Soil sponge is the infrastructure of life

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the main drivers of life on Mother Earth are microbial. Perhaps the difficulty in recognising this is because without a microscope we can't see this incredibly complex world. Unfortunately, probably because we can't see it, we have often brought devastation to this microbial world. Most of our practices wreak havoc on the complex world of microbes. And we just keep doing them. And then, because of the havoc, in order to try and deal with it we turn to synthetic fertilisers, which give some relief apparently, like a headache pill. But these highly soluble synthetic fertilisers wreak more havoc on soil life. Whey you really stop to think bout it, it's crazy what we've been doing and what we continue to do, as if there was no future. 

And then because we grow plants deficient in a full spectrum of nutrients, they get sick and so we spray more synthetics, often quite toxic. It just gets worse. And we do diplomas, degrees, Masters Degrees and PhDs in all this too. Training people to wreak havoc on soil life even more effectively. Sometimes I shake my head in disbelief. 

But we can start to bring things back. And one of the places we can go to in order to help us is those natural places where soil life still thrives. Here microbial life has flourished for millions of years. That microbial life is full of indigenous knowledge, memories, that go back into aeons of time. This is the knowledge that knows how to look after the soil. We can tap into that life, multiply it up and start to apply it in our farming areas so that we can gradually bring life back to all the nearly-dead soils everywhere.

"According to the USDA-NRCS, the most conservative estimates suggest that every 1% increase in soil OM will help soils hold up to 20,000 gallons more water per acre (Bryant 2015)."