“I appreciate being in your loop. I attended the conference this year. I miss the Walters family not being there, but change does happen, and I think you guys are doing a great job. Bernie Ware and I did a prerecorded video on ‘The Future of Food is Local’ for the online Northern Michigan Small Farm Conference, which has become one of the largest farm programs in Michigan. It is available to anyone, anytime, no charge, at smallfarmconference.com. If it wasn’t for attending my first Acres conference back in ~1975, I might have gotten out of farming. I found a lot of answers from reading Acres U.S.A. and attending the conference over the years.”
Joe Scrimger
Battle Creek, Michigan
“Regarding the article by Annaliese Abbott in the November issue heralding ‘The Legacy of the Scientist Who Linked Soil and Human Health,’ Ms. Abbott supposedly debunks Albrecht’s research findings on several points and accuses Albrecht of ‘jumping’ to conclusions and reaching faulty or mistaken findings. What legacy? Evidently Albrecht didn’t link soil and health, according to Ms. Abbott.”
“Ms. Abbott contends that early USDA studies comparing ‘fertilized’ (NPK) and unfertilized soils showed no difference in nutritional quality and that there was never any evidence to support the claim that vegetables and milk produced from depleted soils could cause people to suffer from deficiency diseases despite eating a ‘balanced’ diet. She therefore seemingly leaps to the conclusion that this is proof that depleted soils (i.e., those lacking in nutrient minerals and organic matter/humus) produce food as nutritious as soils fully and properly kept nutrient-rich through fertilization. Everybody knows that, even readers of Acres U.S.A. I suppose that means minerals and vitamins just show up in harvested crops (or not) and there is no connection between known plant, animal and human nutrients and their health. As long as synthetic chemical fertilizers boost the bins and bushels, have at it.”
“What, pray tell, does ‘depleted’ mean if not a paucity of the minerals and other plant nutrients required to grow vigorous and healthy crop plants? How do you get nutrient-dense crops out of nutrient-depleted soils? This is absurd. It means that not only Albrecht but Howard, McCarrison, Price, Bear and a whole slew of contemporary agronomists, ecologists and astute eco-ag farmers are off-base and not seeing what their eyes tell them.”
“Logically it means farmers need not pay any attention to the fertility status of their soils and can just keep farming them because they will always naturally produce abundant, healthy crops. Despite present-day food from conventional farming being nutritionally pathetic, if farmers stopped fertilizing soils, everything would come crashing down.”
“In Eco-Farm (1977, 1996, 2003), Charles Walters, who coined the term ‘ecological agriculture,’ following the wisdom of Albrecht, writes about the naïve and absurd policy positions of FDA and USDA (even to opposing findings of other agencies) — this in spite of the 1940s research by Dr. Firman Bear showing the mineral content of five vegetables carefully gathered from 10 states varied enormously in mineral content (Ca, Mg, K, Na) depending on the soil type and probably cultivation practices.”
“A description of Bear’s study and research data are given in Hands-On Agronomy (1993, 1995) co-authored by Walters and Neal Kinsey. Note that Colorado crops grown on their inherently mineral-rich soils (thus needing no fertilization) were highest in nutrient mineral content (pages 281-83). It is Kansas, not Tennessee, that is America’s breadbasket. This is just as Albrecht said it would be.”
“The dramatic decline in vitamin and mineral content of vegetables and fruits over the past century is well documented. To claim, as the FDA did, that it is inaccurate to state that the poor nutritional quality of any farm soils anywhere in the U.S. causes abnormally low concentrations of vitamins and minerals in the food supply is ‘breath-takingly absurd,’ in Walters’ words.”
“Ditto the USDA statement in its 1959 Yearbook of Agriculture on soils (which is all about fertility management) that the ‘lack of fertilizer may reduce the yield of the crop, but not the amounts of nutrients in the food produced.’ There goes half the advertising in your magazine if, as Ms. Abbott implies, fertilizing soils can have no beneficial effect on crop quality. Really? Meanwhile in the U.S. multiple degenerative diseases continue to sky-rocket and the nation once classified as healthiest in the world has sunk to dead last. I wonder why.”
Gary L. Kline
Olympia, Washington
“I enjoy the range of articles published in Acres. The recent article by Phil Wheeler (February 2022) goes over so much ground with no thorough explanation of his outlandish claims that it’s almost gibberish to me. Jumping from ‘the electromagnetic spectrum exists’ to ‘everything has a frequency that no one can detect except sometimes we can and artificial fertilizer has bad frequencies’ and ‘brains make waves, therefore prayer is radionics’ strikes me as far beyond reasonable.”
“I understand that people have had some amazing experiences that defy conventional understanding, and I think that’s where this is interesting, but I would really like to see some radionic-skeptical viewpoints published too, or at least a more thorough explanation of just what the heck they think is going on.”
Nathan Rutz
Cleveland, Ohio
Share your experiences with the Acres U.S.A. community by telling us about it via email (editor@acresusa.com), social media (@acresusa on FaceBook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn) or mail (P.O. Box 1690, Greeley, CO 80632).
