Soil Testing or COVID Testing
Growers Mineral, Corp. has disagreed with the agricultural establishment for years about the relative importance of soil testing for predicting the need for soil applied nutrients and the success of growing an economically competitive crop. The Growers argument has been that, since growing a crop is 96% carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O)-or mostly sugar-trying to control that production by measuring other elements in the growth media has limited success in predicting the crop production. The Growers Company felt that other factors in the crop environment had more meaning than the soil test. However, Growers Mineral, Corp. always said soil tests are part of a series of factors that must be considered when trying to predict crop production. It seems as if soil testing has evolved into a technique to accomplish fertilizer sales.
So as the world has been dominated with the mystery of the COVID-19 virus, testing related to this virus has started to take center stage in evaluating the problems associated with the virus. The COVID-19 tests include trying to find the virus directly to looking for antibodies that are produced by the human's immune system. The need for these tests are seen by some as the final answer to solving the problems created by COVID-19. Therefore, the race to develop these various tests has consumed the scientific community as well as most of the world as a whole. However, some experts who have advisory roles with powerful politicians are saying, "Not so fast!"
As the various tests related to the COVID-19 virus start to accumulate in large numbers, the experts are discovering where the tests fit into trying to manage the pandemic. It seems that in some cases the tests do not give the final answer to the problem. The term "false positives" has become quite frequent in many of the experts discussions about the virus. The press and the politicians seem to give the tests more importance than some scientists who work with the virus. As the experts are pressed harder by the rest of society for answers to the various problems, those experts are saying that testing has to be placed in its proper perspective along with other measurements or metrics for controlling the virus. An example of this are the people who test positive for antibodies who become infected again, or people who test negative for having the virus, who then become sick with the COVID-19 virus.
With these series of realities, the experts are using hospital information, public health data, and observations with testing to try and predict future outcomes. This is exactly what Growers Mineral, Corp. has been suggesting to farmers since 1955. The terms used by the company have been "soil tests are only indicators, and are proof positive of nothing." This point seems to related to COVID-19 testing rather well in 2020.
Maybe the COVID-19 testing and the soil testing relationship is similar because the test subjects (humans and soil) are controlled by microbiological life. Also, maybe test subjects are more similar to each other than is normally thought in today's environment. There are older references which are considered outdated in today's high technology world that suggest that man will return to "dust."
This is an excerpt from the Early Fall Growers Solution (2020) written by Jim Halbeisen.
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