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Why We Should Use This Bacteria in Fertilizers

  • February 06, 2017

In a novel report for a scientific world bent on using chemicals for massive farming operations, ScienceNordic has found research showing that natural soil bacteria not only can serve as a possible source of nitrogen, but also could reduce the emission of certain greenhouse gases. The bacteria, rhizobia, live in soil and in association with legumes such as peas, beans and soybeans.

It’s exciting to hear that real science is finally coming around to the idea of regenerative farming, which can restore ecology and rebuild soil communities naturally, without the use of chemicals of any sort.

A common misconception is that regenerative and organic farming cannot be done on a large-scale — but it can, and in fact is being done on a working farm in Georgia, where farmer Peter Byck has 100,000 individual animals of several species. This is made possible because they support rather than compete with each other for limited resources as they range freely.

Regenerative agriculture addresses world problems including water scarcity, soil erosion and degradation, land turning into desert, loss of biodiversity, pollution, increasingly toxic foods and decreasing food safety. It also optimizes soil quality, with benefits to air, water, ecosystem, food, animal welfare and human health as downstream results of this.

The five tenets of soil regeneration include: no-tillage; plant diversity and rotation; multispecies over-cropping; maintaining living roots in the soil year-round; and livestock integration and diversification. The results from farming this way are impressive: Integrating biological farming principles can increase plant performance by 200 to 400 percent. Plus, it improves the quantity and quality of the food being grown.