17. Organic Cultivation
Biological agriculture
The health of the topsoil is the most important factor in sustainable
agriculture. Topsoil is created by decayed vegetable matter, and can
vary in depth from a few centimetres to several metres. Forests cre-
ated the deep soils of the world over millennia, and many of these
have shrunk by as much as 80% in the last two hundred years
through our disastrous agricultural practices.
Under natural conditions the friable soil is populated with an
abundance of earthworms and other creatures and is usually
capped with a layer of humus, formed of decomposing leaves and
other vegetable matter, and colonized by a profusion of microbial
and creepy-crawly life. This rich mixture of life forms makes up a
processing factory essential to soil health and fertility, and every-
thing should be done to help it flourish.Soil remineralization
In 1894 an agricultural chemist and contemporary of Justus von
Liebig, Julius Hensel, published Bread from Stone, a valuable book
describing the beneficial effects of fertilizing with rock dust, a by-
product of road metal quarries. His book, posing a significant threat
to this new chemical fertilizer industry, quickly disappeared,
bought up and killed off by those who felt challenged by it.
Ideally ground in a cold process that retains its inherent ener-
gies, this rock dust in composed of finely ground, mainly igneous
rocks (such as granite, basalt, etc.) with a broad mineral spectrum.
Because of its great range of minerals, trace elements and salts,
when spread on the ground, it encourages a wealth of different
micro-organisms.
There has been limited use of rock dust in Switzerland for 150
years. However, its reintroduction has been encouraged by John
Hamaker and Don Weaver who in 1975 brought out The Survival of
Civilization.^1 They describe how important are mineral and trace
elements to plant growth and quality, but also that trace elements
- ORGANIC CULTIVATION