The end product of agriculture has to be human beings capable of thought and reason. That mankind stands at the top of the title pyramid was both an Albrecht logo and a dictum. During World War II Dr. William A. Albrecht made his famous fitness studies, relating draft eligibility to the availability of soil nutrients, always citing calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium as prime cations, with anions structured to accommodate life in the soil. Albrecht’s findings were disturbing to the twin precepts that had swept the republics of learning, namely, N,P and K fertilization and toxic rescue chemistry. That partial and imbalanced fertilization meant toxic rescue chemistry became an Albrecht given. His reports on dental caries as related to the soil nutrient norm were published all the way from Europe to Australia, with papers in German dominating. Some have been presented in earlier volumes, it being impossible to relegate very much of Albrecht’s work to the airtight compartments required by single factor analysis.
It always disturbed Albrecht that modern agriculture seemingly could not keep up with its science. Through a long career he proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that the N, P and K system worked only by accident when it worked at all. His observations became secure when the electron microscope first came online. For the first time the marvel of mineralization known as the cell came into view. Here was the missing link in understanding metabolic activity and the chemistry of growth.
The seed, of course, comes alive by imbibing water. It is then that the desiccated colloidal content becomes soaked. The seed swells. Fantastic forces are put into motion. It has been said that 2,000 miniature atmospheres function. Sailors know this, especially if they’ve ever shipped on a leaking tub with grain in the hold.
It also takes air to trigger metabolic activity. Without oxygen growth stops. If oxygen is cut off for too long, the seed dies.
Soil fertility suggests the requirement for oxygen, both to accommodate the seed and the livestock in the soil.
Many of Albrecht’s papers could be laced into a volume such as this, and all of these papers could be installed properly in earlier and later volumes, it being understood that the end product of farming be kept in mind.
The point here is that the chemistry of growth involves the cell, first, last and always. This may seem odd, but odder still is the fact that the farmer seldom if ever sees a cell, the appropriate microscope being unavailable. Yet what happens at the cellular level will determine the bottom line at the end of the year. This cell, this key to prosperity unlimited, can be platelike, concave, spherical, whatever, according to the role assigned by the Creator. Any diagram is both a fiction and the truth, a bird’s eye view of creation.
We will not further elaborate by considering the catalytic nature of enzymes, or embarking on the rest of the journey Albrecht has sketched out for us. The subject is mentioned here because that bird’s eye view prompted scientists to attempt random saturation of cellular substrate. This was all to produce bins and bushels of resultant food that did not support plant, animal and human requirements. This at first became a breathtaking observation, then a scandal, finally a monument to the stupidity of man, and at this writing a disgrace to a civilized society.
Since the single cell requires several hundred enzymes to even function, many being molecular, plants incapable of developing their own hormone and enzyme systems due to a shortage or marked imbalance of nutrients cannot furnish the upscale requirements of the human being or animal.
Soil Fertility & Animal Health was the second volume in this series. It codified a series of articles Albrecht wrote for the Angus Journal. A few of the caboose papers in this volume properly belong in that second volume, but were not discovered for several years after its publication. They are presented as an add-on to the human health factor.
Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin did not identify the DNA molecule until late in Albrecht’s career, that identification being prompted by the explosion of an atomic bomb over the crowded city of Hiroshima, Japan. Albrecht and his associates knew that the world was changed forever by that explosion, a change that could be measured and compared using soil samples sequestered before the event. Unfortunately nature and institutional arrangements decreed that this great scientist, Albrecht could not stay around and see the next great chapter in the story of Soil Fertility & Human and Animal Health.
Collectively, all the Albrecht papers seem to say that the balance of health in crops, animals and human beings depends on more than the balance of mineral elements. It is never enough to suggest that the ratios between calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium totally govern the health profile. Those ratios nevertheless stand as a gatekeeper for soil tests and consultants for the simple reason that the Albrecht equation works — in the tropics, temperate zone, everywhere, with limiting factors being the life in the soil, tillage, decay management, water in the soil, capillary return and the several other considerations extension of those ideas would account for. Research not beholden to fossil fuel technology has validated Albrecht ever since his ideas were first published.
Single factor analysis is the mark of an amateur. Yet too much research is pursued with that orientation in mind.
The research plots on Sanborn Field at the University of Missouri served up the life form refined by science as Aureomycin. Plots left undisturbed went to poverty weeds. Others detailed for science the beneficial effects — and hazards — of monocultures, nitrogen fixation via legumes, and of course the foundation principles for health in plants, animal and humans based on several Albrecht ratios assisted by the precepts of eco-agriculture.
Insight into the farming craft is best attained when soil fertility is related to human health.
— Charles Walters