Garden Life on Earth
by Barry Carter
Most people have a favorite disaster scenario. Some favor global warming, others favor peak oil. Financial collapse is the favorite of many people but geological cataclysm is favored by others. Regardless of which disaster you may favor, the most immediate problem that develops, as a result of any disaster, will be related to food shortages. Already it is estimated that nearly one billion people are starving on earth.
Most disasters reduce food production or availability. Climate change causes flooding, drought and unseasonable freezes which all reduce food production. Peak oil reduces the availability of petrochemicals for fertilizer and pesticides as well as the fuel to transport food for long distances. Financial collapse makes it more difficult for everyone to produce and purchase food. Geological cataclysm often disrupts or destroys the infrastructure that provides food to many.
Even social disasters are most likely to cause suffering through starvation. When the structures we have built to serve us loose their way and begin to believe that we are here to serve them, they try to monopolize our sources of supply. Whether these are corporate structures, government structures, belief structures or religious structures does not change this pattern.
Nowadays, many people are hungry all of the time. They eat but are not satisfied, so they eat more. But they remain tired and hungry so they have to "sleep it off". I presume that they are still hungry and tired because they are not getting all of the nutrients they need in the food that they eat.
Plants must be the same. They "eat" nutrients which have been solubilized from the soil. They transpire water into the air as the nutrients are removed for food. If there is insufficient nutrition in the plant food that the roots bring in, more water must be transpired into the air to make room for more solubilized minerals from the soil. Unlike people, plants don't get fat when they eat too much; they just waste water.
When we harvest food and ship it elsewhere, we remove essential minerals from the soil and, ultimately, flush them into the seas:
Both conventional and organic agriculture only replace some of these essential minerals. This is probably why we have lost over half of our topsoil in the last eighty years and may be why we have the epidemic of obesity.
Our economic situation, the global energy situation and climate change all are aspects of the same problem -- we have created structures to serve us and forgotten that this is why they were created. Often these structures outlive those who created them. Generally when this happens, the structures initially become objects of adoration or even worship but ultimately those who serve these structures begin to believe that everyone else should be serving them as well.
Structures are, by their inherent nature, rigid. We build roofs and walls to resist the rain, wind and sun as long as possible. We build government structures using constitutions that are difficult to change. We build streets that will not get potholes for as long as possible. We build bibles that cannot be changed under penalty of law or damnation. We build corporate structures that must resist competition from new ideas.
Changeless structures are as close to dead as one can get. Even stones erode faster than many of the structures we have created.
All living things are always changing. So how do we relate to the shifts that are happening with energy, the economy and climate without serving the structures that have created these problems?
If we wish to restore the health of our soil, plants, animals, children and friends, we need to focus on restoring all of the minerals that have been lost. We cannot rely on structures to do this for us.
Suppose there was a cheap, simple, organic and open-source way to concentrate these missing minerals and use them to grow more/better food. Which structures might oppose this? How might we share this information with those who will benefit the most?
I'm working with hundreds of plant growers and heath researchers world wide. We are exploring the benefits of some newly discovered minerals that appear to reduce animal food consumption by 25 to 30 percent:
We've also collected examples of a doubling of plant growth and soil growth in two years:
More examples and three university studies are linked at:
These minerals can be concentrated using simple kitchen chemistry on sea water or rock source materials. (Anyone with access to fire and salt water can concentrate them.) They can also be concentrated from the air or from fresh water using simple mechanical "traps". The simplest method for concentrating these minerals from sea water is also described on the page above and other open-source methods are linked.
For the last fifteen years I have been running email forums for discussion of the benefits of these minerals. On these forums, there have been many reports of improved health and recovery from a large number of health problems subsequent to the direct ingestion of these minerals. I have seen significant "youthing" effects as well. Though I was born in 1949, people tell me I have the skin and hair of a person in their thirties.
I've been working on this since 1969:
We have found that using these minerals in our soil decreases the water requirements of plants grown in that soil. For examples see:
They also seem to help make plants more freeze tolerant:
I am convinced that the best thing any individual can do is to grow more food (and sequester more carbon) by adding reduced salt sea minerals to their soil. You can find some very convincing evidence that this can double plant growth and carbon sequestration in a couple years:
These minerals can also be concentrated out of fresh water or rock using other methods. A very simple method for concentrating them from fresh water is described at:
More complex devices to do this are described at:
I think that it is also helpful to realize that growing soil increases carbon sequestration and that the use of these minerals with keyline plowing has doubled productive soil depth in one year.
The best way to guard our life on Earth may be to garden locally. Can anyone think of anything else, that everyone can do, which might do a better job of reducing our carbon footprint, feeding the world and countering the problems caused by their favorite disaster?