Gabriel Cousens, M.D.
See book keywords and concepts |
 These practices have been well-documented as leading to a decline in soil quality and loss of topsoil and fertility. Further evidence of this relationship between conventional practices and the decline in nutritional content of foods is the fact that, on a fresh-weight basis -the critical way to look at nutrition for consumers of raw food - organic
498 foods have about twice the vitamin and mineral content as conventional foods. |
| The Active Ionic Mineral™ mix, with its fulvic acid, comes from and mimics the soil humus and other humic materials, beneficial bacteria, carbon, and the leaching into the river from the topsoil. Then we bless it like the ancients who purified and healed themselves in the healing waters as our experience of Yah's Grace. We leave it overnight where the rays of the moon, stars, and Earth further energize it with prana and the forces of Nature.
This is the holy secret of cultured, structured, mature water. This is a secret of Nature. |
| Roughly it's been estimated, according to Sea Energy Agriculture, that Australia loses about six tons of topsoil per square mile, Europe loses 120 tons per square mile, and on a worldwide basis, we lose 4 billion tons of dissolved material that is carried off to the sea from the rivers each year. The soluble elements are washed off first by the rainwater. This is why sodium chloride is so scarce on the land and abundant in the sea.
The Seawater Solution
What is the solution for growing healthy plants again, and therefore well-nourished human beings? |
| Unless we pay attention to our harmony with our topsoil, we humans, who are created out of the dust of the Earth, will return much sooner to personally refertilize it.
Pesticide Pestilence
Presently more than 20 percent of the pesticides currently registered in the U.S. are linked to cancer, birth defects, developmental harm, and central nervous system damage.
Let us understand, pesticides are designed to kill living creatures, and human beings are living creatures. |
John Robbins
See book keywords and concepts |
 Losing topsoil, notes World-watch Institute's Ed Ayres, "has about the same effect on a terrestrial community as losing blood has on a person. Only so much can be lost."16
The production of every quarter-pound hamburger in the United States causes the loss of five times the burger's weight in topsoil.17
Unfortunately, instead of being returned to the soil and helping to rebuild topsoil, the wastes from today's livestock often end up in our water.
"Mass production of meat has become a staggering source of pollution. |
Mike Adams
See book keywords and concepts |
| The seed on the right, which was planted at the exact same time and day, was planted in topsoil made from forest compost products, such as leaves, pine needles and so on. As you can see in the picture, there is a great difference between the two plants. The plant on the right is far healthier and is taller, more vibrant, and is obviously benefiting from the superior nutrition it has been provided.
Identical genes, but different health outcomes
There are a couple of other things to note here as well. Both plants have the exact same genetic code. |
Brian O'Leary
See book keywords and concepts |
 For example we are ruthlessly stripping our topsoil beyond repair. And then each successive peeled layer symbolically represents an increase in the crudeness of what we've done, "enough to make your eyes tear", as Meredith puts it. For example, when Europeans first came to America, a squirrel could travel through primary forests extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the Southeast to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley without ever touching the ground. Then the pioneers began to cut down trees that seemed to go on forever, so that they could build homesteads and grow crops. |
James Trefil, Joseph F. Kett, and E. D. Hirsch
See book keywords and concepts |
 See tsunami. topsoil The thin, rich layer of soil where most nutrients for plants are found. fa Most of the land-based biological activity of the earth takes place here, fa The loss of topsoil through erosion is a major agricultural problem. tornado In meteorology, a storm in which highspeed winds move in a funnel-shaped pattern. fa Tornadoes occur chiefly during thunderstorms. fa If the tip of the funnel touches the ground, it can cause extensive damage, fa Tornadoes are common in the Middle West. |
Gabriel Cousens, M.D.
See book keywords and concepts |
 Unless we pay attention to our harmony with the topsoil, we humans, who are created out of the dust of earth, will return much sooner to personally re-fertilize it. The overall quality of our nutrition begins with the topsoil and continues through the normal development and harvesting of the plant. When these factors are considered, a healthy diet is more likely to be created, with its corresponding health dividends for us.
The best way to ensure maximal nutrition is to either grow your own organic produce or buy only organic produce to supply your needs. |
Gary Null
See book keywords and concepts |
| It contains the raw materials that provide us with our amber waves of grain, and with all the other vegetable foodstuffs that nourish us. The topsoil, which serves as the growing medium for most plant foods, is a vibrant and active system. It consists, partly, of tiny rock particles and dust, made when water and wind break down larger chunks of rock. Another important component, known as humus, is a mixture comprised primarily of decaying vegetables and animal waste. |
Brian O'Leary
See book keywords and concepts |
| Fertilizer use has gone up nine times as ever more topsoil becomes chemically polluted and eroded away in our agricultural and pasture lands. The fish catch has quintupled, with the stock dropping fast. Not the least disturbing is that the world population has more than doubled since 1950, and continues growing at the rate of ninety million people each year. There is little left to feed that population as the agricultural bag of tricks becomes exhausted.1
Vogt speculated about what might befall us in his future, which is now, if we were not to change our ways. |
| Citing statistics such as the loss of one-third of American topsoil and one-half of its forests over the previous 150 years, Vogt lamented:
"If we are to make peace with the forces of the earth, that peace must begin in our minds—and we must seek, and accept, many new ideas. We must reject many old ones...one of the strangest lacunae (lacks) in human cultural development is the absence of understanding of man's relationship with his physical environment. So anthropocentric has he been that, since he began to achieve what we call civilization, he has assumed that he lives in a sort of vacuum. |
Gary Null
See book keywords and concepts |
| The sad fact is that, through mismanagement of the land, we have greatly reduced the quality of the topsoil left in some parts of the United States.
Let's look back into history again, to the 1830s. Then, each farm had a wide variety of crops growing on its land—and these were relatively small farms. A century later, in the 1930s, farms were larger, but now they grew only one crop. This crop was generally grown for feeding livestock that became meat for humans. Corn, soybeans, and wheat were the three primary crops grown in the United States. |
Marion Nestle
See book keywords and concepts |
 Preserving topsoil today means a thriving farm for generations to come.
Biotechnology allows farmers to choose the best combination of ways to help grow their crops. It helps cotton farmers use fewer chemicals to protect their crops against certain pests. And. it's helping provide ways (or developing countries to better feed a growing population. And, in the future, it can help farmers grow better quality, more nutritious food-
Biotechnalog- is also enhancing lives in other ways, helping to create more effective treatments for diseases such as leukemia and diabetes. |
Brian O'Leary
See book keywords and concepts |
| When the trees go, so does the topsoil, the cool canopy of the forest, the absorption of carbon dioxide, the retention of water, the prevention of (remaining) forest and brush fires, and preservation of biodiversity, indigenous cultures and natural medicines. The deforestation of Indonesia has been particularly alarming, contributing to out-of-control fires that in 1997 caused such a wicked haze that thousands of people died of lung diseases and a jetliner crashed in the pea soup atmosphere above Sumatra, killing all 232 people aboard. |
E. D. Hirsch
See book keywords and concepts |
| The twice-daily rise and fall of the ocean level owing to the gravitational force exerted by the moon and sun. topsoil The thin, rich layer of soil where most nutrients for plants are found. fa Most of the land-based biological activity of the earth takes place here, fa The loss of topsoil through erosion is a major agriculural problem. tornado In meteorology, a storm in which highspeed winds move in a funnel-shaped pattern. fa Tornadoes occur chiefly during thunderstorms, fa If the tip of the funnel touches the ground, it can cause extensive damage, fa Tornadoes are common in the Middle West. |
Brian O'Leary
See book keywords and concepts |
| During the nineteenth century, growing cotton and tobacco raised the ante by depleting topsoil and diverting water from its natural flow. During the twentieth century, we have exacerbated the situation by industrializing the landscape with power plants, factories, textile mills, urban sprawl, grid systems and agribusiness in cotton, tobacco, grazing and other environmentally unfriendly practices. Even since the time of William Vogt this past century, the poisoning of the environment has escalated ever more, providing a recipe for disaster if we don't reverse what we're doing. |
Jeremy P. Tarcher
See book keywords and concepts |
 We are ruining topsoil many times faster than it is being created, as noted earlier. Fresh water consumption, much of it for agriculture, is almost two times that of its annual replacement. And 70 percent of the world's marine species are at risk of extinction.21
And then there's our health. Production myopia has spurred the shift to giant feedlots with thousands of head of cattle raised in cramped spaces. Cattle stressed by being shipped to big lots—then confined and fed a diet to which they aren't suited—commonly suffer lung disease. |
| When I started in the fifties, this land was so bad it didn't even grow weeds. The topsoil was gone. When we shifted to organic, we just kept adding organic matter. We seeded clover, alfalfa, and grasses. Now in many areas the soil is dark and rich and full of earthworms.
"I can survive with the low prices," John says, referring to his early choice to farm organically. "But most farmers around here can't. They're deep in debt from what they've paid for land, fertilizers, pesticides, and big machinery. |
Victoria Boutenko, M.A.
See book keywords and concepts |
 In their best-selling book, Secrets of the Soil, Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird state that, "The combined weight of all the microbial cells on earth is twenty-five times that of its animal life; every acre of well-cultivated land contains up to a half a ton of thriving microorganisms, and a ton of earthworms which can daily excrete a ton of humic castings."49 As a result of our human "highly technological" garden-
Trace amounts parts per million dry matter
41
<^ # \ |
Gary Null
See book keywords and concepts |
| Inside this rich topsoil is a complicated world of living organisms that help plants assimilate minerals from rock particles and other chemical compounds. Fungi, bacteria, earthworms, and insects are among the many forms of life that feed on humus. Thus these small life-forms slowly decompose plants left from the previous growing season, as well as animal carcasses and manure. They also aerate the soil so that gases can be exchanged and water absorbed. |
Jeremy P. Tarcher
See book keywords and concepts |
| Our big farms have stripped our topsoil by using chemicals and overusing the land. We can't have healthy food without healthy soil," Matt says.
Matt's caution reflects a deterioration in food quality borne out by official surveys which show nutritional values declining in many commonly eaten vegetables.9 Our drive for production, over all else, has eroded even the nutrition in foods we eat precisely because we think they're going to be good for us!
But it's not just the plants that are affected. "Animals have been affected by the production drive, too," Matt says. |
Gabriel Cousens, M.D.
See book keywords and concepts |
| A vegan diet, on the other hand, makes 5 percent of the demand on the soil in the U.S.
The ratio of food productivity per acre from livestock versus vegetarianism shows a tremendous disparity. For example, one acre of land can produce 20,000 pounds of potatoes, but can only support the production of 165 pounds of beef. An acre of grain gives five times more protein than the protein from beef raised on one acre. Legumes give ten times more protein an acre and leafy greens produce twenty-five times more protein than one acre used to raise beef. |
Jeremy P. Tarcher
See book keywords and concepts |
| Worldwide, topsoil is eroding as much as thirty times faster than it's being created.5 It's gotten so bad that soil particles eroded from Kenya, for example, are blown as far west as Brazil and Florida.6 So, in just the last forty years, erosion has made almost one-third of our farmable land unusable for growing food.7 Water resources are being destroyed just as rapidly, not only through pollution of surface water but also, on every continent, by the rapid depletion of underground water by crop irrigation. |
Gary Null
See book keywords and concepts |
| We still have massive erosion, except we have used artificial fertilizers that were not available in the 1930s to give the impression that our topsoil is healthy when it is not. These fertilizers are in effect a disguise, used to hide the fact that we have not maintained an ecological balance.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH ARTIFICIAL FERTILIZER?
For most of the twelve thousand years since plants were first domesticated, farmers simply supplemented nature with organic fertilizers. They also learned to rotate crops or let fields lie fallow so that the soil's nutrients could be replenished. |
Jeremy P. Tarcher
See book keywords and concepts |
| Wangari knew that when trees go, so do the roots that retain topsoil and capture what little water does fall. When trees go, so does the protection from the wind that keeps soil from blowing away. She knew that this meant villagers, mainly women, were walking farther and farther to get water and firewood. She saw the vicious cycle of forest loss, desertification, and communities' growing inability to feed themselves.
Government foresters weren't much help. "I tried going to talk to them about what could be done, but they weren't interested," Wangari tells us. |
Gary Null
See book keywords and concepts |
| In the wintertime the soil cracks after freezing, and water from melting snow carries remaining topsoil away, causing massive erosion.
That is what was happening in the "dust bowls" of the thirties. You may remember the tragic consequences of this chain of events depicted in John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath. People had to give up their farms because they couldn't grow anything; their fields had become one big, dusty wasteland. This was a result of drought combined with poor soil management. |
John Robbins
See book keywords and concepts |
| The production of every quarter-pound hamburger in the United States causes the loss of five times the burger's weight in topsoil.17
Unfortunately, instead of being returned to the soil and helping to rebuild topsoil, the wastes from today's livestock often end up in our water.
"Mass production of meat has become a staggering source of pollution. |
Gary Null
See book keywords and concepts |
| We simply use artificial fertilizers containing mainly nitrogen, phosphorous, and potash, which are not supportive of the organisms that create topsoil. In some soil, you can't find a worm. They simply cannot survive in the acidic environment created by these chemicals. In Australia, for example, nine-foot-long earthworms originally present in vast numbers were completely exterminated by sulfur phosphate fertilizer. And if a worm cannot survive in soil, that's a sign that the soil will not produce good crops worth eating. |
Gabriel Cousens, M.D.
See book keywords and concepts |
| According to topsoil and Civilization, every great nation has risen and fallen according to the quality of its topsoil. The sustenance of all animal life comes primarily from the vegetable life that is grown on this soil. The health of humanity depends on the health of the soil. Nutrition begins with the top-soil.
This crucial understanding has not been significantly appreciated by the commercial food producers or by most dietetic schools. We can no longer speak about a beet or a carrot as if they had a static nutritional content. |
Email this page to a friend
