17/09/2023
https://www.facebook.com/100044174482086/posts/871851774297297/
The tiny realms beneath.
Recently it has been decided by scientists that two thirds of all life on earth actually lives in the soil underneath us. How mad is that? It certainly makes one think about where to put the waste after cleaning your paint brushes, or pouring anything other than spring water onto the roof of their world, the floor of ours.
The realm of the tiny kingdoms of microbes and fungi have inhabited the earth for billions of years before we ever appeared here, so perhaps it is safe to assume they have developed a much sharper intelligence that us? It certainly looks that way if you open your eyes to how humans are rapidly destroying our only home in the constant strive for higher GDP. I bet the microorganisms and everything else we are (not) sharing this planet with are only dying for us to hurry up and wipe ourselves out.
Let’s turn that around.
These tiny realms are mostly invisible to the naked eye. A teaspoon of healthy soil contains more bacteria than there are people on the earth. One square foot of healthy soil has thousands of miles of threadlike mycelia, the roots of fungi. These threads and microbes are incredibly active and vitally important. They are the earth’s underground World Wide Web communication network. The underworld life-forms play roles in soil aeration, nutrient cycling, and soil water uptake, which make possible the healthy establishment of plants, the foundation stone of all life.
Fungi are the creatures from the underworld whose fruiting bodies are momentarily visible to our realm. These organisms turn dead things back into soil, the ultimate recyclers. They also weave the whole world together, underground, but we have broken these links by our treatment of topsoil.
When I was young, before the advent of chemical agriculture, the fields were full of large white mushrooms every autumn. My dad used to send us out to collect them and I remember hunting for them in the evenings, one of the few memories I have, the fading warmth of the evening sun on my skin and the excitement of searching for those perfectly formed, white, field mushrooms. Cool and solid, yet so smooth, clean and velvety to the touch. It was a yearly activity and Dad would slice them up and fry them in salty butter on the aga in the evenings. I haven’t tasted mushrooms like them since.
These days, they are rarely, if ever spotted on modern farms. Ploughing, spraying pesticides and the application of chemical fertilizers have destroyed the natural cycle of life of which they were part. Though ploughing gives an initial burst of fertility, the underlying truth is that it destroyed natures intelligent channels for the transfer and supply of nutrients in the soil. As a result, we turned our backs on nature's gift of perpetual abundance and became responsible for supplying the fertility ourselves, to make things grow. When you turn the soil and expose the earth to sunlight, it is akin to ripping the skin off the human body. The layers of soil are mixed together, sending the communities of microorganisms into chaos. Microorganisms in the soil need small amounts of oxygen to respire, but when you cultivate, many of them die from overexposure to oxygen.
After tilling, the threads of mycelium which have a symbiotic relationship with plants and bacteria, are no longer able to feed the plants nutrients in return for the sugars the plants make from photosynthesis. Plants normally tell the fungi when they need a specific nutrient, this is then sourced and transported back to the plant through the vast underground network, when it is intact. The mycelia increase the effective absorption area of the roots many thousands of times and secrete enzymes that dissolve the nutrients, also making them available to the plants. Bacteria also break nutrients down so that they are in a form that is available to the plants to take into their systems.
There is a direct human consequence to what we have done to the soil. When soil is healthy, so is the food that is produced from it, but today we must deal with a phenomenon called the “dilution effect” in our food. Because we are annually exploiting and ploughing soil, we are removing minerals faster than the soil can replenish them. Most conventional food crops are dependent on the addition of synthetic fertilizers to grow, however, only three nutrients are traditionally added to get the crops to maturity: potassium, nitrogen, and phosphorus (NPK), all derived from petrochemicals. Recently many farmers are adding a few extra minerals to the mix, but these few do not stack up against the complex range of hundreds of macro- and micronutrients our bodies need in order to be healthy. If we are lucky enough to have enough food, we are often still starving, if not hungry. Obesity is a modern form of malnourishment.
By now, most of our industrially farmed and urban soils are nearly dead. Fertilisers, made from petroleum, have burnt the life out of the soil and ploughing and digging it had finished it off. The side effect of all these fertilisers and ploughing, is that the bacteria and fungi are not present anymore. Like all the wildlife above ground, they are being pushed away.
'No-till' methods of gardening and farming have been intensively studied and results show that there is a period of adjustment for land at the beginning, but in the long run the practice leads to healthier and more diverse soils and the food is rich in nutrients. It also improves the soils ability to absorb water, prevents erosion, and reduces and consequently removes the need for pesticides. It is a no brainer, but there’s no money in this for the entrenched system of chemical agriculture and their lobby groups, so it is up to each farmer individually to do the research and find the support they need to make these changes. Microbes are what support life, and without them you have a dead substrate. This is often the case in urban gardens too, as builders remove and compact the soil when houses are being built and leave the residents with what only can be described as ‘dirt’.
Extract from my weekly article in the RTE guide with photos by Claire leadbitter from
