Farming With Rocks and Minerals: Challenges and Opportunities
Farming With Rocks and Minerals: Challenges and Opportunities
Peter Van StraatenDepartment of Land Resource Science, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada N1G 2W1 Manuscript received on September 29, 2005; accepted for publication on March 13, 2006Presented by Othon H. Leonardo
ABSTRACT
In many parts of the world food security is at risk. One of the biophysical root causes of falling per-capita food production is the declining quality and quantity of soils. To reverse this trend and increase soil fertility soil and plant nutrients have to be replenished. This review ...
Remineralize the Earth Embarks on a Research Project at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
By Dan Kittredge
Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st the nutrient density in our food crops has been consistently declining. USDA studies show that an average apple from the 1960's had 5 times the nutrition of that same apple produced today. This is an average of course, and there are many farms who have figured out how to produce high nutrient density crops even while the national average has been plummeting.
Remineralize The Earth has just embarked on a research project in collaboration with the University of Massachusetts to document the effect on nutrient ...
Water purification and lava/lava-basalt dust!
More than 60 years ago, prominent German scientists, under the guidance of Dr. K. Seidel, rediscovered the self-cleansing process of natural rivers, streams, and waterways.
Botanical sewage purification, a natural process, is an outgrowth from classical land treatment of wastewater. Today, this classical method of application to land has been updated and serves as an ideal, natural way to purify human, animal, and industrial sewage. It also has the potential to clean rainwater, reservoirs, and groundwater. The system consists of shallow basins connected by pipes. The ...
Real Food Campaign at Whole Foods Markets
For Release after October 1, 2007
Remineralize the Earth (www.remineralize.org), an international environmental nonprofit organization based in Northampton, Massachusetts, is working together with two Whole Foods Market stores in Massachusetts in October to raise funds for its new Real Food campaign.
The Real Food campaign will be launched in the coming months. It is focused on educating and networking farmers, agronomists, policy makers, supermarkets and consumers about remineralized, nutrient dense foods that are high in minerals and trace elements.
Currently most ...
Saving Dying Oaks in California
Hearst Castle Study
Scientist Lee Klinger has initiated Sudden Oak Life, a movement to put forth a more global, systems approach in understanding and solving the tree decline problem in California and elsewhere focusing on boosting the fertility of the soils with natural, mineral-rich fertilizers so that the trees are healthier and better able to survive attacks by diseases and pests.
View results on Dr. Lee Klinger's website, suddenoaklife.org.
Case study results from treated and untreated coast live oaks from January 4, 2006 to September 25, 2007.
An article on Dr. Lee ...
RTE Fundraiser to Launch Real Food Campaign
RTE Fundraiser to Launch Real Food Campaign
RTE is working together with two Whole Foods Market stores in Massachusetts in October to raise funds for its new Real Food campaign.
Joanna Campe and Dan Kittredge of RTE will have a booth at the Acres USA Conference in Louisville, Kentucky, from December 6-8, 2007. The Real Food campaign will be seeking to increase the demand and facilitate the supply of nutrient dense foods. We are coordinating farmers, farm co-operatives, retailers, consumers, mineral suppliers, and agronomists.
Whole Foods Day
Whole Foods Day
Dan Kittredge, Executive Director of RTE, recently spent an afternoon at the Whole Foods in Brighton, MA, educating consumers about RTE's upcoming Real Food campaign. The event was done in coordination with the Brighton and Framingham store coupon month campaign that raised funds for the Real Food campaign.
RTE offered remineralized apples from Saratoga Apple in Schuylerville, New York, and had them available for taste testing in comparison to commercially available organic apples that Whole Foods had for sale.
The almost universal response of consumers ...
Soil Remineralization and the Climate
Soil Remineralization
The soils of the entire world have become severely demineralized by erosion over thousands of years. Plants require a continuous intake of minerals, just as we do, and for very similar reasons - calcium to build structural support, iron to carry oxygen, and so on. Plants growing on mineral-depleted soil do not get enough nourishment and so become smaller, less-abundant and less hardy, more vulnerable to the insects, worms and fungi that prey upon them.
Remineralization has been shown to cause a phenomenal growth of the microorganisms in the soil. It ...
Soil Remineralization in Context
One of many anecdotal photos sent over the years to the magazine in the early remineralization movement in the 1980s. These two oak leaves were sent by Jeannie Stevens from Victoria Australia. The larger leaf was that of an oak tree that was remineralized in March 1984. At that time the leaf was the same size as the smaller one on the left. There was a magnificent forest of seedlings under that tree in December 1986. The oak tree nearby with the smaller leaf on the left was not given an application of rock dust and had very few viable acorns and weak seedlings.
Soil ...
Why Remineralize?
In this unintended "experiment" in our garden, we remineralized soil in one raised bed with finely ground granite residue from a water well drilling site. The remineralized soil produced the carrots on the left. Carrots planted earlier, in soil not yet remineralized, but otherwise more improved, are shown at the right for comparison. Dust obtained from a mixture of rock types would have even more dramatic results, according to Weaver and Hamaker. These results were typical for all crops receiving rock dust in our 1985 garden.
--Dan Hemenway
Benefits of Remineralization
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