Until the 1940s, farmers returned essential nutrients to the soil by mulching, manuring and crop rotation. These methods have worked successfully to maintain soil quality since agriculture began. But human greed and arrogance convinced commercial interests that they could use man made technology to do better than Nature, and make bigger profits. So began the degradation of the American food supply.

At the end of World War II, drug conglomerates making nitrates and phosphates for weapons, were left with few buyers for their stockpiles of chemicals. They had to find new markets for their products. Earlier experiments had shown that many plants will grow on a mixture of just three minerals, Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), and Potassium (K). Armed with this knowledge, war chemical manufactures began selling NPK fertilizers to farmers at attractive prices that made traditional soil enrichment methods uneconomical.

By the ‘60s, in order to compete in the food market, almost all American farms had become totally dependent on NPK products in order to make a living.

Mixtures of NPK provide three of the main minerals essential for plant health. They grow fine looking crops with abundant yields.


But your body is not a vegetable!!

Human need more than nitrogen, phosporus and potassium, they also need selenium, chromium, calcium, magnesium, iron, copper, iodine, molybdenum, zinc, cobalt, boron, and vanadium.

NPK fertilizer, a destructive legacy of weapons of war, do not contain the minerals essential for human health, because they were never designed for human nutrition.

As each succeeding crop grown on NPK products has depleted the soil of other essential minerals, and these minerals are no longer replaced, most produce now grown in America has become mineral deficient. That makes you deficient also, because your body cannot make minerals and has to get them from your food.

It’s certainly food for thought !! So, that’s the argument for organic growing.

A BRIEF EXPLANATION ABOUT PHOSPORUS FERTILIZER.

The use of phosphatic materials as fertilizers was practiced unknowingly long before the isolation and discovery of phosphorus by the German alchemist Brand in 1669. As early 200 B.C., the Carthaginians recommended and employed bird droppings to increase the yields from their fields. The Incas of Peru prized guano and bird droppings on their islands so highly that it was made a capital offense to kill birds.

SHREVE’S CHEMICAL PROCESS INDUSTRIES, FIFTH EDITION, GEORGE. T. AUSTIN

<< Last page