Soil Health is the Key to Good Food, and therefore Good Health

Soil health or fertility is the capacity to receive, store and transmit energy to support strong plant growth. These processes require healthy soils - living, self-organising systems with physical, chemical and biological components all functioning and in balance.

The continuous use of acidic or salty synthetic fertilisers, insecticides, fungicides and herbicides will disrupt this delicate balance.

We need to focus on healthy soil microbiology, showing that increasing soil health results in a dramatic reduction in the necessity for fossil fuel inputs (fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides), and dramatic increases in plant health (with its corresponding reduction in pest problems), and significant improvement in carbon capture - a critical element in our battle with global warming.

All around the world people are becoming more aware of the environment and the effect we are having on it. We are becoming increasingly concerned about what is in the food we eat and more particularly, what toxins have been sprayed on the plants during their growth. We are aware of the fact that in spite of the use of toxic sprays over decades, insect pests and diseases are resisting and fighting back.

In addition, we are facing more and more serious health problems and diseases, a growing inability to cope with stress and some forms of cancer seemingly on the increase.

The good news is that there is a world-wide trend towards better nutrition and health and this involves the realization that we should grow our food by safe, natural organic methods.

There is no doubt that healthy soil means healthy plants. With this in mind, many home gardeners are refusing to use poisonous sprays and unnatural chemical fertilizers and instead are concentrating their efforts on composting and mulching and creating a healthier environment for their plants to grow in.

If you would like to make the switch to Organic Gardening but are not quite sure how to go about it, here is a great resource to get you started. Just click on the link to find out more.

One man who is passionate about discovering and using the power of nature in food production systems - and the connections between soil biology, soil health, and the overall functioning of agro-ecosystems is Dr Maarten Stapper. He sees many opportunities for Australian agriculture to reverse soil degradation and regenerate soils, and travels the country to educate farmers on how to use fewer chemicals in their soil and on their crops.

Dr. Stappen is a farming systems agronomist who works at BioLogic AgFood. He has extensive experience in healthy agriculture having worked in the Netherlands, Canada, USA, Iraq, Syria before coming to Australia in 1982.

Maarten has been involved in research related to organic/biological farming for many years. He was recently featured on the Television program "The Australian Story" which looked at such issues as, What is the future of Biological Farming? How do we get healthy food production systems? How do we get carbon in the soil? Do we need GM? Where do science institutions lead us?

As an advocate for biological farming, Dr Stapper has paid a high price for promoting a greener, cleaner way to grow food. Originally a CSIRO scientist, he left when it became clear his views on biological farming were incompatible with those of his employer.

Here are some comments taken from the transcript of the program "Back to Earth".

DR STAPPER: "Well I grew up in the Netherlands, in Holland, in the dairy country, and I was every day after school, after kindergarten already, on the dairy farm, always helping with the animals. Then I went to the agricultural university and after my first year I went to Canada for three months to pick tobacco and that was one of my first signs that agriculture was going in the wrong direction. They had been using DDT for 20 years, so all the little bugs had gone, the beetles had gone, the birds had gone, and then on the farm there was this eerie silence, and yeah, what does it do to our environment?"

DR STAPPER: "The real key to our life on planet earth is the soil. The soil is the skin of planet earth, and that skin, that soil, provides us with the living plants that give us the food. Well the skin of our planet earth has now been decimated over the last decades."

DR STAPPER: "Genetic modification was right from the start a point that I was questioning, the policy of CSIRO plant industry was completely on the track of genetically modified, so all the funding went into that direction of, put a foreign gene into a host to get some characteristic of that foreign gene into our crops."

DR STAPPER: "And I question that as a system because we have to start with the soil, the genes don't make the crops better, it's the soil. I seemed to be the only one that was asking questions in the system. With the whole GM silence surrounding me, and me speaking up, I felt like a voice in the wilderness. That I wasn't heard of. "

PROF VALERIE BROWN, FMR CSIRO ADVISORY COUNCIL: "Once the decision had been made that genetic engineering was indeed the strength of CSIRO and the direction the country should go in, there was a whole troop of people, either what is it? Jumped or pushed, whose work was no longer seen as relevant. Maarten was frustrated and there's no doubt that he had cause to be frustrated because he was a victim of a huge swing in CSIRO to make all services, public goods services earn their keep. So suddenly there wasn't even a place for an argument about a public goods service for your research, it had to show that it was commercially viable."

ADRIAN LAWRIE, FARMER AND SUPPLIER: "I run my own biological farm and business and I started organising for Maarten to speak to groups of farmers. He was literally like a beacon in the sky, in a grey sky of where do we go next to get some solid information about biological farming."

PETER COOK, FARMER: "We noticed that there was an advert in the paper, that this guy Dr Maarten Stapper was going to be speaking on biological farming, the problems that were in the soil, in the plants, in the livestock, so my son and I went along. And when we got out of it, my son looked at me and I looked at him and we said, well this is exactly what is happening on our farm, he's answered all our questions. Well about four years ago, we were amazed at how downhill everything was going, and our production was dropping, livestock were not looking like they should and our chemical bills were just huge. After I listened to Dr Maarten Stapper that day, I felt good. There was a way to overcome all the harm that had been done, and I was excited about getting away from chemicals and starting to look at nature, starting to look at the soil."

PETER COOK, FARMER: "I believe that the biological way was getting back to what was done probably 50 years ago, in dollar terms I don't really know how much we've saved, but probably in the vicinity of $20,000 a year in chemicals but the exciting thing is that we're looking after the property, then if we've got good plants, then people are eating good food. There are good minerals passing from that food into the people. I've got a totally different outlook on it now, and I want everything I sell to be as clean and green as I possibly can."

PAM COOK: "And the wheat that we were growing was virtually chemical free, so I wanted to find a way to eat it ourselves so I decided to get a grain mill and use our own wheat and make bread from that. The information we got from Maarten Stapper is life changing, it makes us question all the things we're doing farming, and the food we eat, and health wise as well he tells it how it is, which is really good, and the world needs lots more Maarten Stapper's to get the message across."

You can read the complete transcript here .... or .... click here to watch the program video.