Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 2:13 am Post subject: Re: Shortages Threaten Farmers’ Key Tool: Fertilizer
Starvid wrote:
manu wrote:
Keep some cows and oxen and make your own fertilizer. Learn to compost properly.
Riiiiight.
Quote:
Ms. Nha’s husband, Le Van Son, remembers villagers’ amazement in the 1990s when they learned that a pound of chemical fertilizer contained more of the major nutrients than 100 pounds of manure.
Yes, and she is probably even more amazed now when her field is ruined by artificial fertilizer. If you don't even know that by now, you are not even worth responding to. Plus the artificial fertilizers don't have all the hundreds of micronutrients that the plants need for taste and minerals and vitamins. So you get a big tomato with no taste and no nutritlon.
Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 2:21 am Post subject: Re: Shortages Threaten Farmers’ Key Tool: Fertilizer
[quote="Jupidu"]@Starvid
Artificial Fertilizer are nothing else but a mixture of different salts. Using this over and over again is damaging the soils. It's like doing irrigation with salty water. Rivers and lakes are getting too much fertilizer and algae are spreading out and in the sommer there could be a lack of oxygen in the lake or even in the river, fishes or other animals are dying.
Good point, not only are they ruining their land, they are polluting the rivers and even the oceans in some places.
@Manu
For a peasant with one or two acres that's for sure a possibility but when a cow breeding farm with thousand cows or more wants to distribute the manure on it's "nearby" ten thousand acres, then you need a lot of fuel!
The farms don't need to be big. That's my point, small is beautiful.
Plus, you use the bull and oxen for plowing and moving things around.
Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 2:47 am Post subject: Re: Shortages Threaten Farmers’ Key Tool: Fertilizer
Jupidu wrote:
Quote:
Unfortunately most of crops don't like acidic soils and this can cause many secondary problems.
1. The main goal of organisms is usually not to destroy their own environment.
False.
Such destruction often takes place
Look on yeast in wine tank or on consequences of monoculture
Nevertheless in this particular case higher acidity would not harm putative bacterial species as these are resistant to it.
They also need phosphorus for themselves btw.
DNA contain phosphorus after all.
There are some crops, which takes kind high soil acidity, but rice, potatoes or cabbage are certainly not between these.
Wheat is moderately resistant, eg it will take pH 5.5 kindly, albeit it would prefer a bit higher then this.
Such crop will benefit only slightly from your acidic, phosphorus solubilizing bacterias and only in situation, where there is severe deficiency of it.
On the other hand it would benefit much more from inorganic, non-acidic phosphorus fertilizer, say diammonium phosphate.
There are some berries, which don't mind low pH, even as low as 3 in few cases, and such crops would benefit most from symbiosis with mentioned bacteria.
Rule stating that if you have a big hammer, then every problem looks like a nail does not apply in gardening or agriculture.
Quote:
2. Symbiosises are a very popular form of organsims for living together (e.g. diazotrophic Bacteria which are living in the nodules
of legumes).
Yes, they are.
Quote:
3. Nature always wants to come into a form of balance (Temperature, amount of bacteria, ph-value etc.)
Yes, but intensive farming has nothing to do with natural balance, so Nature makes all efforts to weed it out.
Natural balance is at substantially lower yields, than those which we enjoy now.
Quote:
Bacteria by itself are most probably not willing to destroy their environment by producing to much acid.
I explained this before.
In general objection of bacteria in natural environment is to maximize their own growth, not human food yield.
NB. You are assuming that bacteria have far greater forecasting abilities then humans do.
Quote:
Soil is not comparable with a big vessel where you put in a lot of chemicals and afterwards there should be a certain new mixture with calculated properties in it.
Well, it is a deterministic system in any case.
Quote:
But yes you can produce a too acid soil, if i remember correct by diverting too much manure or too much artificial fertilizer (don't know which one it was).
Manure is rather alkaline than acidic, so you are wrong here.
Example of such inorganic fertilizer is ammonium sulfate, which is physiologically acidic (removes calcium from circulation).
Quote:
Producing means use of energy and therefore (because of millions of years of experience) there is never a situation where to much surplus is produced.
...as long as partners are well matched.
It is also known, that many plants are running underground chemical wars between themselves and try to suppress each other growth.
Quote:
Why should a bacteria produce nitrogen when it get's no sugar because the plant don't need nitrogen at the moment?
Those living within roots of plants are taking notice of that - good example of symbiosis.
Some others living in soil will carry on regardless, as long as sufficient amounts of decomposing organic matter are present.
Quote:
I never saw a soil analysis nor did i ever caused such a thing, but for me it sounds very logic and therefore true.
"Logic" not necessarily equals "true", albeit it often does.
Last edited by EnergyUnlimited on Tue May 06, 2008 1:27 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: Sep 03, 2005 Posts: 75 Location: Germany, State M-V
Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 2:57 pm Post subject: Re: Shortages Threaten Farmers’ Key Tool: Fertilizer
@EnergyUnlimited:
Finally i find the time to answer. I always want to give a good answer, so sometimes i need a bit longer.
I just read your link:
Quote:
This comes at expense of acidification of soil.
Bacterias used as promoters are producing significant amounts of organic acids, which are increasing phosphate solubility.
link
But i couldn't find a hint, at least in the abstract ("Phosphate solubilizing bacteria and their role in plant growth promotion - Hilda Rodriguez and Reynaldo Fraga"), to your argument that this phosphate extracting bacteria are increasing the acidity of the soil. Can you post please the phrase of this document where this is mentioned? The article costs 31,50 Dollar and i don't want to spend so much money just for a posting.
That's really a thing were i'm getting angry: Most often the scientists are paid by national institutions, but publishers are thinking it's their own material when they have read it.
I know that articles in journals like "Science" or "Nature" are for free after a year, but there are a lot of journals to read.
Here is another article about bio-fertilizers (for Coffee):
"Bio-fertilizers for Coffee Plantations
by Dr. Anand Titus and Geeta N. Pereira
...
The soil acts as a reservoir for millions of microorganisms, of which more than 85% are beneficial for plant life.
...
Bacteria like Pseudomonas striata, and Bacillus megaterium are also important phosphorus solubilizing soil microorganisims. Many fungi like Aspergillus and Penicillium are potential solubilizers of bound phosphates.
...
Soil phosphates are rendered available to plants by soil microorganisims through secretion of organic acids. Therefore, phosphate dissolving soil microorganisims play some part in correcting phosphorus deficiency in plantation soils."
From ineedcoffee.com
Why should a bacteria produce more acid than to soluble the needed phosphate (and in this process the acid is used off)?
Quote:
Natural balance is at substantially lower yields, than those which we enjoy now.
That depends mainly on how thick the layer of humus is. In the rain forest this layer is very thin and the soil beneath is a really poor soil. But if a plant or an animal dies, almost immediately it is recycled, so no minerals or nutrients (nitrogen from amino acids from animals) are lost. Additionally thousands of tons of sand from the sahara is blown every year into the Amazon.
Plant a plant (desert plant) with bare roots (by washing away the dirt with a garden hose) in the desert sand and give the same amount of artificial fertilizer like in conventional ag and as much water as is vaporizing throughout the day => the plant will be dead in a few weeks because it needs the organisms in the soil and the soil by itself to hold the fertilizer and the water. The organic matter acts like a storage for the fertilizer (See document "Soil fertility" at agromisa.org).
Quote:
Manure is rather alkaline than acidic, so you are wrong here.
No, it's really manure, which is then decomposed into ammonia. If really needed i will find an english document for that. If got this knowledge from a document of the university Osnabrueck a proseminar of the science of Systems, bio-geo-chemical cycles, Subject Nitrogen, Summer 2002 (Britt-Kristien Tietjen and Sten Zeibig).
Quote:
It is also known, that many plants are running underground chemical wars between themselves and try to suppress each other growth.
Yes, but we are talking about bacteria which are living in symbiosis, eh?
Quote:
Some others living in soil will carry on regardless, as long as sufficient amounts of decomposing organic matter are present.
Now you got me, i really don't know what this sort of free-living bacteria are doing. I read something about getting energy from some type of nitrogen-compound but can't remember if it was meant for this sort of bacteria or another or if it was only in the anerob nitrogen cycle. I'm no ag-engineer
Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 5:36 pm Post subject: Re: Shortages Threaten Farmers’ Key Tool: Fertilizer
Jupidu wrote:
There are already some solutions to handle the fertilizer problem all around the world:
For rice it is even possible to produce more food without chemical fertilizer:
It's called the "Duck revolution". Invented by TAKAO FURUNO, a japanese peasant. He is practicing ecological farming since 1977 and in 1987 he got the idea to combine rice farming and growing ducks at the same place. Gradually he enhanced his idea by adding other organisms to his system. He published in 2001 all his knowledge in the book "The power of duck". The result of his work is the combination of rice growing together with growing of ducks and fishes in a paddy.
Even better is to let grow different sorts of Azolla ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla ), a aquatic fern in the paddies. Azolla works like legumes in fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere in the ground respectively in the water.
For crops/grains:
- Inter cropping of legumes and grains (not only one year after the other but instead at the same time at the same place): Legumes deliver nitrogen and the grain is the plant for the legume to creep.
- Instead of aritificial and costly fertilizer Bacteria (Diazotrophs, usually living in symbiosis with legumes) can do the work - even better, because plant and Bacteria (in symbiosis)are living together in symbiosis. Bacteria delivers nitrogen and the plant delivers carbohydrate (starch/sugar). Even better is the combination of these Bacteria with a special flavonoid (plant pigment) called naringenin (especially in tomatoes; e.g. in tomato puree or tomato paste). With this substance legumes are signaling in a chemical matter that they are needing nitrogen in exchange for delivering starch or sugar. The colonization of the roots of the legumes (or here: of the crops) is enhanced through the application of naringenin.
The enhancement of the growth of the plants is not only better because of the nitrogen but because of different substances which are produced through this symbiosis.
Here is a study which analyzed this effect at Brassica napus (rape, canola):
One firm (i am too lazy in the moment to find similar products with a description in english; i get no money or any advantage from this firm. It's just my private struggle against misinformation and agrimultis like pioneer, Cargill, ADM, Monsanto, Bayer Crop Science, Syngenta, et.al.) where you can buy this ecological (!) sort of fertilizer (there should be more, which are selling suitable Bacteria):
The price is 57 Euro (ca. 92 Dollar) plus shipment for one kilo (needed for an area of about one hectare) of powder. You have to mix it with water. It's quite expensive for the owner of a small garden, but perhaps you can convince your neighbours AND: If you are cultivating your garden in a ecological way (no articificial fertilizers, no insecticides, herbicides, etc.) then you only have to buy and apply it perhaps once in your lifetime, because then you don't kill your tiny little friends and they are happy in your soil till the end.
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