Is the Newest Technology of Farming Microbiological?
As Farm Journal launches its first ever Ag Tech Expo farmers will be exposed to what is considered the new frontier of farming, that is start-up companies from Silicon Valley to around the world will be displaying to producers the products needed to be successful in agriculture in the future. The technology featured at this event focuses on a variety of devices that may change the physical or chemical world as we know in today's agriculture. At Growers Mineral, Corp., the emphasis of new technology is centered on the biological world, especially in soil.
In the article "How Gut Bacteria are Shaking up Cancer Research" in The Growers Solution Winter 2017, Volume 30, Issue 1 edition, the reference book The Hidden Half of Nature, The Microbial Roots of Life and Health by David Montgomery and Anne Bicklé was mentioned to the readers. Since 1955, the Growers Program has focused on the success of the farmer by allowing microbiological life in soil to flourish so that the user of the soil could receive the maximum return with minimal amount of input. The book written by Montgomery and Bicklé does an excellent job of describing as simply as possible the science of the new technological understanding of microbiological life.
Since 1955, Growers Mineral, Corp. has proven to farmers that profitable crops could be raised using a fertility approach that would not result in excessive amounts of elements being released into the environment. This approach was at odds with the majority of mainstream agriculture since it did not focus on product sales as will be the case at the new Ag Tech Expo. However, the importance of new technology in the world of biology will be a mainstay for agriculture of the future. The solutions to environmental issues as well as reassuring questioning millennial customers will result from the understanding of microbiological life, just as the solution to systemic disease syndrome will be solved with the help of microbiological solutions.
The understanding of how the microbiological world functions has come into better perspective as the medical world has enlisted the use of microbiology to deal with systemic disease and the arrival of COVID-19. The reference book by Montgomery and Bicklé explains as simply as possible how the microbiological approach is so-called sound science. The last several paragraphs in the introduction of The Hidden Half of Nature describe why and how GMS and the Growers Program are the "new" technology of agriculture.
"There is no doubt that studying the natural world in neatly compartmentalized subjects lets us grasp the otherwise incomprehensible complexity of the whole. Specialization has allowed scientists to chalk up spectacular successes and discoveries. This is the standard approach in seeking cures and treatments for what ails crops and people. But this limited vantage point conceals broad connections fundamental to the microscopic world and our own.
"It doesn't help that profound changes have occurred in the way scientists write about and communicate their scientific discoveries. Pick up a copy of Science or Nature from a century ago, and the average reader can understand what the authors of pretty much any article are talking about. Not so today. Modern scientific jargon is, for the most part, dumbfoundingly mind-numbing. Not to pick on any particular research group or journal, but in researching this book, we often found ourselves wading through sentences like this:
"Recognition of peptidoglycan by NODI in IECs elicits production of CCL20 and b-defensin 3 that direct the recruitment of B cells to Lti-dendritic-cell clusters in cryptopatches to induce the expression of SIgA.”
"Unintelligible to most, this is actually an example succinct scientific writing-the kind that advisors and editors encourage, and sometimes insist on. It packs a page into a sentence. But who, other than technical specialists in that field, can comprehend its meaning? In simpler terms, this phrase says that certain intestinal cells recognize particular types of bacteria, and that this bacterial recognition causes immune cells to release substances critical to health. Of course, it conveys more details, like the name of the particular molecules and immune cells involved. But sometimes clarity on the specifics can obscure larger messages. And the more we delved into microbiome science, the clearer it became that we all need to know far more about how microbial ecology affects our well-being and our environment.
"Researchers in microbiology and medicine are uncovering the intricate symbiotic relationships that exist between people and the microbes living in and on our bodies. Bacterial cells live alongside the cells lining our gut, where, deep within our bowels, they teach and train immune cells to sort friend from foe. Likewise, soil ecologists have made strikingly similar discoveries about the effects of soil life on plant health. Bacterial communities inside of and around plant roots help sound the alarm and man the barricades when pathogens storm the botanical gates.
"As it turns out, the vast majority of bacteria in the soil and in our bodies benefit us. And throughout the history of life on land, microbes repeatedly deconstructed every piece of organic matter on the planet leaves, branches, and bones-fashioning new life from the dead. Yet our relationship with the hidden half of nature remains modeled on killing it, rather than understanding and fostering its beneficial aspects. In waging war against microbes for the last century, we've managed to unwittingly chisel away much of the foundation on which we stand.
"And while impressive and transformative new products and microbial therapies are on the horizon for both agriculture and medicine, there is a profoundly simple reason we should care about the hidden half of nature. It is a part of us, not apart from us. Microbes drive our health from inside our bodies. Their metabolic by-products form essential cogs of our biology. And the tiniest creatures on Earth forged long-running partnerships with all multicellular life in the evolutionary fires of deep time. All around us they literally run the world, from extracting nutrients plants need from rocks, to catalyzing the global carbon and nitrogen cycles that keep the wheel of life turning.
"It's time to recognize the essential roles microbes play in our lives. They shaped our past and how we treat them will shape our future in ways we are only beginning to understand. For we will never escape our microbial cradle. Nature's hidden half is as deeply embedded in us as we are in her."
This is an excerpt from the Late Fall Growers Solution (2020) written by Jim Halbeisen.
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