An Invisible Chain of our Time
Page 4
high value business, and it will be a new theft. This is not an augury, is a fact that will be consummated.
You can ask yourself, how came we to this pointless? Better is, I think, that you know what significance have really the soils. Know it and know all the doings about it, provokes silence and counter emotions. If you travel across the world, you could see a lot of differences between rich and poor farmers: one is the form of enslaving, by higher costs and technologies in the firsts, and by lower prices in the seconds. But it is only a small link in the chain, and never mattered what could say an honest agronomist about it.
A layer that makes almost everything.
Well, sure that you have heard once the word ecology, this nice word, which seems to be protecting us, talks about nice gardens, healthy food, birds singing and machines that do not pollute. Actually, was a zoologist called Haeckel who created the word ecology that later some scientists developed on the study and understanding of the homes where we live the living beings, what means all living beings: whoever we be the being, the way we live, or where we live. Between the ensembles of systems of Nature, a big, huge and fantastic home is the soil. The soil is a very big Meeting Hall, a kind of Convention Center for living beings, materials, processes, and relationships (please, never forget this idea). It is not the only in the world, others are the seas and continental waters, even the complex systems as are the forests, fields, reefs and a large number of those called "ecosystems". Every history that you might know about one living over the firm earth has almost been initiated here.
Is not necessary a large lesson about soils (I promise), only realizing that soils are a brainchild without deviser, which includes the mix of minerals, deposits, presence of water, rocks fragmented, gasses, the structure conformed by the ensemble, climate, spontaneous and balanced natural chemical processes, and the hidden subsoil which bases all this. Surprisingly that works, this sort of salad of weird beings and materials and phenomena that works! And allows other things also can work. But even more, in good conditions, every part is there (the upper and lower, humid and dry, aerated and compact) is connected with another, and each one influences each other... at least when conditions are not changed bluntly.
Above, below and within this permanently changing space, the first dwellers essentials to promote life are mainly the bacteria, fungi (that really means to be a pioneer), and with them this material not-live that we call viruses, but certainly from biological origin. These are everywhere, are ubiquitous, are invisible ... millions and millions in each cubic centimeter of soil. This two main groups (taxa) and viruses are present widely in every environ (are always in the air, water, soil, your hands, your body, your gut, on surfaces, on the food, everywhere, belong to everything): bacteria can be framed into complex colonies and communities; the number of species is extremely high, do not being known today neither the 2% from species living and interrelated into soils. And viruses are only active within cells.
You could ask: can we dispense with them, and clean the soil? How is it possible, the soil so dirty?
No, it is not dirty: actually it is healthy. And you also have it around and within you, and you are not dirty, you are healthy ... at least when the most dangerous bacteria or virus are not there. A second key point might be that: thanks to them, the ground exists like you see and need it. The kingdom (realm) of bacteria is making a lot of things, without awareness that all those tasks are profitable for the next beings as we are. Its activities comprise the catching of energy from the Sun (photosynthesis), from inorganic materials and reactions from soils (chemical nurture), and from organic compounds of beings that have gone to better life (biological decomposition). Over them, grows up and lives a long and fascinating ladder of upper organisms, like lichens, fungi, the protozoa, and afterwards with the terrific group of silent recyclers it comes a vast army of arthropods, plants and animals. All this is accurately interlaced. And like all systems, the adjustment may break.
When you are seeing a local natural system near your own home (for instance a pasture, steppe, peat bog, grove, lake, the bank of a river, mountain side, scrub hill), the complexity is not casual: ignore the meaning and position held by each element in the whole, does not allows do without it if are not paid the consequences from its elimination. This is a lesson from the Ecology, and no the opposite, the done along this badly called Green Revolution for 60 years: kill everything has been there on the soils. This is the idea that has been sold to farmers until the present time: simplifying systems is controlling, and this did not was truly a good idea.
Thereby, I am shocked when I read some scientific study which aim is demonstrate and assess the effects of better levels of organic matter into soils, facing to use of chemical fertilizers. This is our world, yet you must demonstrate that Nature is more efficient. It is another joke more for the circus: I fear that there are not being sold fertilizers, is being sold a lazy agriculture.
A big change for soils began with the appearing of a new concept in agriculture, what was called New Agriculture. And immediately it was seen as the Green Revolution, what 50 years later proved to be only one more of the follies done, this one the most spoken, but staying many more silenced in a subtle way. What was the Green Revolution? I will try to say it with good manners.
Here, in this field, there are a lot of species, but… do you need all of them? You do not, do you? All out, are weeds, are "bad" plants! And these bugs, these insects, what are they doing? They are eating, feeding freely! It is unacceptable, all out! This is a business, it must be profitable, efficient, the rest is romance, utopia! Let's go plant one strong species, selected, defined, specialized, and lonely. The bigger will be the field the better will be the harvest. Do you need maintain the productiveness in your soil? Do you need maintain the yield in your fields? No problem! Follow me. Here is a lot of chemical manure that we have produced, a big effort, bringing it from far away, elaborating a smart mix for you. Have you still some insidious insect, any pest? Do not worry about! We already have a comfortable product for spraying, and leave nothing in sight. You will be the most advanced in the area. Do you need a more powerful machine? Do not worry about, of course, because we have... we have ... we have... you will be the bigger.
Pioneer communities increase the complexity of life according to conditions that allow the different soils.
Thus was as clever businessmen have persuaded a huge mass of farmers without knowledge, those we supposed always have known the countryside, they believed it all: and years later, vast tracts of land were completely depleted, with a full loss and running out of soils; they depend today fully from high intakes of chemicals, special seeds, but today even a mild drought diminishes the yield of these farms.
In any case, The Green Revolution did not only broke some element in the trophic chain, community, arthropods, but also were "eliminated" a lot of species and elements far from crops, and even currently we start to understand that disappeared many allied of us. Furthermore, the waste of treatments will remain everywhere along decades, in fact is there, each analysis again and again comes back and keeps showing it in too many places: we do not know how big was the change in this "salad of bacteria and their products" that we have eaten in the past, and what now we cannot eat more. Now we are slowly recognizing that our problems of health have had as causes our lifestyle, not only the food. Actually, the foods suffered also the lifestyle of humans, mainly by black waters and lack of hygiene, the extinction of some species, and the sentencing of other species to oblivion, and currently by modern practices. Perhaps we have killed in the same way than a Holocaust, all that what was a lot of microscopic friends who lived in foods and our body, and have protected us from an important percentage of unbalances and diseases, and its lack has eased the appearing of others diseases. When this is talked with some microbiologist, he always squints his eyes.
A scientist who could read this guess might ask irritably: where are the proofs? Well, then, this is not new, there are already studies ab
out this inkling, but the definitive are coming; myself would be charmed by achieve this purpose the next years. The last places in the world where the less developed tribes (under our concept) base their diet food in natural seeds, untreated meat, fiber, and have not suffered yet the pollution, nor steep changes in their lives, might have some natural diseases even local diseases, but rarely those generalized among the occidentals: never will show the emerging or complex diseases that are dime of dozen in our developed world. And the proportion of diseases drawn from there in front to our diseases, this could point out that this prediction is not foolishness. Of course, you do not will able to find only one microbiologist or bioengineer who want spend one minute about it, despite the tacit recognition that everyone does about it. Usually, a scientist goes to work and get his future in a safe lab desk, one from the seven bigger companies in the world: not all of them are working on your health.
Why is so important this “hall” of microorganisms?
In the XVII century, was A. van Leeuwenhoek who found by the first time what then was something unseen yet: protozoa