Dear Hugh and List, Thanks for explaining many things. I went to Michigan State and there they tought me that Mg is a divalent cation. I am not familiar to the University you have mentioned. I simply don�t know it. It can be a good one but I simply never heard of it before.
There is little I can comment about Biodynamics since I am a freshmen in the field but I consider myself a Dr Steiner fan and student. I would use a Field Broadcaster and in fact I have sent you an e mail about that and never got a reply but that is another story.Incidently I am reading "Stone Age Agriculture" and there is a nice drawing of your Field Broadcaster there which made feel even more compelled to use one. So please do not let me in the dark. Throw some light down here whenever you can. The Biodynamic movement in Brazil is a very weak one. After 27+ years they have accomplished nearly nothing. Now there are other groups being formed and there are few good BD growers who are really doing a good job but that is in Southern Brazil not close to where I live. I wish them all the luck in this world as we really need something like BD agriculture. The BD growers that I visited in Brazil were talking about transmutation but I have measured their soils with a penetrometer and I found a compacted layer in all of them. That is certainly not what I call a live soil. If there is compaction there is anaerobiosis. If there is lack of oxygen there is no life. I have two books from Prof Kervran and I do think that transmutation do happens but this is something that you can�t account for in your daily life. I mean in terms that you would consider part of the problem being solved simply because there is transmutation and therefore I don�t need to apply Calcium to my soil. Calcium helps the soil microbiology probably more than any other element. >From the smallest bacteria to animals and even man, everyone is dependent of a good supply of calcium in the soil.In Dr Albrecht own words " Calcium is what makes the other elements get into the plant more efficiently" . Actually he would tell a laymen audience that " every element rides in the back of calcium into the plant". By the way, there is plenty of scientific research proving this statement. Potassium, Phosphate, etc... all get into the plant more efficiently at high calcium levels. The main point that made me really upset about Mr Goldstein article is that he have based it in a very old papers from the 80�s in which they were trying to disprove Albrecht theory. In that paper that is being cited all over the world " ad nauseam" to disprove Albrecht theory they have used several Ca:Mg ratios and have concluded that there was no difference in the production. Every paper that is done with a hidden purpose is not a trustable one to start with. Secondly , you can play as much as you want you Ca/Mg ratios but if you get to some high ratios in which you would be influencing pH then all microelements will have to be taken care otherwise the less availabilty of micro nutrients at a higher pH will off set the benefit of the suposedly "good" Ca/Mg ratio. I suspect that this is what really happened. Mr Goldstein apparently does not have a good soil chemistry otherwise he would know all that. If you are to play with Ca/Mg ratios you should account for a decreased availability of micro elements at higher pH. How are you going to do that I simply don�t know but one should devise a way to take that effect into consideration. I know that Mr Goldstein have written about the economics of the CEC balancing and I cannot comment on that. Any grower has to do his own math. For some crops it may pay but for others it may not. I do not enjoy seeing people being ripped off as well. You are so right about a live soil being less and less dependent on CEC balancing. In fact I have seen some soils in which the grower did nothing but to add cattle manure. Guess what , in those soils you would notice a almost perfect balance exactly like Albrecht would like to see. The rationale behind this is that since humic material is originated from organic matter and in the organic matter the relationship would be exactly like the one recommended by Albrecht the higher the organic matter ( and consequently the humus) the closer to Albrecht levels the soil will get. Unfortunately I cannot agree with the gentleman that have recommended the farmers to apply whichever lime was available or go for the cheapest one. I have done that exactly for 20 years at not avail. Cheap Limes are the ones which normally have a low reactivity. This lime may take as much as 5 years to released the calcium and by the time it is released ( if you don�t have a live soil ) all that calcium would have been leached away perpetuating the situation on and on. If there is a need for calcium then a highly reactive type should be used. I don�t like the High Calcium limes that are manufactured by man. I prefer the high calcium manufactured by nature in ancient oyster shells deposits that would have a reactivity similar to any good High Calcium lime.This is the one I use. I have already compared High Calcium lime ( which is basically ordinary Lime subjected to High temperatures in which Calcium carbonate would loose a CO2 and would remain as CaO which is more reactive than CaCO3) to Oyster shell finelly ground and the results was favourable to oyster shell. Same thing to bone meal. I believe that organic materials material like are more tunned to the plant than a mineral material like a crushed rock ( lime). Chemically speaking it does not make sense and I believe that you could not talk about tunning of a material to Albrecht or any of his close followers like Neal Kinsey but I do believe in tunning and I do take it into consideration when designing any fertilization programm. Jose
