TIS_intro.htm

The excerpts below are from the Introduction to
The Ideal Soil

The Ideal Soil: A Handbook for the New Agriculture

Introduction

Towards a New Agriculture

This is a book about the New Agriculture, but more than being only about the New Agriculture, it is a how-to manual that tells exactly how to go about changing your farmng, gardening, and landscaping practices over to a sustainable and healthy model that does not require large year to year inputs of fertilizers or massive inputs of organic matter. Once the soil minerals are balanced and part of a living soil, the need for insecticides and other "rescue chemicals" will drop away as well. The New Agriculture is premised on the idea that being well fed leads to health. Living things that are well fed do not attract disease or parasites. From the smallest bacterium to the largest tree all living things have a genetic potential for growth and health that is only limited when something is missing from or out of balance in their environment. As gardeners, farmers, and caretakers of the land we cannot control the variables of climate and we cannot control rainfall; what we can control is the level and balance of essential nutrients in the soil, but that is plenty.

In order to begin, we need first of all to know what we are starting with, we need to take inventory. This book is a recipe for creating the ideal soil, but that recipe will do no good without knowing what ingredients we have to start with, so that we know what other ingredients may be lacking. The only way to know what we are starting with is to have the soil assayed by a soil testing laboratory. Once that test is in hand, the rest is pretty simple. Without the soil test results, we are floundering in the dark, we are merely guessing. Soil testing is not expensive. There are many soil testing labs around; they have hundreds of thousand of dollars of precision scientific equipment and skilled technicians to operate it, and they are inexpensive and fast. You will need the results of a soil test to use the information in this book.

We have held back nothing that we know in the following chapters. It's all here, everything that we have learned over many years of reading, research, and experimenting. To the best of our knowledge, no book like this has ever before been published; no one before this has tied all of the major and minor soil nutrients together and shown their correct proportions and relationships to each other. Our fond hope is that those who read and understand The Ideal Soil will no longer need us, but will have all of the information to go out and bring their own soil to their own version of perfection, and perhaps go on from there to offer that service to others.

For the New Agriculture to come into its own will require many more people to understand these principles. Perhaps one day each community will have a trusted soil physician just as they once had a trusted family physician. Perhaps you the reader will be one of them. We sincerely hope so.

At present there are very few persons with the knowledge of how to balance the cation nutrients in the soil; perhaps a few dozen competent consultants on the subject in the USA, and not many more worldwide. None of them before now have had access to the system explained in this book. Until this first on-line publication in November of 2008, this information has been our trade secret, known to fewer than six people. We have used the Ideal Soil chart proportions for a number of years in many different climates and soils, and can confidently state that we have had few if any problems and no complaints. It just works.

The science of soil nutrients can trump remedial nutrition and it can trump pharmaceutical medicine. It is primary; it comes before either of the above and if applied intelligently can make them unnecessary. A healthy well fed body will suffer from no nutritional deficiencies and will need no supplements or drugs.

There is nothing difficult about learning to balance the soil minerals. A very rudimentary understanding of chemistry and fifth-grade arithmetic are the only bits of knowledge needed. Every step in the process and the reason for doing it are clearly explained and shown. You are invited to take this knowledge, put it into practice, add to it, and make it your own. You can do this.

Agricola

Terra, November 6, 2008

Read Chapter 1 of The Ideal Soil HERE

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