We have all entered a dark room and shouted, “Turn on the light!” Sometimes, there is no light to turn on. Every year our farmers work in situations where there is no light.
When we look at what soil is made of, it is composed of minerals, water, air, organic matter and living organisms. There are literally tons of living organisms in an acre of ground.
These earth worms, nematodes, ants, actinomycetes, fungi, algae, bacteria, and other small animals that live in the soil; all work to decompose organic matter, break down soil particles and turn minerals into forms useful for plant growth. Denitrifying bacteria in the soil turns nitrite into nitrate which is the form of nitrogen that plants can use easily. Nitrogen fixing bacteria who live in a symbiotic relationship with legumes such as clovers, alfalfa, birds foot trefoil, peas and soybeans make nitrogen from air and not only feed nitrogen to their plant, but make extra nitrogen that can be used by the next crop grown.
There are both aerobic bacteria which only are active when oxygen is present and there are anaerobic bacteria that only are active when there is no oxygen present. That’s why it is necessary to turn a compost pile or stir a liquid manure pond, to activate both kinds of bacteria to turn unstable nitrogen into a more stable and less smelly form.
Everything earthworms eat is expelled in a form that plants can easily use as plant food. The most widely used herbicide in the world is also registered as a bactericide because it effectively kills many bacteria. The bacteria killed include many of these soil organisms that make free fertilizers for farmers. How much of this herbicide residue has to be present in the soil to reduce beneficial soil bacteria has never been tested.
When a farmer feeds the animals there are also many dark rooms that the farmer has to work in.
Pregnant animals should be fed an anionic diet for a few weeks before having their young. This anionic diet forces the animal to produce more calcium in her bones, preparing her for after delivering her young when she will produce more milk than her system is used to. This lack of calcium after calving could cause serious health problems and even death.
After delivering her baby, the animal’s diet should be switched immediately to a cationic diet with extra calcium and other feeds that are very cationic in composition.
Fields that are high in some minerals like potassium, produce grain and forages that also are high in potassium which has a high atomic weight and hence high in cations. Therefore, how the farmer fertilizes a field has a large effect on the resulting feed tests. Before computer programs for feed ration balancing arrived in the 1980s, nutritionists had to use the mineral composition of all the feeds and calculate their atomic weight before calculating the feeds cationic value.
For many decades, nutritionists knew that ruminants or animals with four stomachs had bacteria in their stomachs that helped break down roughage. Now we know that all animals have microbes or bacteria in their digestive system to aid digestion and help keep the digestive system healthy.
It has become very important to not only provide adequate nutrition for the performance of the animal, but also it is just as important to provide adequate nutrition for the microbes or bacteria in the digestive system of whatever or whoever is being fed. Unhealthy gut bacteria can lead to a very unhealthy digestive system and even death.
All doctors and pharmacists check everything prescribed to check if what is prescribed might interact with anything else the patient is taking, before filling the prescription.
We must also demand that food for animals and humans does not contain any residues from sprays that might affect the health of the gut bacteria as well as the patient.
Some sprays chelate or bind very tightly and make unavailable certain minerals like copper, zinc, manganese, calcium, etc.
Pregnant animals without adequate manganese are more prone to have early embryonic death of their fetus. In the late 1980s, we increased the manganese content in the mineral that our cattle consumed to compensate for manganese that might not be available in the feed. Some farmers are adding extra copper to their nitrogen fertilizer because without adequate available copper, nitrogen uptake by the plants is poor.
If calcium availability is inadequate, phosphorus availability is restricted even if a soil test indicates adequate phosphorus content in the soil. Again tests are not available to show if a chemical residue may be chelating certain minerals.
Recently, we have noticed an increase in food recalls because of e-coli and salmonella found in foods.
There are also several outbreaks of clostridium difficile in hospitals. I hope it is just a coincidence that the farmers most used spray has little or no effect on killing forms of e-coli, salmonella, and clostridium.
Farmers have already had several drugs taken away. They were very effective in saving baby calves and pigs, and cows with mastitis which is the most costly disease in dairy cattle in the world. These drugs are being reserved for human use on controlling clostridium infections.
Farmers want to produce tasty, economical and safe food for our citizens. Let’s hope that more safety testing is completed on these chemical tools before they are released and touted as a wonder spray.
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations. gladcrest@gmail.com
