Life is Solar Powered
An early spring sunbeam gets the ball rolling
There is something inherently fabulous for all of our senses in soaking up a warm sunbeam on an early spring day as winter begins to relinquish its cold and intense grip. Our partnership with this sun however goes much deeper. I can sense the approval of “Ms Frizzle” as I am about to take you on an adventure into the relationships with the sun and its connectivity with all life, worthy of her “Magic School Bus”.
It all starts with plants. The simple version that we are all familiar with is that plants consume CO2 and produce oxygen. But now let’s see what really happens. A living plant in the soil has the unique ability to take water, CO2 and the sun’s energy to produce oxygen along with many sugars and simple proteins through the process we know as photosynthesis. This is where it all begins. Provided the system is left to do its job and not meddled with by chemical inputs such as inorganic fertilizers, the plant now takes these sugars and sets up symbiotic relationships with many microorganisms. Some of the sugars are used for plant growth, but many will be pumped down through the roots as sweet, nutritious exudates. The plant knows what sugars it needs to produce and excrete through its roots to attract the right microbes to bring in the resources it needs in trade. Many different plants make many different exudates, to collect many different micronutrients, so here is the beginning of our argument for biodiversity.
Plants using sunlight and an intricate connection with soil ecology to produce valuable and nutrient dense forage
Fungi and Bacteria, the only two organisms that can make enzymes to break down minerals from rocks, congregate at the root zone of the plants called the rhysozhere (the area right adjacent to the roots) and set up partnerships for micronutrients and water in exchange for the sugars that the plant provides them in return. The beneficial microbes attracted by the plants, provide protection to the plant roots as they set up house there. The root zone is like giant farmers market, hosted by plants, where a bustling exchange of materials take place. If there is diversity as nature intends, there is so much variety here. Once the plants get macronutrients from chemical fertilizers, they become lazy and close down this market. They now have the basics of life and will just shop for them at the convenience store (macronutrient chemical fertilizers providing only NPK). It is kind of like keeping your body going on potato chips and soda pops. It gets simple macronutrients, gets big, but is not healthy and full of valuable micronutrients to make vitamins etc that in turn support immune systems.
Chemical assault on soils, breaks the connection between plants and nutrient aquiring and cycling microbes
If is link in the chain is not broken by chemicals, and the natural system persists, the mycorhyzal fungi that colonize the roots can actually increase the roots effective size by up to 800 X allowing for even more absorption of water and micronutrients.
Things do not stop here. Now we have all these bacteria and fungi gorging at the roots, full of these wonderful micronutrients, but how does the plant get them? Well we need to start cycling them and to do this we need predators. Predators not only cycle the nutrients, but also keep in check the burgeoning populations of bacteria and fungi, maintaining balance. This is where protozoan, nematodes and micro arthropods come in. They look at these bacteria and fungi as a great, nutrient dense meal and start chowing down at this buffet around the roots. The meal is a rich one and too full of nutrients and the excess that these predators do not need will then in turn be pooped out by them in a plant available form right around the roots of the plant where the plant can now take up these abundant, available nutrients. In nature, there is no waste and what is seen as waste for one, is a valuable resource for another.
Horses getting energy and nutrition from sun energy with the help of plants
There are also bacteria that live in the soil or colonize certain plants such as legumes that have the ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen. Adding the nitrogen to the system is the building block of proteins. 78% of our atmosphere is Nitrogen and we can enlist bacteria to bring this into the soil for the plants. It is a well choreographed dining hall.
In the macroscopic world we can see insects feeding on plants and each other along with providing food resources for us and many other animals
As we move along the food web into the macro world (the one that we can see unaided), bigger organisms feed on not only the plants that have now stored so much nutrition, but also on the microorganisms in the soil. The cow that provides us with milk and meat, eats this nutritionally dense plant along with lots of gut supporting micronutrients and microbes, and passes this nutrition along to us in the form of meat and dairy. The same goes for the humble chicken. It not only eats the plants, but also the grasshoppers, worms, grubs etc, and turns this into nutritious eggs and meat keeping these often pest populations it loves to dine on in check.
A wide variety of food not only benifits us and is essential at all levels of biology and nutritional cycling begins in the soil
There is a saying that without life there is no soil and without soil there is not life. I would like to amend this for our modern, chemically depleted world and state that without “healthy” soil there is no “healthy life” and without “healthy” life, there cannot be “healthy” soil! You can hopefully now see that if this complex food web is disturbed and broken down by the continued assault of modern industrial farming techniques how it will affect not only our health, but also the health of all that rely on our soils for nutrients. We are not separate from this system, but an integral player and our lives depend on it. Links in the web are broken between these organisms that cycle and provide nutrients for our overall health and the overall health of our ecosystem and we thus see an increased dependency for compensatory and expensive pharmaceutical interventions. Necessary microorganisms that would replenish our gut micro biomes and immune systems are left to die of starvation as plants withhold resources after being fertilized, and so forth. Do you want to eat from a colorful, vibrant and diverse farmers market, or from the gas station convenience store? We must revere our soils and all that it supports and remember that we are what we eat.
