Natural Laws and World Economy

 

Economists tells us that the only true or virgin wealth a nation has is what is pumped or mined out of the ground and what the farmer and rancher produces with their skill using sunlight, water and soil.

The wealth you pump or mine from the ground will some day be used up, but with recycling and good farm and ranch management, the wealth grown from the soil can be renewable forever and ever.

Recycling organics or recycling anything, for that matter, is creating new wealth. New wealth is what sets an economy in motion. Everything else is buying or selling a service.

In a natural environment, there is no waste. Nature designed a system of life that is never ending. One form of life dies and decays so that another form can be born and grow. The circle continues in perfect harmony, as along as Nature is allowed to control the process. Like all laws of Nature, recycling is a positive law. Still, we continue to seriously violate that law by constantly breaking the cycle. If we do not return the depleted life to the soil so that it can nourish the next generation, sooner or later we will suffer the consequences. As the soil organic content goes down, the quality of the soil declines and the life it supports is pulled down along with it.

The biggest problems facing mankind today are eroding soils and water shortages. Both are caused by the loss of soil organic matter. As the soil organic content decreases, the less water the soil can hold and the less rain can penetrate. The result is more runoff, bigger floods, more soil erosion, and dryer soils. That requires pumping more water from falling aquifers.

Because of declining soil organic matter, Earth is gaining up to 10,000,000 acres of desert each year. Mexico, our neighbor to the South, gains over a half-million acres of desert every year. More than 60 percent of Mexico's farmland is severely degraded and another 30 percent is in varying stages of ecological decay.

Here in this country, the state of California gains 10,000 acres of desert every year. According to soil scientists, much of the farmland across this nation is down to 20 percent and less of its original organic values. Because we lose 3 billion tons of topsoil each year, crop quality and production is falling and irrigation, fertilizer and pesticide needs are going up.

Here in Texas we are not immune to soil loss. Back in 1950, the soil organic content of the Rio Grande valley was 3 percent and higher. Now it is down to .5 percent and less. Older farmers tell us it now takes twice the irrigation water to grow the same crops they grew back then.

Planet Earth is about 74 percent water, but only 3 percent is fresh water and Texas wasn't blessed with very much of that. Our modern farming methods are destroying productive farmland at an alarming rate. Poor (chemical) farming practices bum up soil organic matter faster than Nature can replace it. Many conventional farming methods are not sustainable. Recycling and organic farming can reverse this road to desertification and starvation. Organic farming is sustainable.

Organic foods are more nutritious, providing more sustenance per pound, so it would not be necessary to produce as much food to provide for people's needs. For example, the protein content of organic wheat is around 18 percent and higher, while conventional chemically grown wheat tests at only 10-13 percent protein.

As farmers, ranchers and gardeners that understand the laws of Nature, recycling and organic growing, we have an obligation to help every man, woman, child, farmer and rancher in Texas and the rest of the country understand Nature's recycling laws.

The mountains of manure that are piling up around feedlots, dairies, poultry and pig houses have to find their way back to the farmland that so desperately needs it. With all of our present recycling efforts, there is still way too much organic waste from homes, restaurants and industries that are being buried in landfills. This valuable organic material is useless in a landfill and priceless in the soil of farms and ranches.

Biosolids began as food on the best of our farmlands, yet they are returned not to the land but to the landfill. We have to get over our "hang ups" and learn to use biosolids to the benefit of us all. Biosolids, with toxins removed, have been proven to be one of our best soil builders.

Used correctly, animal waste, human included, is a better fertilizer than any chemical mix man can formulate. Nature designed it and has used it since the beginning. It has no fillers. It is comprised of once-living material.

The most important thing missing from chemical fertilizers is the energy the soil life needs to process the fertilizer, energy that comes from once-living things. Without this energy, an endless cycle of soil exhaustion is begun. Eventually crop quality and production fall off. Then more chemical fertilizers are used, depleting more energy. Pests then move in and more chemicals are used to try to meet those challenges. Soon the energy and life is gone from the soil and we gain more acres of desert and have less stored water.

Chemical fertilizers wouldn't be nearly as destructive if all carbon-rich materials such as yard waste, wood and paper, kitchen wastes and other organic material were returned to the land. That would also help solve the landfill space problem.

Industries that handle waste and generate waste, and especially the bureaucrats and politicians that regulate those industries, need to understand the importance of returning organic waste back from whence it came.

Recycling is positive law. The penalty for violating that law cannot be avoided. Eventually, Nature will come to collect.

 

The Garden-Ville Method - Lessons in Nature