For every apple that is grown and sold on a permaculture style plot of land, the trace minerals present in that apple are leaving the farmland and ending up in a sewage system, perhaps to not be recovered.
Is exporting nutrients, particularly trace minerals really sustainable?
Posted May 4, 2017, 7:42 PM UTC
I've wondered about this myself. It seems as though we're using plants to mine trace elements so we can flush them into the oceans. In a perfect world we would be collecting feces and urine, composting them and returning them to the soil. However food supplies now come from thousands of miles away, but the practice could still be helpful. I mean, there is a lot of farm land in Cali exporting a lot of food, but also a lot of people generating shit. Until that day best to model it on a household scale, composting your own waste and using it to feed your plants. Plant that seed so when it becomes obvious to more people that the system is unsustainable they have a working example of how to do things better.
You've phrased this a lot better than I could. Exactly what I was thinking too. Keep doing this repeatedly at maximum capacity it seems eventually all the zinc, iodine, selenium, etc will eventually become a much lower concentration and make the food less nutritious. I have a feeling the general current food supply is much more devoid of trace minerals than it used to be for this very reason.
I've been doing a lot of research on permaculture establishments lately and every single one that I've seen imports nutrients in some way or another. The best ones use natural methods, including bringing in mulch from outside and even farming bugs. Others just use fertilizer or make their own. Most of these trace minerals are present in decent amounts in the environment, you just gotta find the right way for the right minerals. And of course, recognizing when you're going to be, and when you are actually low on these minerals is a big part of that.
Is true permaculture a system where nutrients are not imported, but recycled?
It may be wrong minded, but I feel notions of purity are less productive than a general discussion of values and techniques.
Reduce your inputs as the goal.
There isn't a 'true' permaculture. It's an ideal that you strive for.
I harvest seaweed and add it to my garden. It's not truly sustainable, but it's 1000x more sustainable than any other plot on my block.
If it isn't sustainable it would take awhile to find out. I suspect tree crops have access to subsoil minerals via roots and a good portion of those end up in the leaves we use for mulch. Poor soils don't usually have a complete absence of nutrients and many crops would do OK on poor soil, even if it isn't optimal.
it is only sustainable if you're building soil yourself. composting, utilizing KNF methods, using IMO's, using animals to build and turn soil, etc, etc, etc. Regenerative farming (soil building farms) is absolutely practiced worldwide.
Lichen are a symbiotic relationship between fungi and photosynthetic microbes that exchange sugars for minerals chemically weathered from the rocks.
There are fungi that can establish a similar symbiosis with plants. In a healthy soil ecosystem that contains sand or pebbles, mineral availability should not be an alarming problem.
Interesting concept. I wonder if some rocks have a higher Aluminum/Silicon to trace mineral ratio than others. The aluminum & silicon aren't being used up, but the trace minerals will be.
Everything should be a cycle.
I am not planning on selling any food, just growing for home consumption, composting humanure and returning minerals to the landscape. Also importing nutrients in the form of mulch (free waste diversion, reduces distance chipping trucks travel = ethical) and Azomite (perhaps not so perfectly ethical, but I do think it provides long duration trace mineral rich remineralization ).
Even if I did sell, I think yard waste diversion would replace minerals lost.
Not a universal solution, but is likely to be a sustainable option for the forseeable future. Universal solution is getting smarter about closing all loops: including turning "sewage" into fertilizer on a society wide scale.
What's the gamma radiation level of Azomite?
From their FAQ:
No. AZOMITE® is not radioactive and does not have the capacity to emit alpha particles, which can harm humans or animals. The findings of a gross alpha/beta test report prepared by the ALS Environmental Laboratory Group of Fort Collins, Colorado, reveal that the alpha radiation values present in AZOMITE® are lower than those from a sample taken from the ALS parking lot. Beta emission is actually consistent with the potassium in AZOMITE®. AZOMITE®'s alpha number, averaged from 6 samples, gave a value of 5.8 pCi/g. A value greater than 20 pCi/g is required to even warrant documentation.
My was question was regarding gamma not alpha/beta
Cannot find much info on that, sorry. Out of curiosity, have you tested the radiation levels naturally occurring on your farm or garden?
Yes, exporting nutrients, minerals, etc. will deplete the soil's currently available store, however the consistently increasing biological activity and natural patterns of weather, water, and other life forms ensures that soil can continually be built to support abundance even while shipping away produce.
A site, a system, a farm, etc. are not bubbles. Alluvium, Illuvium, and other methods of material deposition lead to soil and organic materials being deposited across landscapes. Not to mention basic recycling of organic material (e.g. I sell a restaurant lettuce, it gives me compost later that week.)
If you have any type of functional ecosystem you will have birds, deer, bats, etc. all coming on and off of the site importing trace minerals, trace elements, NPK, etc. in their manure.
Furthermore, the amount of minerals present in the base material of any landscape (bedrock, subsoil), that which was already deposited there, is enormous. It is through the biological activity of bacteria and fungi in healthy soil that these stores are made accessible to plants. This supply is technically, but not practically finite.
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This isn't happening at the rate the minerals are being exported, I theorize.
One can't properly export food if the birds & deer are eating all of it.
This makes sense, thank you.