Germs of Endearment

Farmers should restore Mother Nature’s little microscopic helpers!

Veterinary school taught me that there are no good germs. Our whole education was basically designed to teach us how to armor up to fight the pathogens — the bad guys.

The tools of that warfare consisted primarily of disinfectants, antibiotics, and vaccines. It was a battle, and we felt happy to have these weapons. Our teachers literally called all this our “armamentarium,” reinforcing the notion that it was violent war against all microbes. In fact, we were taught to look back, somewhat mockingly, to the times when the poor medical people had to deal with plagues and pestilence as naked fighters with no armaments.

Of course, the truth is that those ancient tools only look puny to a farm or to land that has been ravaged — driven to death’s door thanks to modern chemistry.

When I got out into the “real world,” it slowly sunk in to me that what I was taught isn’t how the world really works. As it turns out, “pathogens” arise when we have helped create an imbalance in the microbiome — that is, when we have somehow destroyed or diminished the “good guys.”

Nowadays there are classes taught in some medical schools that teach doctors how to restore harmony in the human microbiologic world, and lately some are even using fecal transplants. We now know that there are more microbial cells in the human body than all human cells. And guess what? They are driving the bus.

This is true for all animals and all plant life. Once harmony has been restored, though, the pathogens aren’t able to create havoc.

Soil Health for Herd Health

There is one consistent aspect of all heavily farmed soil, especially tilled row-crop land: it’s pretty much depleted of all normal biology. This lack of biology is destructive to everything good about soil.

One of the most common consequences is compaction. A plant can only go a short time without its roots being able to breathe and grow. Compacted soil is a noose around the roots that starves them to death. More tillage makes it worse — more compacted and more sterile.

Jerry Brunetti frequently referred to the soil microbiome as a “coral reef,” complete with the full spectrum of predators and prey. This microscopic nutritional cascade starts with the tiniest — the bacteria — which are eaten by the fungi and protozoa. The long hyphae of soil fungi are extremely important — they reach out and bind with plant roots, enabling the plant to access valuable nitrogen that was pulled right out of the air. In exchange for some carbohydrates, this synergy gives the plant what it needs to grow and flourish. The microbial food chain continues up to the larger animals such as earthworms, dung beetles, and other arthropods.

When we start fixing abused and basically sterile soil, we typically begin by stopping all tillage. This is just the beginning, though, because land left abandoned, such as CRP land, is still stagnant and sterile. Change will come, but only after years, decades, or even centuries.

Fortunately, we have learned how to speed up this process in the most natural of methods. We use what Mother Nature uses: enhanced biology. There are several ways to do this. One of the most common, albeit most crude, is the application of raw manure. This almost always comes from a confined feeding operation, which means it can be contaminated with destructive chemicals, wormers, antibiotics, and other drugs. It also means that the raw state cannot be fully captured; as much as 80 percent of the nitrogen, carbon, and other much-needed elements gas off into the sky.

The next step up the ladder is to use manure and forages that have been fermented or composted into a more-dense, more stable form that will actually stay on the ground and will be much better assimilated into the plants. This means live compost. The composting process is biologically driven, and pure compost is one of the richest natural sources of soil-enhancing microbes.

There are several problems with compost, however, beginning with the fact that it is often difficult to find good manure to start with. In any natural and regenerative operation, manure is the “pure gold” that makes everything work. When manure is hauled away in any livestock production, it is a non-sustainable operation. The lack of the biological circle will only continue until the tilth of the soil has been hauled down the road and thus exhausted.

It is also difficult to learn the art of composting. Advanced training is almost always needed to do it right. A starter culture must be used, the water content must be constantly maintained, and the entire pile needs to be turned or lofted to ensure everything gets composted.

But if good compost can be made, compost tea is a powerful way to rapidly apply its benefits to pasture. Compost tea is made in a machine that mixes a small amount of good compost with hyper-oxygenated water, which stimulates the growth and reproduction of the microbes. Through spinning or the creation of a vortex, a concentration of pure microbes can be spun out and then applied to the soil or plants, typically in a manner called foliar feeding.

The word “foliar” of course means “relating to leaves,” so we are spraying a fine mist on the plants themselves, although a certain percentage then goes onto the soil as well. Along with this biology, we can also add food for the microbes. Even simple sugars such as molasses will suffice. Sugars also help the liquid stick to the plant. We can also add other biostimulants, especially if there are critical and essential minerals that are missing. Compost teas are a powerful tool that can achieve dramatic results. It’s possible and actually quite easy to double the Brix — the total nutrient value of the plants — with just one application.

In addition to the aforementioned standard methods of fixing soil biology, there are other alternative methods that work very well in the right hands. These vary in the degree of complexity and cost per acre, but one of the simplest is the application of raw milk. It’s biologically alive and is filled with minerals, milk sugars, and other nutrients. Twenty gallons per acre is a full application. Another possibility is biodynamic preparations — homeopathic solutions that follow the principles of the Austrian polymath Rudolph Steiner — although these are very complicated to make and require special training.

Finally, perhaps the best and most rapid known method of soil restoration comes from biological soil stimulants — commonly referred to as “bugs in a jug.” Allow experts to concentrate the microbes and juggle the ratios into the best-known recipes for success. There are hundreds of these products on the market, with a full array of power ranging from mildly effective to astonishing value. The cost for treatment varies from as low as $7 to several hundred dollars per acre, but the benefits can be long-lasting, and these amendments are a great option for the many farmers who don’t have access to high-quality manure, compost, raw milk, etc.

Decide to De-Cide

An extremely important aspect of biological farming is weaning off of all the “-cides” — pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, etc. It doesn’t make sense to spend time and resources applying beneficial microbes only to apply a chemical that will then kill what you just put on. Getting off of the -cides isn’t as hard as it sounds, though — you’ll soon wonder, “Why did I ever think those were so great?” All the cutting-edge natural farms have long ago stripped themselves of all these tools of destruction.

This movement toward balance also includes the reduction and removal of other chemicals or drugs that act as soil poisons, such as vaccines, chemical wormers, hormones, and antibiotics. Again, when health is achieved, it leads to a strong immune system — for animals and plants as well as for us. Toxic agricultural chemicals are causing many farmers to be more sickly than city people, and this chemical problem is frequently driving the smartest young people off the farm because they don’t want to raise a family that will be exposed daily to the carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, and biocidal poisons that are a necessary companion to commodity farming.

Rather than “fighting nature” we are actually working hand-in-hand with her to create massive shifts back to a wholesome and productive land. This is always less expensive, less time-consuming, and much more effective. Fighting nature just wears you out — nature always bats last!