Soil bacteria could improve crop yields, via fungi | Hacker News Reader

Soil bacteria could improve crop yields, via fungi

news.cornell.edu

168 pointsPaulHoule54 comments

I found this presentation[0] by a farmer talking about growing soil to be super interesting. He touches on promoting beneficial fungi as one part of it. He claims that with all the relatively easy techniques he, and other like minded farmers do, that they get high calories per acre than some conventional farmers.

[0]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPjoh9YJMk

I recently read “The One Straw Revolution” by Masanobu Fukuoka [1] and a lot of the technique seems to be around making sure the soil is cultivated for letting mycelium and bacteria do their thing. Mycorrhizal fungi seems to play a huge role in soil carbon storage, which is disrupted in modern agricultural practices [2].

[1]https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-one-straw-revolution?varia...

[2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhizal_fungi_and_soil_c...

Great book! I’ll always remember his lazy cultivation technique of creating “seed balls” consisting of various seeds and mud, and just tossing them down a hillside.

The one thing I appreciate most about Permaculture and techniques like those that Fukuoka deployed, are how the focus is on how to maximize yield and minimize effort.

I’d second this as being interesting, and add some anecdata:

There’s a lot of similar discussion in the marijuana community. When I used to grow (legal, medicinal) marijuana, we had a reading group about soil ecology where we discussed how fungi and roots interacted, the fungi-bacteria-animal systems, etc.

A lot of crop management can be done via cultivating “healthy” soil ecosystems.

We were able to cut down on nutrient supplements, eliminate things like growth treatments, and get rid of some infestations by adopting a perspective we were raising soil full of healthy fungi, bacteria, and animals. We also started moving spiders into the plants if we found them elsewhere in the garden.

I think “symbiotic ecology” is a topic we’re just scratching the surface of.

Don't we still need to move phosphorous and other elements back into these soil? We don't have a closed loop for recycling of these elements, and instead losing them to the ocean or some place very difficult to recover.

Yes, these methods are wonderful for the home gardener, but you can't feed the world this way. You absolutely need to regularly amend the soil if you're growing crops intensively for sale.

Farming is mining in slow motion. Eventually you have to put those elements back into the system, and you can't get all of them in sufficient quantity from compost.

I disagree. The farmer mentioned above is Gabe Brown and he operates over 5000 acres and operates a closed loop. He grazes the fields which he plants crops in which he feeds to grain based animals such as pigs and chickens.

Hardly a home gardner.

Closed loop means complete recycling. Crops that go to feed humans are then lost as the phosphorous and other elements are dispersed elsewhere instead of being returned to the soil.

And how many people does he feed with his 5000 acres?

Can he provide enough for 100% of the daily caloric needs of 5000 people? 10,000? 100,000?

Crops and livestock require potassium. He harvests the crops and removes them (and the potassium in them) from his farm. Where does he get potassium after it's all been mined out of his soil?

I thought some of the fungi break down minerals from rocks?

There are no rocks in fields that have been cultivated for generations. Well, deep in the soil there are, but you won't find fungi down there.

Chicken manure is high in nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. By moving his birds behind his cattle, he is adding nutrients back into the soil that are being used by the crops that are grown afterwards. On top of that, the birds are scratching and spreading the cow manure which are full of other nutrients that are being removed by crops.

Again. The chicken and cows and the crops get eaten by humans. Phosphorous and potassium goes somewhere else, certainly not back into the farm where it originated.

It doesn't matter if the cows and the chicken do all these things, because humans aren't returning their fair share to the soil.

I saw some another video where the claim was that there’s already enough elements in the soil to last thousands of years, but they require the right mixture of microorganisms to become available to the plants. It’s only the lack of microorganisms that forces us to add those nutrients.

[0] https://youtu.be/x2H60ritjag

Yes, right, that claim is that made in a video by Dr. Elaine Ingham, called The Roots of Your Profits, which I mentioned in this same thread, here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26718277

and which links to a comment by me (in a previous HN thread on no-till) about her work and revolutionary conclusions. And her company, Soil Food Web, is set up to consult on implementing the findings of her work.

And some major reasons both the number and diversity of microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi (and also other organisms such as archea, nematodes, arthropods) are low, is because tilling fields, not keeping the soil covered at all times as happens in nature (see Gabe Brown [1] videos where he keeps stressing how key this is and why), use of tractors, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides depletes the soil of parameters needed for survival by those creatures, such as right moisture and temperature ranges, and organic matter levels. Not to mention the soil erosion and water body eutrophication ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutrophication ) and desertification that occurs over the years due to all these wrong practices.

All in all, it's a deadly cocktail, and the exact opposite of how nature works.

[1] Google Gabe Brown videos. He has videos, charts, stats, etc. for almost all claims he makes, claims about his neighbors' poor results compared to his, and about his performance vs. state and US averages. He has a standing invitation for any one to visit his ranch and roam around and verify his claims.

I saw the lecture by Gabe Brown (linked above) and at the end he claims to produce significantly more calories pr hectare compared to conventional farming practices, not only because he practices Holistic Management methods that builds soil, but because he utilizes his land for many different purposes simultaneously – mutually beneficial parallel processes.

I know a guy who utilize similar methods here in Norway, admittedly on a smaller farm, but he mentions the same benefits. The farm is profitable without receiving government subsidies linked to the usual crops (grains), which seems like solid proof of their claims.

My gut feeling (based on having had half an eye on this topic for more than a decade) is that the potential for bountiful, diverse and healthy crops are much greater than most people realize. The main challenge is to disrupt the inertia that the industrialized methods have and gaining recognition in a rapidly aging population of farmers (and government officials / regulators). Maybe real change will come only with a new generation of farmers?

Yeah, it’s not magic.

That’s why it’s cut down nutrient supplements and totally remove processed hormones — not totally remove both.

The soil ecology is good at:

- turning raw ingredients into slightly more complex ones

- accessing things in the soil

- having the fungi exchange hormones for sugars

So you need to deal with adding back trace elements as part of their plant food, especially if you use the same growth medium repeatedly (eg, indoor growing).

But you can usually get away with less of those supplements because the soil ecology boosts uptake.

Waiting on the article about Monsanto (ahem, I mean Bayer) patenting soil fungi

Dr. Elaine Ingham talks about soil health too. I've been following her for years. I really love her work.

I read about Elaine Ingham for the first time a couple of months ago and it was a revelation to me. Her website https://www.soilfoodweb.com/ is very informative too. I wish these ideas were adopted much more broadly. It sounds like a solution to many of our problems. No fertilizer, no pesticides, no pollution, reclaimed biodiversity. What are we waiting for?

Maybe adoption is slow because the website is a clusterfuck

I think the website is rather recent. She does a much better job explaining soil health in an instructive setting.

This is the lived thesis of https://www.instagram.com/flavorkit/channel/?hl=en who's sort of a travelling amateur farmer (in the sense of self-educated through love of the topic) and constantly talking about soil as an ecosystem and the very important role fungus plays in that ecosystem.

She's an excellent person to follow if you want to apply this stuff to your home gardening.

This has been a huge topic in permaculture and organic gardening circles for a while.

A major proponent of the 'soil food web' is Dr. Elaine Ingham who has written a ton on the topic. From a more intuitive and less scientifically 'rigorous' angle you have Korean Natural Farming techniques where you sample 'indigenous microbes' from healthy natural environments and then introduce them into your garden.

KNF seems to be based on basically based on the same principles as Dr. Ingham talks about, if you take a high level view.

Or what Dr. Ingham talks about is based on KNF.

Good point, but I happened to (though might have not) think of it, just before I first posted my above comment. So I had changed the wording slightly to what it is (and made no edit after that). That is, I made it say:

KNF seems to be based on basically based on the same principles as Dr. Ingham talks about

rather than:

KNF seems to be based on Dr. Ingham's principles.

The former version implies that both could have come from the same source (of principles), while the latter implies that KNF came from her work, which I did not mean, from the start, though it may be so.

But from its Wikipedia page, KNF seems older than when she likely started her research, but not sure. In any case, the KNF inventor and she could have made their discoveriess independently, as sometimes happens.

And yes, I just noticed that the former version has a grammatical error, an extra "based on" after the word "basically". Missed that earlier.

Mycorrhiza are not a new discovery, nor are soil bacteria playing an imporant role. I'm not sure any of this is really "new".

Amateur cannabis growers have been brewing compost tea to enhance the bacterial/fungal/nematode populations in soil for over a decade.

Even in the world of industrial-scale agriculture no-till with cover crops is becoming increasingly popular.

I'm not sure what new things this research really offers besides perhaps attempts to identify specific fungi / bacteria that can enhance yeilds?

Yeah, I read it and tried to figure out what was new.

Like above, this has been known for decades. (maybe centuries aha)

Would be nice if they can figure out if the fungi's intentionally attract bacteria as per their prediction.

Not all research needs to be new or ground breaking. multiple studies on a subject, from various different people and institutions, using various methods are good. While nothing new and ground breaking here, it does reaffirm the already known, and we can confidently say that recent scientific studies continue to reinforce soil bacteria being good for crops.

> Amateur cannabis growers have been brewing compost tea to enhance the bacterial/fungal/nematode populations in soil for over a decade.

A decade? LOL amateur cannabis growers are johnny-come-latelies. This stuff was written about almost a century ago, and has been practiced widely for decades. The only thing that's happened in the past decade is that amateur (and pro) gardeners have started blogging and vlogging.

Pretty sure people grew and bred cannabis since thousands of years ago.

That's not the type of people he's talking about. Only a decade he said, referring to Americans who have only been able to openly grow cannabis over the past decade.

There was also some information on the ecological dynamic that leads to nutrient release by those bacteria, and how they interact with the fungi. I thought the fact that some bacteria could use the hyphae to transport themselves, finding and killing a secondary bacteria that is found on the fungi was pretty interesting.

This is one reason why I was so worried about Glysophate ("Roundup"). It attacks the mycelium -- you can see the result in the soil after a couple of years of use.

I once had a colleague who had worked on Glysophate earlier in his career. He was really proud of his work because "you can drink it, and it breaks down harmlessly in the soil". He never worried about the fungi.

Edit: moronic brain fart in writing rhizome rather than mycelium. Extra embarrassing as at the time described we were working on antifungal drugs.

The rhizome is the vertical part of the stem that send outshoots.

Not sure I see the relevance to Roundup?

Complete brain fart — thanks for catching it and commenting!

If round-up was a medical drug, it at least would have restrictions for use on a farm

Dr. Elaine Ingham has done a lot of work on this, and talked about it a lot, too, at conferences and in videos. I had mentioned her and a brief gist of her work in an HN thread about no-till, some months ago, here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24828524

Her claims are huge. It would be great if they were true. And they may be, based on her arguments and research.

Check out her video, The Roots of Your Profits.

I don't think the problem is their reliance on fertilizers. It's their reliance on the modern agro business. Any farm today has to generate an insane amount of a monoculture to make any money, and thus has to "roid up" their farm to do so. It's bad for the environment, it's bad for us... the only people it's good for is the middle men.

(a lot of the problem is not directly the farm, but the people who rent or lease land, the prices paid for a given crop, etc. It's very much a systemic economic problem)

Without modern agro business practices, we still make enough food to export most of it. The USA today makes $131 Billion dollars exporting food & feed using unsustainable practices. (it's worth noting that this number is going down, because other countries don't like our food processing standards; one of the reasons TTIP was blocked)

Cut that in half, and we'd still make $70 Billion, but we'd only have to produce half as much. Improve our farming & food processing standards, and it might actually increase, as we could become a preferred market in a world with higher food and environmental standards.

Jeff Lowenfels wrote three books about soil enrichment that you may find interesting.

1. Teaming With Microbes: The Organic Gardener’Guide To The Soil Food Web

2. Teaming With Nutrients: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to Optimizing Plant Nutrition

3. Teaming With Fungi: The Organic Grower’s Guide to Mycorrhizae

http://www.jefflowenfels.com/

I've read the first one and it's fantastic. Really should pick up the other two.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_natural_farming

I reminds me on the no dig gardening of Charles Dowding. He try to keep the soil healthy with the intensive use of compost. So he, as he said, doesn't need any fertilizer, has no nutrients-washed-out-by-rain problems, a load of less hard work and can make a living out of is market garden. The fungi and bacteria in the compost and the non disturbed soil seem to be the key for that all. Nice to have a proof of that.

A friend's farm, so I thought I'd post it.

https://issuu.com/sandandpinemag/docs/s_p_am21.issuu/14

Slow Farm: regenerative agriculture is all about patience

Is there any research into the sentience of fungi?

It seems like a broad group of fungi species are able to function as a network for its basic function of self propagating

And that a smaller group of fungi species are able to self propagate with complex functions while disconnected from the network

Feels very misunderstood, to me

Coordination and functioning as a network is conceptually not related to sentience; one could argue that it's necessary, but it's not sufficient and perhaps even an orthogonal issue.

And this changes when mushrooms solve the turing test?

Paul Stamets has researched this https://www.edrosenthal.com/the-guru-of-ganja-blog/going-und...

I think the only practical test for sentience is 'can you argue convincingly you should be accorded human rights'? I still expect an AI to be the first nonhuman to pass it, but that shouldn't obscure the fact that many nonhuman beings are incredibly intelligent.

I suppose that eventually a species could figure out:

“Humans wont kill us if one of us can debate them [and also look visually appealing to them]”

Could be lower energy than whatever they currently do

> 'Among the hyphae microbiomes were... “bacterial predators” that kill and eat other bacteria by causing them to burst and release their contents.'

This occurring at the surface of the hyphae may provide phosphate and nitrogenous compounds that the fungus can absorb.

https://www.indigoag.com/for-growers/biologicals also seem to be in the general space

“Farmers” of a certain type have known about myco for a long time. It’s old news. Root hair peptides and fancy adjuvants are hot right now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com