The idea of “balance” is at once both clichéd and elusive. It’s clichéd because everyone talks about obtaining “work-life balance,” and one can purchase energy bars, shoes, natural skincare, and several different brands of clothing that each include the word “balance.”
But the very existence of such striving indicates that most of us don’t actually possess it. If balance were commonly achieved, no one would talk about it.
It’s therefore perhaps ironic that this concept that we yearn for so much in everyday life is absent in most of our agricultural soils. As a society, we devote a lot of attention to trying to balance our work and leisure but pay little concern for the mineral balance in the soil that feeds us.
Balance was of prime importance to Dr. William Albrecht and other agronomists 100 years ago when they discerned the ideal ratios of primary cations in the soil. Dr. Albrecht’s experiments showed him that the ideal soil was saturated with approximately 65 percent calcium to 15 percent magnesium. Calcium serves to loosen the soil while magnesium tightens it; thus, on high-clay soils that are naturally prone to compaction, the balance of calcium to magnesium may need to be higher — perhaps 70:10 or even 80:10. The other primary cations and anions need to be balanced as well — potassium should be 2 to 5 percent of the soil, and iron should be 1/3 to 1/2 of potassium; manganese should be 1/3 to 1/2 of iron; boron should be 1/1000 of calcium and between 1 and 4 ppm, etc.
Soil balancing rejects the simplistic idea of von Liebig’s Law of the Minimum, in which the least-abundant mineral drags the whole system down. A proper agronomic system is concerned not just with whichever mineral is lacking — it is even more troubled by the nutrients that are in excess, since these are often the ones that lead to insect pressure and plant disease.
Yet in spite of the work of Dr. Albrecht, popularized by Charles Walters and many others in this magazine over the past five decades, most largescale growers forsook the idea of soil balancing and instead embraced the more one-dimensional NPK formula, mostly ignoring calcium, magnesium and the trace minerals. While it’s right to be skeptical of theories that simplistically assign blame to corporate interests and that take away the agency of individual farmers, one can’t help acknowledging that calcium, magnesium and trace minerals are quite inexpensive compared to N, P and K.
Another area in which the conventional wisdom has failed to appreciate balance, as argued by Rob Lewis in this issue of Acres U.S.A., is in the theories used to explain how our climate has undergone change in the past century. Lewis profiles the work of Spanish researcher Dr. Millan Millan, who along with others, beginning in the 1970s, argued that changes in climatic patterns are the result not just of increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere but also of land use — specifically the reduced amount of vegetation that has accompanied expanded urbanization and has thus led to higher surface and air temperatures. Simply put, more trees mean more regular rain and lower temperatures. It’s a balance that used to exist in nature but is increasingly being disrupted.
You’ll also want to pay particular attention this month to the interview with relay cropper Jason Mauck, Wendy Zellner’s exploration of the benefits of silicon for crops, and excerpts from two new AcresUSA-published books: Maureen Ash’s Holding the Lines and Megan Neubauer’s Pick-Your-Own Farming.
And that’s the view from the country.
