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Welcome to Network Vital Agriculture and Nutrition, Netherlands

Network Vital Agriculture and Nutrition (NVLV) welcomes both professional members and friends.

NVLV is a Dutch association that promotes restoration of a rich and diverse soil life, which is the condition essential to grow the resilient crops necessary to produce the healthy (wholesome) food that will effectively support our vitality.

Aerobic soil organisms represent the core of sustainable forms of vital agriculture. In the soil, aerobic soil organisms are the main distributors of sugars and amino acids, (photo)synthesized by green plants with solar energy, CO₂ and N₂ gases from the atmosphere. Plants share these so-called primary metabolites with soil organisms, in return for (organic) metabolites of plant degradation. Such compounds originate from much further away in the soil than a plant could ever reach with only its own root system. These secondary metabolites are brought in by a vast array of soil organisms of all sorts and sizes. In order to take advantage of all the carbohydrates exuded from the plant roots, soil micro organisms locate themselves in great numbers around the root hairs, in the area called the rhizosphere.

Aerobic soil organisms determine both the resilience and nutritional values of crops. Through the supply of organic ingredients known as secondary metabolites, aerobic soil life decisively determines the nutritional value of a crop. With secondary metabolites containing trace elements, the plant can produce micronutrients such as enzymes and anti-oxidants (to name just a few). Micronutrients turn the plant into a vital organism, suitable for making wholesome food that is so much more nutritious than the fast food version produced by the many fast food chains scattered all over the world.

The combination of aerobic soil life and clay/humuscomplex is called the soil food web and is the key to maintain health, both in animal and man

Fast food contains only macronutrients (empty calories in the form of refined carbohydrates, accompanied by too many proteins and fats). The human -or animal- body cannot properly digest macronutrients without micronutrients present. A living organism that lacks micronutrients is more or less forced to store excess fats and proteins for later use. For fats this means deposits somewhere around the waist, and excess proteins start to clog the veins and later obstruct the arteries around the heart. Voilà the beginning of numerous chronic illnesses like obesitas, diabetes and cardio-vascular disorders. When pesticide residues also enter the food chain, the situation gets worse, with neurological diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, while cancer is waiting just around the corner, to take you for the last walz in your ball book.

The above illustrates why a thriving aerobic soil life is so important for safeguarding our health, as it facilitates production of wholesome food in combination with a well-developed clay/humuscomplex.

And there's more: soil organisms counteract man's destruction of the soil

Soil life is of utmost importance to avoid micro erosion, a phenomenon representing the first stage in a creeping destruction of the clay/humuscomplex, the flexible backbone of a soil's infrastructure. Micro erosion is set in motion through degradation of humus, an umbrella name given to colloidal organic compounds that act as glue in the clay/humuscomplex. Without an active aerobic soil life, organic compounds in the clay/humuscomplex cannot be properly replenished. The process of breaking down humus causes the grid that was formed by the clay/humus-complex to break down as well. This makes orphans of the resilient plants that used to rely on the soil food web for their supply of organic nutrients!

Mycorrhizal fungi play an important role in the soil food web, as intermediates between

• the root hairs of the plants,
  
• the bacteria in the soil nearby and
  
• a much greater sphere of influence marked by the hyphae (threads) of the fungi that are also active much further away from the roots.
  

In many industrially cultivated soils mycorrhizal fungi have now grown almost extinct, as a consequence of the huge doses of NPK-fertilisers that acidified so many healthy soils and caused the clay/humuscomplex to be broken down and the supply of trace elements to fall short. This happened in the time span of less than a century, starting with the invention of chemical fertilisers by Justus von Liebig.

Restauration of fungal life in the soil is not an easily accomplished task; it takes time, simply because a soil cannot churn and move its contents, as happens through the peristaltic movements of a mammal's bowels.

Elimination of the soil food web transforms friable soils into flyable soils and results in sensitive crops, degrading our health through inferior food

Loss of aerobic soil life marks the beginning of soil degradation, fertility losses and increasing problems of drought stress in cultivated crops. Unfortunately that is exactly what GBH's (Glyphosate-Based Herbicides, or glyphosate cocktails) do to soils, in addition to killing the plants on top. As glyphosate cocktails cause major disturbances and suppression of aerobic soil life, their use is -certainly on the long run- tantamount to agricultural suicide, because it destroys the integrity of the soil as a living organism. That is exactly opposite to what we should strive for: build our agriculture on agro-ecological principles in order to have nature work with us in stead of against us!

Clay/humus complex and aerobic soil life together determine natural soil fertility

The key issue behind all this is that aerobic soil life builds stable complexes of clay, silt, humus and organic detritus, the latter indicating the fragmented remnants of plant and animal life. Together with the mineral particles fraction, the components of this clay/humus complex are held together by a gel rich in carbohydrates. This gel is exuded from the root hairs of plants and processed and enriched by microbial soil life that thrives on those carbohydrates. Thanks to the gel component this clay/humus complex can adsorb vast quantities of water, whereas the nutrients suitable for crop growth are held by the attractional forces of humus, clay and silt combined. Without soil life to maintain it, this clay/humus complex will slowly but steadily fall apart. Its role is to incorporate mineral particles by binding them flexibly together with humic components, increasing the size of soil aggregates further, in co-operation with fungi. This joint venture improves both soil aeration and nutrient status, boosting the conditions for aerobic soil life on the fly. Read more about this joint venture and imagine what happens to the soil structure (the aggregates) without the binding forces provided by this clay/humus complex (hint: think about the Sahara...).

For the reasons mentioned above restoring soil life solves a lot of problems in agriculture, nutrition and health. At the same time soil life provides the simplest, cleanest and most efficient way of buffering against global warming, intense rain storms, severe droughts and a crippling soil erosion!
A truely effective start of tackling such a huge set of problems would be to engage in transforming the counterproductive practices of industrial agriculture in general, i.e. to reduce the unsustainable levels of external inputs and to start respecting the local ecology in stead of favouring international pesticide suppliers. By relying on petrochemicals the industrial farmer slowly destroys his own future, and ultimately the future of the planet!

Foto: courtesy of ILEIA's Farming Matters magazine.

Industrial agriculture is all about scale and neglects soil health: To industrial producers mass production of dry matter is everything, because it provides maximum cash returns. Although it is true that many industrial producers have been pushed into the credit corner by banks, multinationals, consultants and the intermediate trade, and although increasing the scale of agricultural enterprises would not seem illegitimate in itself, there is a big catch with respect to consumers: Industrialised food production degrades health: of soils, plants, animals and man. In addition, it affects agricultural communities socially. To be more precise: industrialised food production goes hand in hand with watering down the food quality because it goes hand in hand with soil degradation because it goes hand in hand with soil organic matter destruction because it comes with monocultures+heavy machinery+chemical fertilisers+pesticides. It destroys the small farmer's livelyhood (and bars him from maintaining his expertise), in agricultural villages it undermines health, living conditions and employment and in cities it reduces awareness about the importance and origin of wholesome food. Food quality ultimately depends on the resilience of the plants processed, a quality that can certainly be expressed in terms of nutritional value. For mass-produced food, the principal cause of loosing nutritional value lies in the lack of interest for the link between the crucial contribution of soil life to soil fertility and buffering of water and organic carbon, the resulting resilience and health status of crops grown on those soils, the nutritional value of food ultimately produced with those crops. This is true for industrial producers and governments alike. It may look like a long shot, but it is not! All interests hinge around exports and the profitability of plain dry matter production.

As said, soil organisms are essential in maintaining natural soil fertility and soil health. But soil organisms are also the link with animal and human health, because availability of soil organisms makes all the difference to plant health as well. Without healthy plants there is no healthy food; it's that simple. Then how is it that soil organisms are still absent in the industrial picture?
a) in industrial agriculture, fertility is linked to chemical fertilisers and not to soil organisms and
b) crop productivity is only considered important in terms of dry matter production, but not in terms of the nutritional values that go with it. As a consequence, nutritional values don't play a role in decision making. The same is true for the food industry: nutritional value and human health are ignored, as they add little weight to the scales. What counts are the economics of bulk treatment, swift transport and the longest possible shelf life. Money, money and money makes the world go round! The fundamental problem with the industrial approach therefore is, that food has become a commodity, even an object of speculation. All agro-industrial enterprises want to earn from our food first, before it lands on our plates; the same story goes for the food-processing industry. Producing nutritious food is not within their scope. And supermarkets are most happy to sell the stuff anyway, irrespective of its nutritional values.

Inflation of the food quality (nutritional value) blows up our health care system.
Evidently the impact of reduced food quality on human and animal health has become an end-of-pipe problem, a collateral damage of industrial agriculture ignored by many stock market share holders. It is gladly left to the farmaceutical and medical industries for further treatment (and profits). Unfortunately healthy food as a treatment is not in the medical books, so pills are promoted instead! Hippocrates'statement seems almost forgotten, at least in the medical curricula. In the medical sector the consequences are clear enough. New customers are always welcomed with open arms, but everything has its price. In other words: medicines, hospital beds and medical care have become commodities, with a trade value. Even national health insurance has been privatised. In Dutch the whole complex of medical, mental and farmaceutical 'care' used to be called 'De Zorg' (The Care), but The Profit might actually be a better term now. It is not exactly clear anymore who benefits most from the treatment procedures: the 'patient', the Clean White Coat, the pharmacist, the care organisation or in the background the share holder of the industries behind all this. You name it; the list is long and each participant has his own interests. Finally: don't forget the managers and the directors of the numerous care organisations. They are everywhere and mostly busy, but probably not with their hands on a bed. Rather it will be with 'pee contracts' and other matters of crucial administrative importance.

Bad money to the wrong research: not our health is leading, but corporate profits
Important causes for our health care system to start des-integrating are:
a) governments have ceased to properly supervise the food production chain as a whole
b) have ceased to fund fundamental research institutes where independent scientists can study the -hopefully- uninterrupted movement of nutrients through the food chain without having to worry about big corporate sponsors that might become unhappy about potentially unfavourable research results. Where most research institutes have now become extremely dependent of corporate funding, national governments are in effect handing over their powers to the lobby machines of a few multinational corporations. Those don't waste time rolling out their hollow phrases over Washington, Brussels and Strassbourg. And that is not all. To add insult to injury, officials of big institutions (like EPA in the US and EFSA, ECHA in the EU), supposed to be impartial and to protect the public interest, are all too often making friends with corporate buddies and hopping jobs all the time. To consumers the end result is always: What You Not See Is ultimately What You Get! And it applies to trace elements-deficient processed food just as much as to transparency-deficient trade agreements. It all points in the same direction: our health is not the interest of multinational corporations.

NVLV underlines the importance of family farmers worldwide, in maintaining a constant natural soil fertility, and preserving food sovereignty as well as agricultural production capacity on the long run. Their existence is threatened by BigAg enterprises and some governments that ignore the merits of a small-scale, diversified approach towards seeds diversity, wholesome food production and everything in between. In order to be sustainable, agricultural subsystems like soils, seeds and crops must be able to act in a coherent way: that is with a co-ordinated response, in their adaptation to the environment and -with the help of the local community- to maintain their balance under changing climatic conditions. That is the agro-ecological approach in brief. When applied globally, it will effectively curb the global warming now taking place and help local communities to a sustainable type of agriculture.

Their financially powerful opponents would rather see the locally adapted, small-scale farms swallowed by industrial, large-scale systems, and try to convince farmers and governments that every problem can only be solved with high-tech consultancy in tandem with 'universal' seeds, chemicals and machinery. And all of that against a price that many small farmers cannot pay! As a consequence they are pushed out of their businesses, not only in developing countries, but also in the European Union, where big (acreage) industrial farmers receive the bulk of all agricultural subsidies and small farmers are strangled by rules and regulations that are overly specialistic or just too expensive for them to be implemented.

Industrial agriculture is steadily destroying our food production potential
Unfortunately, with all his technology, the industrial agriculturalist is not the one that will save us from hunger after all. He overlooks one very urgent problem growing under his heavy-duty tractor tyres: erosion of his soils. First on a micro and then on a macro level. He destroys his own land by ignoring the humus factor! The report 'Preserving agricultural soils in the EU' states that by now app. 45% of the European cultivated acreage contains too little soil organic matter.

So let's put our priorities right: our most urgent problem is not how to feed the rest of the world, but how to keep our own soils in a productive state!

We have to bring organic carbon back to the soil, in order to close the cycle and preserve the production capacity of our land

• The first thing to do there is to boost soil life by eliminating toxic substances and to (re-)introduce aerobic bacteria and fungi like Mycorrhiza, which have disappeared for up to 90% in a cross section of all industrially cultivated soils;
• the immediate second is to provide a constant supply of oxygen, organic materials (mulch) and stone meal (trace elements) to the soil surface in adequate quantities, suitable to feed the available soil organisms (more is not necessary and probably counterproductive): it is the reason that soil life should be promoted first. The mulch applied should not be contaminated with toxic wastes, pesticides, GMO's, antibiotics and antibiotics-resistent bacteria, because these eliminate the type of aerobic soil life that is required to produce humus.
  Which is why obsolete aerobic soil life should be restored, as that is the gearbox that transforms the incoming solar radiation into power for driving the organic carbon cycle.
• The third: mechanical and chemical soil compaction should be avoided to the greatest possible extent, because aerobic conditions are crucial for boosting the humification process. Rotting processes on the other hand are linked to anaerobic conditions, leading to intoxication and loss of soil structure.
• The fourth: bring back biodiversity and maintain land races + local seed banks, because diversity makes virulent plant communities that withstand pests and diseases.
• The fifth: focus on multi-cropping and prohibit patenting of seeds/organisms

Industrial soil cultivation techniques and their contribution towards soil degradation
Several factors harmful to soil organisms and trace element availability can be distinguished:

• the acidifying action of NPK-fertilisers in combination with
  
• increased oxidation of organic matter as a result of deep(er) plowing, which overturns the soil profile, releases extra CO₂ and disturbs depth-dependent soil life
  
• intensive farming techniques involving heavy machinery, inducing soil compaction and a growing lack of oxygen, further aggravated in the case of
  
• a lavish use of pesticides and injected slurry.

All these factors contribute to the suppression of soil life and thus to a stagnation in the formation of new humus, which is the active component of organic matter. It is essential as a buffer, in the organic carbon cycle and in the formation and maintenance of soil structure (soil aggregates).
Even in the newly reclaimed Dutch Flevopolder (after just one generation of industrial farming), soils are imploding under the degradation pressure caused by loss of organic matter. This quick loss of sparse humus could only happen because the calcium and clay contents of the newly reclaimed sea floor were excellent, allowing for bumper crops and fast depletion. However that advantage lasted only one generation of farming. Now the soil profile looks like concrete. In the process of soils losing their organic matter, soil structure suffered, entering the first fase of degradation. The process was further aggravated by top soil compaction caused by heavy equipment and sometimes ill-chosen cultivation timing.

If the process goes further, the steady loss of humus will continue to the point where organic matter is almost absent. By then the soil aggregates will have fallen apart completely, making the soil surface sensitive to wind and water erosion. That is the last fase of soil degradation, which ends in a complete loss of soil, being washed or blown away into the sea, depending on the local moisture conditions.

The same scenario of depletion is presently unfolding in the Hoeksche Waard, by origin an extremely rich sea clay polder in the West of Holland: it is now suffering under a trend breach in yields. It is the sad consequence of soil organic matter contents declining over several decennia due to the intensive farming methods outlined above. Those methods have been inconsiderate of the importance of keeping the organic carbon cycle up and running, as the basis for a truely sustainable agriculture. Whatsmore, such agriculture can only be supported by a rich and diverse soil life if it is not frustrated by the use of pesticides.

Summarising the process, it should be recognised that high production levels cannot be supported without the availability of active organic matter and soil life as essential ingredients. Precisely those stocks are being depleted by industrial farming methods. This in turn results in rock hard soils, in creeping inflation of the nutritional values and in a diminished resilience of crops. Under those conditions, a break point in yield development has to come almost unavoidably. The Dutch Flevo polder case illustrates very well that high doses of chemical fertilisers and a lot of mechanised Horse Powers do not exactly support sustainable agriculture; they only facilitate a rapid exhaustion of the organic matter content, especially in combination with severe top soil compaction caused by the use of heavy machinery and such compounds as potassium chloride in particular.

The link between industrialisation of agriculture and the use of mineral fertilisers
Predominantly in the industrialised countries wholesome food production has since World War I increasingly become the exception rather than the norm, during the development of 'modern' Western agriculture and in its tracks the food-processing industries. The strongly promoted use of chemical fertilisers had much to do with it, as well as the 'spontaneous' disappearance of almost all soil-based research in its wake. The latter was swapped for fertiliser-based research, with full support of governments that liked the idea of replicating the design of a centrally managed Industrial Revolution once more, but this time in agriculture. The concept of distributing mineral fertilisers from a central point co-incided beautifully with the implementation of plant scientific innovations orchestrated by research offices higher up in the bureaucratic network. The plant breeding programmes designed to develop fertiliser- and pesticide-adapted food crops were the result, presented as 'Green Revolution'*). Behind this approach was an explosives industry that after the Great War was looking for new ways to sell solid nitrogen in bulk. The irony here is that the Evolution has already provided plants with free nitrogen-fixing bacteria, to produce amino acids and sugars from water and gases such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen. These gases are abundantly available in the atmosfere and only need to be put to use by the proper bacteria, in combination with chlorophyl.

The industry also uses gaseous nitrogen but chooses to convert the gas first, to a commodity that can be packed in bags and sold to farmers. The conversion to solid fertilisers requires the expensive Haber-Bosch process, together with astronomical quantities of methane gas (by co-incidence a commodity of the Dutch government). Those solid fertilisers subsequently interfere with the way in which the plant normally covers its nitrogen requirements: from the air through bacterial fixation. Nitrogen from chemical fertilisers gives, when dissolved in the soil water solution osmotic and acidic effects that seriously hinder the plant in its selection of preferred organic nutrients. This approach of 'force-feeding' has a great impact on the plant's energy management and destroys plant vitality. The result is a weak plant directly inviting pests and diseases. They push the plant further into a downward spiral of more pesticide use and less vitality.

The interest of the explosives industry is an increased use of solid N-fertilisers
The explosives industry did not exactly favour the continuation of a soil research type that focussed on studying the organic nutrient uptake by plant roots, because this process costs nothing in terms of nitrogen availability, but all the same makes efficient use of readily available organic nutrients. Indeed no attractive prospect for the sale of commercial fertilisers!
This is the very reason why governments were 'programmed' to re-organise research institutions and financially restrict them, in a way that exclusively studied the uptake of minerals: it accommodated and helped justify the use of mineral fertilisers. As a consequence, the sales of mineral fertilisers and pesticides have soared since then, whereas the overemphasis on grain yields in breeding programmes has interfered with the production of straw, thus hampering the return of enough organic matter into the organic carbon cycle. This had serious consequences for the rates at which soils were recharged with organic matter in general (carbon sequestration!), and in particular for small farm households in the developing world, which had always made good use of their crop residues in the past.

*) Why plant breeding under the Green Revolution went for adaptation of existing local species (land races), is an altogether different story. Where breeding claimed to produce HYV's (High Yielding Varieties), the real target was to develop a tolerance against an intensified use of chemical fertilisers or pesticides. Land races are mostly very well adapted to their environment, beginning with fixing nitrogen from the air. Stripping land races of their location-specific qualities and their nitrogen-fixing abilities is totally counterproductive and makes a breeding programme eco-suspect. The practice illustrates clearly that the principal aim of the Green Revolution was not improving yield (or food quality), but only boosting turn-over of external inputs such as fertilisers, pesticides, irrigation and consultancy. That chemical fertilisers in general do increase dry matter production of crops, depends in reality on the availability of humus, but it does represent the side effect that conveniently sells the product to bulk producers. It says nothing though, about the nutritional value of the food that is turned out. The underlying cause of decreased nutritional values is that chemical fertilisers acidify the soil, accelerate the loss of organic matter and trace elements. This in turn stimulates the production of empty calories. It also explains why important parameters such as impact on health, health care and environment are left out of the equation as soon as positive results of cost/benefit analyses are required to promote industrial agriculture. No matter what relevance there is to health and environment, it is always put secundary to the interests of big industries involved.

Who does actually benefit from the agricultural industrialisation proces?
It's definitely not the small farmer
Securing enough (let alone wholesome) food for an ever increasing world population is not even a remote point of consideration for big agricultural enterprises. It's just the gospel that they keep singing for the general public. What they are most keen on is co-operating with lobby firms specialised in 'massaging' governmental bureaucracies in the whole Western world. Their target is total control over our food, in spite of their mantra 'We shall feed the world'. In fact the whole concept of 'feeding the world' through industrial agricilture is daft and extremely arrogant, considering the ongoing losses of productive land due to industrial cultivation methods alone. Moreover, the concept of producing and exporting denatured food from a few industrial hotspots (against huge external costs in terms of fossil fuels, environment and health) is totally stupid when we compare it with the moderate costs of producing wholesome food locally and sustainably, with local species conveniently adapted to their environments over many centuries. A family farmer does not deserve to be wiped out by bureaucracy just because he/she lacks purchasing power to accommodate the agro-industry. In fact family farmers represent through their sheer numbers the only category that will be capable of producing enough wholesome food at reasonable cost for everyone, region by region, village by village. Local food production on an agro-ecological basis requires only a fraction of the resources used by industrial farmers and helps family farmers to save resources, simultaneously respecting soil life and biodiversity. These are all factors crucial to sustain production at quality levels necessary for maintaining health through successive generations.

What does it all mean to the quality of our food?
Wholesome food production is synonymous to growing vital crops, which, for maintaining their vitality are totally dependent on an abundant soil life in order to create a buffer of living organic matter (=humus). Pretending that mineral fertiliser is just as good as any other source of plant nutrients is the ultimate fairy tale, if only because plants respond very little to mineral fertilisers as long as humus is abundant. A closer look into the history of soil research will co-roborrate this*). Organic matter in all its diverse stages of decomposition and (humus)formation is the buffer store that enables soil life to maintain a balanced supply of all sorts of organic nutrients with built-in trace elements, to the plants. It is therefore a key factor to plants building up their vitality, in co-operation with a little army of microbes living in exchange with the smallest roots in the soil, in the so-called rhizosphere.

Seen in this light, life being depleted from the soil has become a major threat, to the natural fertility of agricultural lands, to their fysical stability and equally serious, to the health of each and every individual that eats the food coming from such degraded land. The implications for national health and the environment in industrialised countries are huge, but nevertheless overlooked by the authorities concerned. The external costs of the losses in fertility (of land as well as man) remain mostly hidden and are silently charged to the taxpayer, who as yet has no clue about the origin of all those modern diseases that have come to bother him. Unaware of the relation between human health and soil health, he puts his faith blindly in medical doctors who concentrate on suppression of symptoms in stead of preventing the diseases from popping up in the first place.

As a vanguard movement we've been shaping and giving direction to solutions in three areas proposed by Michael Pollan (Feb. 2009): development of knowledge and raising awareness with regard to:

1. a more natural and sustainable agriculture, based on recycling of organic carbon
   
2. the use of carrots instead of sticks in maintaining rules and regulations
   
3. involvement of consumers, 'voting' with their forks and spades to create the type of agriculture, biodiversity and landscape they want. It means that purchasing and investing in regional production is one option, and personally taking up vegetable gardening yet another.
   

Our dream is that farmers will use and manage our rural space in a sustainable way again, with renewed joy and confidence in their own wisdom; that they will be respecting nature in growing vital crops and rearing healthy animals, providing wholesome food both for them and for us.
To consumers we wish that they will be aware of what they eat and where it is grown, that they know the farmer who grows their food and finally, how their food would contribute to their health as Hippocrates already knew.

Our professional members are active as scientists, advisors, farmers, project officers, editors etc; they are working on:

• healthy living soils and
• restoring cycles in agriculture, resulting in clean water and air,
• vital nutrition,
• healthy people,
• biodiversity,
• animal welfare,
• eco-regions and a green economy.

Our friends are all those strengthening and promoting this movement, with a kind look on our work. They participate, provide ideas and/or financial means and have signed up as a member because of it. Everyone can become a member. Participate?

We pioneer out of passion and personal leadership; we work with intuition and not for quick profit; we use innovative science and knowledge gained from experience; we look for balance in the carbon economy and try new forms of regional co-operation; we solicit public support for wholesome food production and a connection with nature. In short, we develop solutions for the future.

How do we realise these dreams? We learn together and share knowledge at seminars and symposia, in working groups and regional (sub)networks; by co-operating in projects; by substantiating and monitoring new methods, by providing mutual feedback and coaching, by linking up with other innovative networks and through lobbying with government.