbed by plants (Ensminger et al.,1983).
If you would like more information get this book. It is called "The Healing Power Of Minerals. Special Nutrients, and Trace Elements" It is a must read. So many diseases are due to mineral and vitamin loss. "Prima Health" Books.
In this book contains chapters that list common Conditions that may be treated with certain Mineral and Vitamin intake. It is a great book for preppers with common sense information that I have never found in any book. I paid $15.00.
www.primahealth.com
__________________
Don't anger the bird. He's gotta a gun.
Parrot's cannot spell. Go edit another's post and leave the bird alone.
Soil Mineral Depletion.
So where did all the minerals go in the eighty years? They disappeared from the soil. In a stable ecosystem, minerals are drawn from the soil into the plants as they grow and bear fruit. When the plant dies, the minerals return to the earth for other plants to use. However, if the farmer hauls away the plants or their fruits and grains with a harvest, the minerals in them are removed from the cycle. The soil then becomes gradually depleted of its minerals, unless more are added to it in the form of fertilizers. Most soils will support only about ten years of intensive farming before the land becomes so mineral-depleted that it will no longer produce healthy plants.
Knowledge of soil depletion is as ancient as agriculture itself. About then thousand years ago, hunter-gatherers began to plant food crops, perhaps in cleared areas of the forest. When the land began to fail, they would simply clear a new plot and plant there, letting nature reclaim the original land. Some primitive agricultural people still practice these methods today. They cut and burn away plots of the forest to grow their crops. The ash from the burned plants acts as a mineral fertilizer to enrich the soil until it eventurally becomes barren.
Herbie's opinion.
The old methods of farming are not used much anymore. Commercial fertilizer is not the same as when the old plants are tilled back into the soil for the next generation of food crops. It lacks trace minerals that are needed for our bodies.
Methods That Maintain The Soil
As farmers settled on permanent plots of land, they developed ways to restore the mineral content of the soil. They woul duse plant or manure fertilizers on the soil to restore some of the nutrients. Plant matter used for fertilizer replaces the plant matter taken away in the crops, keeping a balance in the mineral cycle of the soil. The manure of grazing animals returns some of the minerals from the forage crops where the animals graze. In some cultures, farmers ground up the mineral-rich bones of dead animals to enrich the soil. For centuries in Asia, even up to the present day, farmers have returned animal and even human waste to the soil. In some areas, such as the Nile River valley, periodic flooding covers the farm land with new mineral-rich soil from up stream. This phenomenon has made the Nile valley a source of the most highly nutritious foods in the entire Mediterranean region since ancient times. The love story of Anthony and Cleopatra takes place during the Roman conquest of the rich agricultural regions of Egypt after theier own farmlands became depleted.
Crop rotation is another method for remineralizing the soil. Medieval English farm communities allowed one-third of the crop land to lie fallow each year, and all the manure from the grazing animals was put into the soil of that land. Another third lay fallow the next year, and crops were planted in the soil fertilized the year before. This system slows the mineral decline in the soil, but does not stop it completely. Pasture land also eventually becomes mineral-depleted, as the animals use the minerals and as the manure is systematically hauled away. The herd eventurally thins, the forage plants become mineral-depleted, and the fallow land ultimately becomes barren as well. In Britain, the pastures were wasted, the cows became scrawny, and their droppings ceased to fertilize the gardens. This agricultural decline was one of many factors the movement from the farm to the city in Britain over the last two hundred years.
Farmers may also plant certain non-cash crops on their fallow land and then plow the crops under. Some farmers today plant alfalfa in their fallow fields every four years. Alfalfa has deep roots that may extend more than twenty feet down into the soil. These roots bring up minerals from the deeper layers of the soil, which are returned to the top soil when the crop is plowed under. This method also eventurally fails, perhaps after centuries, when the deeper layers of the soil also become depelted of minerals.
This traditional method of crop rotation with plant and animals fertilizers today is called Organic farming . It is the traditional farming using the same method for many centuries to produce nutrient-rich foods.
Soil Decline in American History
With subsistence farming, where the family or community takes only what they need for personal use from the soil, the process of depletion may take hundreds or even thousands of years. With the advent of urbanization and the demand for food crops by city dwellers, commercial rather than subsistence agriculture becomes predominant, more plants are being hauled away from the soil, and the soil mineral loss accelerates. The urbanization of the United States in the last century has contributed greatly to the dramatic soil depletion indicated by the mineral data for apples. At the turn of the last century, about 85% of the popoulation liveed on farms, grew much of the food they are, and practiced crop rotation. Today, more than 85% of the population lives in cities and requires food from the land cared for and tended to by someone else, and to which the consumers themselves do not return their wastes. The mineral cycle of the land is broken. Instead of being returned to the land, our mineral wastes now go into landfills and sewers. Plants whose minerals were so carefully guarded and returned to the soil by subsistenve farmers for millennia are now shipped overseas at the fate of more than 100 million tons per year (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1996)
The burned-out farm has been a part of American history since well before the first Europeans arrived here. Anthropologists think that soil depletion may have been responsible for the decline or disapperance of some corn-farming communities in the Southwest. Weston Price, the dentist who studied the effects of traditional diets introduced in Chapter 2, also found anthropological evidence of progressive soil decline in the lands of Southwestern Indians. He examined skeletons from a period of more than a thousand years and found an increase in arthritis, tooth decay, and degeneration of bone structure in progressive generations. These communities hunted but also grew corn, and Price speculates that it was the progressive depletion of minerals in the soil the corn was grown in that caused the gradual decline in health.
Soil depletion also fueled the historic westward expansion of the United States. As the colonists' land became depleted, they abandoned it to look for new land to the west. This phenomenon also influenced the movement from rural areas to cities. A few cultures--those that used wise agricultural methods--did not have to leave their land. In areas of Pennsylvania, Germans, the Amish, and other groups still farm land today that their ancistors settled more than a hundred years ago. These groups believe that the soil they leave their children should be healthier than the soil they inherited. Some German settlers even took over burned-out farms and retored the soil to health (Ebeling, 1979). Weston Price noted the general decline of minerals in the soil by 1938.
In corresponence with government officals in practically every state of the United States I find that during the last fifty years there has been a reduction in the capacity of the soil for productivity in many districts, amounting from 25 to 50 %. Price, 1938.
Price also found a correspondence between soil depletion in specific areas and an increased incidence of heart disease and pneumonia in those areas.
The Rise Of NPK Fertilizer
Soil depletion continues to play an important role in the unfolding history of the family farm in the U.S. Traditional farming methods have been abandoned in favor of intensive use of chemical fertilizers in the last 30 years. NPK-named from the chemical symbols for nitrogen, phosphours, and potassium-has largely replaced maures, organic plant material, and ground up animals bones as fertilizer on commercial farms. Of these, the primary nuturients nitrogen, phosphours, and potassium are most responsible for the growth, size and productivity of agricultural crops, and this they are the primary elements of modern fertilizers like NPK.
Continued
The deficiency of a few nutrients-sulfur,and iron, for example-will cause discoloration of plants, affecting their marketability. The other elements are less crucial to productivity or appearance, although they are extremely important to the nutritional value of the plants to humans. If the secondary nutrients or trace elements become so depleted that it affects the productivity or appearance of a crop, these nutrients may be added to the soil. For instance, iron is often added to fertilizers for commercial potatoe crops, which rapidly deplete the soil of the iron essential to the growth and appearance of the potatoe. The U.S. Department of Agriculture assists farmers in determining whether additional nuturiens need to be added to soil to support plant growth, productivity , and appearance. The nutritional value of the food is not considered in such analyses. Plants remove all these nutrients from the soil, but contemporary farmers add only three or four minerals back in. You will see how, of the five minerals listed, phosphorus, and potassium have declined the least in foods since 1963. This is because these two minerals are standard ingredients in modern fertilizers. NPK fertilizer was developed in the 1830s before we understood the mineral requirements of either plants or humans. We are using an outdated technology, despite what modern scientific knowledge has taught us about the nutritional value of miinerals.
The effect of chemical fertilizers is more complex than simple mineral loss. The addition of chemical nitrogen depletes both the vitamin C and the iron content of plants that grow from fertilized soil (Harris, 1975). In addition, the potassium in NPK fertilizer is added in the form of potassium chloride, which means a ton of chloride is added along with every ton of potassium. The high levels of potassium inhibut plant absorption of magnesium. Chloride leaches the soil of magnesium, zinc, and calcium (Hall, 1976). Potassium chloride also alters the mineral balance so that selenium becomes bound in the soil and cannot be absorbed by plants (Ensminger et al.,1983).
If you would like more information get this book. It is called "The Healing Power Of Minerals. Special Nutrients, and Trace Elements" It is a must read. So many diseases are due to mineral and vitamin loss. "Prima Health" Books.
In this book contains chapters that list common Conditions that may be treated with certain Mineral and Vitamin intake. It is a great book for preppers with common sense information that I have never found in any book. I paid $15.00.
www.primahealth.com
__________________
Don't anger the bird. He's gotta a gun.
Parrot's cannot spell. Go edit another's post and leave the bird alone.