Let’s talk about a word we use so out of context that we forget it has meaning: Organic. The whole cert thing makes it pretty abstract. It’s common for opponents to mock “everything w carbon is organic”. Well let’s talk about what doesn’t have carbon: salt based fertilizers. 1/

Let’s go deeper here is simple model of soil in horizons. A parent material of rock is weathered into subsoil w no life. Life forms an organic layer which mixes to make topsoil. Agriculture might make a weird tilled and compacted layer. 2/

This happens over time here’s is a diagram showing ecological succession from left to right (i will go way in detail about this in a future post.) 3/

So there is enough nutrients in our minerals to grow all the healthy vegetation we want for thousands of years and it keeps weatherizing. Most of it is in mineral form. It is not all plant available. 4/

Plant available nutrients are soluble meaning they are dissolvable in water. Plant roots can live off these soluable forms. But everything not taken up by a plant gets washed away. 5/

So between these mineral forms and soluable forms there has to be a way to connect one to the other in nature. Guess who accomplished this organisms. How do they do it? By taking nutrients and attaching them to carbon to make organic molecules. 6/

So: nitrogen and sulfur become protein. Phosphorus becomes lipids etc. in the living and cycling bodies of fungi bacteria nematodes Protozoa springtails insects plants water bears etc. 7/

The nematodes and Protozoa eat and release the nutrients in soluable forms that the plants use. Plants pour carbon into this community to grow microbes to feed nutrients back to them. 8/

So organic ag is ag that focused on improving the storage and cycling of nutrients using organic matter. Beyond that is a lot of variety and other philosophies mixed in. /9

If done right Carbon is sequestered soil improves the biology is enhanced erosion reduced mineral forms pass to microbes are passed to plants who feeds them carbon rich sugars proteins carbs. If done right. 10/

So until after the world wars we really didn’t have the ability to plow so much. A little plowing goes a long way for shift soil from fungal to bacterial and that feeds out midsuccession veggies but it can wreck so much 11/

We also had to find new ways to make gunpowder other then stealing nitrogen-rich guano from bird islands. Turns out fossil fuels really help with the process of breaking about nitrogen’s pesky triple bonds. So we learned how to make soluable fertilizers in the form of salts. 12/

Most of our fertilizers are soluable salts. Plants will just grow in them. But fungi bacteria and microbes won’t if there is enough. A study done in the 00s (I’ll look for it & put it in my references) said that 80% of inorganic fertilizers wash into ground &drinking water 13/

Without the biology there is no probiotic protection on leaves and roots. The plants exude delicious organic compounds. Without the healthy fungi and bacteria, pathogens have a feast. So we use pesticides and fungicides. 13/

The fertilizers flow into rivers and the sea and cause blooms that wipe out the oxygen the oceans go anaerobic and start producing hydrogen sulphide. Dead zones. Extinction events. /15

food is high in nitrogen but low in complex nutrients plant are bread to be the best to uptake fertilizers withstand herbicides fungicides. need increasingly tech oriented solutions to deal with a growing threat of collapsing systems. Robots sprey drones gmos pollinators die 17/

not talking re; organic certification At least they are there I like Tilth&some orgs. Was hard for the early pot farmers who were into tomatoes (you know i’m right) they needed a market So it’s often oversold on the health side&elitist. But the ecology side is there& real. 17/

Especially now that organic includes hydroponics which is literally not about the organic horizon in soil. the purpose and beliefs re: how to restore life are there in many organic farms. Not all bc any certification demands a minimum passing rather then the greatest version 19/

The biggest consequence of this is an unraveling of all the connected systems. Carbon released, erosion increased, oceans killed. All because of this using of ancient sunlight to rip apart soil and salt the earth. And it can be fixed. 20/

Biology can correct this. Bacteria can w enough sugar break fungicides mixes of crops can feed repair things. Compost process work. We still have few ancient forests and grasslands to gather innoculum. Food can be grown while building back biomass. The co2 can become Tilth. 21/

There are solutions. We can actually put the world back together by aligning with the systems that made the world. I’ve been trying to articulate them so here are multiple threads indexes as a pinned post. Thanks for your time. Let’s start! 22/22 https://twitter.com/buildsoil/status/1082729703746629632?s=21