E.g. a 25% average yield penalty in this meta-analysis:
Alvarez, R. (2022) ‘Comparing Productivity of Organic and Conventional Farming Systems: A Quantitative Review’, Archives of Agronomy and Soil Science, 68(14), pp. 1947–1958. doi: 10.1080/03650340.2021.1946040.
I studied the productivity benefits of adding beneficial fungi as part of my master's thesis. On average they provide a yield benefit, but it's not ubiquitous and they're far more likely to work in arid and semi-arid soils that have poor microbial diversity in their baseline. They don't tend to be as effective in temperate soils - partly because they have to compete with existing soil microbes.
This isn't categorically true if you're comparing the same variety of crop. Vaclav Smil does great work compiling data on this in his book "How to Feed the World". The overall environmental picture is also more complicated[1].
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/is-organic-agriculture-better-for...
Organic grown food tends to be higher in anti-oxidants and secondary metabolites, possibly because the plant immune system is activated more frequently due to better microbial biodiversity. From what I remember at least - it doesn't maintain any advantage in macronutrient density (carbs/nitrogen etc.)
There’s just not compelling evidence for your claim comparing the same varieties, the research exists.
It's hard to tell. There's no shortage of these types of questions, or people claiming to have the answers to them (like this guy). Reductionist Western science isn't amazing at understanding if these holistic thinkers are full of crap or not. Certainly some of his ilk are snake oil salesmen, and some are visionaries. I *tend to distrust the ones who are selling the solutions. I tend to trust farmers and farmer-researchers who are describing what they're seeing, but aren't selling anything.
A lot of people I know have used their Bio5 reactor and are pretty happy with it. It's hard to know what sort of effect applying compost extract has on agroecosystems, because these are complex systems and the tools we use to measure soils are fairly crude. But I know producers who have stopped using nitrogen fertilizers entirely, and are applying this extract instead.
If you're interested in soil health in general, and learning about what you can do on whatever land you might be managing (including a garden plot or a yard), an excellent starting resource is NRCS's soil health principles, https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/conservation-basics/soil/soil-heal.... If you are able to find ways to meet these principles in your context, that's like 80% of the battle. The rest will sort itself out. Or if you have more specific questions about other things these guys are schlepping, let me know and I can give you my two cents or point you towards more resources.
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Definitely give a shout if you have more questions. I'm biased but she's great at this. You can find some contact info for me in my bio.
e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3_w_Gp1mLM&pp=ygUUY2hpcnN0a...
I live in a rain forest. Every winter washes the soil clean of the majority of nitrogen that was built up the previous summer. To keep a raised bed alive I have to amend with bulk compost in the fall and spring. Without the fall amendment the soil starves and the spring amendment is less effective. That was until I added biochar(innoculated charcoal) to my beds. The charcoal prevents nutrients from being washed out of the soil when there are no plants replenishing it. In beds amended with biochar I get higher production and lower inputs. Biochar can help reduce inputs on chemical farms too. But, the combination of healthy living soil and biochar, for me, makes gardening easy. I am more concerned with whether a plant has enough sun than anything else these days.
For a taste, Joanna Steinhardt for the LA Review:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-mycophiles-plea-on-m...
I suspect some folks here might also appreciate his early-career (2011) musical collaboration with brother Cosmo Sheldrake and friends, as the Gentle Mystics:
Aaah, it all connects - a web within a web indeed...
I have got some weekend reading and listening to get to now - thank you all kindly. As a contribution wanted to mention Paul Stamets and his works - it's all somehow about fungi (and bees sometimes!), and all deeply fascinating
Trees have shown the same pattern — we had a large, older tree go down, one which had quite a bit of fungus growing around it, & the trees planted near the old site did well while new trees on the other side of the yard did not, even with significant, regular watering.
Note that fertilizer applications are not synergistic with mycorrhizal fungi, fertilizer applications typically prevent the benefits of mycorrhizal fungi, plants no longer need to rely on mycorrhizal fungi for nutrients. I have noticed an "explosion" of fertilizer and supposedly growth enhancing products touting their microbial benefits with labels that show long lists of various beneficial microorganisms, but it's mostly just marketing hype.
For anyone not familiar, look up Gabe Brown's talks on growing soil.
They should show up with data. My other concern is that regenerative farming advocates always seem to leave out labor inputs.
The monocropped modern agriculture is not only producing dead soil, farmers that become reliant upon exterior input supplied by global conglomerates (i.e. ther margins don't go to the person doing the farming, but everyone suppling the stuff the farmer needs), and causes a lot of damage to local ecosystems.
No data I’ve seen supports that claim. In fact Vaclav Smil’s book “How to Feed the World” collects a lot of data refuting this claim.
> producing dead soil
If less land needs to be under cultivation this doesn’t matter. You can rewind or reforest old disused agricultural land.
Thanks for condescending.
Its not really a fair comparison. This is like comparing PDAs to desktop computers in 1991, and surmising that mobile devices are just marketing hype.
A bit more difficult is growing edible mushrooms along with the plants, for example Boletus edulis, which are symbiotic with oaks and other trees.
The difficulty lies in the waiting period, it can easily take years before any fruiting bodies appear.
I don't completely agree but it's a better position that what's currently dominant
Wild how I got downvoted for stating a pretty obvious fact. Long term planning and self sacrifice in the interest of long term community benefit which transfers to one’s future self / progeny is actually very similar to communism.
Fuck me I guess
It takes hardly any artificial fertiliser (10g per sq meter) to eliminate beneficial fungus from the soil, at which point you are basically running an open air hydro system and have to artificially add nutrients and adjust pH. It takes upwards of 3-5 years to start getting proper results from organic farming methods when switching back and basically involves adding years of organic material to kickstart the organic cycle.
It is totally possible to get comparable results to fertiliser based farming when farming organically, you just need to focus on 'growing' the soil, not just providing nutrient to the plants. In my opinion the former is farming, the latter is hydroponic production. Both have their benefits, it's just that one leaves behind barren soil and the other enriches the soil and is part of a natural cycle that leaves the soil exceptionally fertile.
The RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) sells little packets of mycorrhizal powder that you can put into your garden if you feel it is lacking beneficial fungi. Another more natural route is to bury a kilo of cooked white rice near a very healthy tree, where the soil is soft and 'healthy' then retrieve it after a week. It will be mouldy, but with the right type of mould. Mix that into compost, grow tomatoes in that compost, then when they are finished, chop up their roots, mix it into the compost again, add fresh compost from your compost bin to make seed compost. Mix that seed compost into whatever you want to 'infect'. Some people grow just the fungus using sprouted barley and add the mouldy sprouted barley to their compost.