Soil Fertility in its Broader Implications



"Food is fabricated soil fertility." - Albrecht

 Soil Fertility in its Broader Implications

- These excerpts were written by Dr. William A. Albrecht in 1945.

Food is fabricated soil fertility. It is food that must win the war and write the peace. Consequently, the question as to who will win the war and how indelibly the peace will be written will be answered by the reserves of soil fertility and the efficiency with which they can be mobilized for both the present and the post-conflict eras.

What is soil fertility? In simplest words, it is some dozen chemical elements in mineral and rock combinations in the earth’s crust that are being slowly broken out of these and hustled off to the sea. Enjoying a temporary rest stop en route, they are a part of the soil and serve their essential roles in nourishing all the different life forms. They are the soil’s contribution – from a large mass of nonessentials – to the germinating of seeds that empower the growing plants to use sunshine energy in the synthesis of atmospheric elements and rainfall into the many crops for our support. The atmospheric and rainfall elements are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, so common everywhere.

-         Except from Albrecht’s Hidden Lessons: The Albrecht Papers Vol. 3 – p.6

Soil fertility determines whether plants are foods of only fuel and fattening values, or of body service in growth and reproduction. Because the soil comes in for only a small percentage of our bodies, we are not generally aware of the fact that this 5% can predetermine the fabrication of the other 95% into something more than mere fuel.

Realization is now dawning that a global war is premised on a global struggle for soil fertility as food. Historic events in connection with the war have been too readily interpreted in terms of armies and politics and not premised on mobilized soil fertility. Gafsa, merely a city in North Africa, was rejuvenation for phosphorus starved German soils. Nauru, a little island speck in the Pacific, is a similar nutrition savior to the Japanese. Hitler’s move eastward was a hope looking to the Russian fertility reserves. The hoverings of his battleship, Graf Spee, around Montevideo, and its persistence in Argentina were designs on that last of the world’s rich store of less exploited soil fertility to be had in the form of corn, wheat, and beef much more than they were maneuverings for political or naval advantage.

Some of these historic martial events serve to remind us that “an empty stomach know no laws” and that man is in no unreal sense an animal that becomes a social and political being only after he has consumed some of the products of the soil.

-          Except from Albrecht’s Foundation Concepts: The Albrecht Papers Vol. 1 – p.105;