Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumHealthy Soils, Healthy People; The Legacy of William Albrecht
Text of 2011 Albrecht Lecture
Healthy Soils, Healthy People; The Legacy of William Albrecht
John Ikerd
William Albrecht was still Chairman of the Soils Department and a familiar name in the College of Agriculture when I first arrived on the MU campus in the fall of 1957. I recall a friend who was a bit offended because Albrecht seemed to be questioning the intelligence of people, like him, who been raised on food from the worn out soils of South Georgia. We students werent aware of the larger controversy surrounding Albrechts work linking the health of soils to the health of people. While President of the Soil Science Society in 1938, he had written in the Yearbook of Agriculture A declining soil fertility, due to a lack of organic material, major elements, and trace minerals, is responsible for poor crops and in turn for pathological conditions in animals fed deficient foods from such soils, and mankind is no exception."[1] My soils instructor, Prof. E. R. Graham, stuck pretty close to the physics, chemistry, and biology of soils. I dont recall him ever mentioning Albrechts work linking soil health and human health. Perhaps he didnt want to endure the professional criticism Albrecht received for venturing beyond the narrow bounds of his disciple. The University of Missouri had plant and animal scientists to worry about the health of plants and animals and an entire medical school to deal with the health of people. Professor Albrecht was admonished to restrict his observations to the health of soils.
Perhaps his most controversial, most important, study was a review of World War II era dental records of 70,000 U.S. sailors. He linked the health of sailors teeth to the health of soils in their native regions of the U.S. In those days, people mostly ate foods grown on local farms or at least grown in their respective regions of the country. He concluded, If all other body irregularities as well as those of the teeth were so viewed, it is highly probable that many of our diseases would be interpreted as degenerative troubles originating in nutritional deficiencies going back to insufficient fertility of the soil.[2] With the end of World War II, Albrecht called for a major national initiative to restore the health and fertility of Americas worn out soils.
Instead, the nations agricultural priorities shifted to producing more and cheaper food. Albrecht anticipated that reliance on commercial fertilizers to increase production would degrade both soil health and human health. He was particularly concerned with an overemphasis on nitrogen, prosperous, and potash (N, P, & K), would lead to depletion of trace minerals, such as manganese, copper, boron, zinc, iodine, and chlorine, and degrade basic soil health. He wrote "N P K formulas, as legislated and enforced by State Departments of Agriculture mean malnutrition, attack by insects, bacteria and fungi, weed takeover, crop loss in dry weather, and general loss of mental acuity in the population, leading to degenerative metabolic disease and early death."[3]
SNIP
I identify with William Albrecht, both personally and professionally. I had to break free of the narrow bounds of agricultural economics when I began to explore the larger and more important questions of agricultural sustainability. I was a respected agricultural economist at the time: Head of the Department of Extension Agricultural Economics and President of the Southern Agricultural Economics Association. I felt the sting of academic rejection and marginalization whenever I raised questions related to crop science, animal science, soils science, ecology, sociology, or philosophy. I never claimed to be an expert in any academic area other than my own. Like Albrecht, however, I knew I needed to understand enough about rest of agriculture, society, and humanity to understand how and why a dysfunctional agricultural economy was degrading the sustainability of agriculture and threatening the future of humanity. My work in sustainable agriculture led me to the work of William Albrecht.
https://sites.google.com/site/albrechtlecture/home/text-of-2011-albrecht-lecture
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)This stood out to me.
general loss of mental acuity in the population
We are what we eat.
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,073 posts)raging moderate
(4,317 posts)A very good article.
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,073 posts)Note to original author: Don't neglect proofreading, can't depend on spell-check. "prosperous" --> "phosphorous"
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)mopinko
(70,366 posts)mopinko
(70,366 posts)several neighbors dont like my "messy" little farm. but soil is what we are all about here, not looking like martha stewart's farm.
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)that was concerned with this very issue and even used the healthy/unhealthy teeth-and-diet method to illustrate it. In modern agriculture we have reduced the soil to something that holds plants upright, instead of the living thing it should be. I remember one anecdote from the book where a farmer (Louisiana? Mississippi?) simply burned off his fields, instead of plowing the plant material back in: he said that there was so little bacterial life in the soil that the material wouldn't even decay.
drokhole
(1,230 posts)JohnyCanuck
(9,922 posts)By Hope Shand
Soon after peasant farmers first led plant explorers to wild stands of Zea diploperennis (perennial maize) in Mexico's Sierra de Manantlan in the late 1970s, plant breeders hailed the discovery as one of the botanical finds of the century. The rare perennial maize proved to be resistant to seven viral diseases that plague domesticated maize, and scientists predicted that Zea diploperennis could be worth as much as $4.4 billion to the commercial maize (corn) industry. Conservationists called for the establishment of a nature preserve to protect the rare maize in its natural habitat because they feared that poor farmers living nearby, in constant need of grazing land for their cattle, would soon wipe out the few remaining patches of wild maize by grazing cattle in the area. A nature preserve was eventually established, and peasant farmers no longer threatened the rare diploperennis. But within a few years, the forest began to invade the fields of wild maize. The plants were crowded out and began to disappear. Scientists soon realized that the local farmers had been intentionally conserving the wild maize by using a traditional practice of grazing their animals on dry fodder during the dormant season. Local farmers controlled the growth of the surrounding forest without harming the rare perennial maize plants. Retired vice-president for research at Pioneer Hi-Bred (the world's largest seed company), Donald Duvick, respectfully observes, "It seems that the farmers knew exactly what they were doing, and had more wisdom than the well-meaning environmental scientists."
SNIP
Why Are We Losing Agricultural Biodiversity?
The greatest factor contributing to the loss of crop and livestock genetic diversity is the spread of industrial agriculture and the displacement of more diverse, traditional agricultural systems. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, the Green Revolution introduced high-yielding varieties of rice and wheat to the developing world, replacing thousands of farmers' traditional crop varieties and their wild relatives on a massive scale. The same process continues today. New, uniform plant varieties are replacing farmer's traditional varieties - and the traditional ones are becoming extinct.
In the United States, more than 7000 apple varieties were grown in the last century. Today, over 85 percent of those varieties - more than 6000 - are extinct. Just two apple varieties account for more than 50% of the entire US crop. In the Philippines, where small farmers once cultivated thousands of traditional rice varieties, just two Green Revolution varieties occupied 98% of the entire rice growing area in the mid-1980s.
Industrial agriculture requires genetic uniformity. Vast areas are typically planted to a single, high-yielding variety or a handful of genetically similar cultivars using capital intensive inputs like irrigation, fertilizer and pesticides to maximize production. A uniform crop is a breeding ground for disaster because it is more vulnerable to epidemics of pests and diseases.
http://www.reimaginerpe.org/node/921