SALTING IN AGRICULTURE.

 Readers would benefit by keeping in mind a couple of truisms when reading this article.

 “ A problem correctly stated is half solved”  Anon.

 “Cause & effect are removed in space & time”.   Anon. 

 “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

                                                                                                                                   Upton Sinclair  1870

 SODIUM CHLORIDE ?

I was listening to Margaret Throsby interviewing Peter Andrews with ever increasing interest, when suddenly he made the observation that the “salting” now prevalent in agriculture  was not Sodium Chloride, as Sodium Chloride in solution sinks. 

 Immediately I was switched fully on, as this took me back more than fifty years to when I had inadvertently made the same discovery, which led to a series of further discoveries that earned me the displeasure of my employers.

 I was to later discover salt does not rise to become visible after evaporation on the surface, but remains as a visible salt after  evaporation from a saline solution, as seen on our dry inland lakes and in  evaporation beds where  sea water is evaporated in the harvesting of table salt.

 In 1954 my company (SACO) sent me to an “Irrigation School” conducted by the Department of Agriculture at Yanco in N.S.W. The week long course covered all aspects of irrigation conducted along the Murray Valley.  There were bus trips around various irrigation farms demonstrating the results of irrigation.  Two of the farms we visited had been severely damaged by “salting”, where in places the white “salt” residue was visible.

As we walked through these paddocks  I instinctively wet my finger and picked up a sample which I tasted.  It did not taste “salty” which I remarked about, but one of our party kept tasting it every so often, long after I had stopped.  Noticing his behavior our lecturer  advised him not to do it, “as you don’t know what else is in it”.

The next morning,  our last day, when the bus called at the Hotel to pick up those staying there, they were one short. The  missing bloke had  taken ill during the night and had been taken to hospital. That afternoon we had a small party and we all departed to our various home towns never to meet again!

  The next year I was walking down the street in Barmedman when my name was called.   Turning to meet the voice it was the bloke who had been at the school. Quickly reminiscing and finding names I asked him what happened the night they took him to hospital?  “I was there for two days with fluorine poisoning” he told me.  “That salt we were sample tasting the day before is a fluorine salt, which comes in the superphosphate and is very poisonous”.

SUPERPHOSPHATE

As superphosphate was the holy grail of agriculture then and we were using it in increasing quantities as my company went slowly broke, I casually raised the matter with my Chemical Engineering friend. ( He was later to be involved in the transport of Sodium Fluoride from the Aluminium Smelter at Bell Bay in Tasmania to Sydney, when Sydney’s water  was fluoridated. Later he manufactured plants to remove fluoride from the same water, which were installed in the homes of those prominent people who had advocated the fluoridation of Sydney’s water! )

He told me the same as the label on the bagged super of those days, that the sodium fluoride content of the super was 22,000 parts per million, adding that it killed all living things in various intake quantities. It was later labeled as 1080 and became the major poison used in the campaign to eliminate rabbits. Being odorless, tasteless  and colourless, it fooled the rabbits and also a few human victims.  It was this fluorine that made the  sea borne phosphate indissoluble on the island deposits, but here in Australia the fluorine was released by treatment with sulphuric acid for use in agriculture. The fertilizer companies were subsidised by the Government for this sulphuric acid process.

This information caused me to “go off” superphosphate, but the great revelation was to come much later in a dramatic fashion.

MIRACLE IN THE NEW ENGLAND

I left “Sunnyside” in the Bylong Valley  where I was working in 1957,  to go to a property my family had bought at Kingstown, near Uralla in the New England. A couple of years before this the Nivison family of fine wool fame at Walcha had spread the first superphosphate by air from a Tiger Moth aircraft on their pasture country to increase the production of clover, which in turn was to lead to an increase in other pasture from the production of nitrogen from the rhizobium in the nodules of the clover roots.

The great NPK myth, ( Nitrogen – Phosphorous – Potash ) was to take over the minds and properties of the majority of woolgrowers in this vast New England area. The aerial superphosphate spreading industry was growing rapidly, spawning new companies, including  famous racing car driver Lionel Van Pragg flying a twin engined Bristol freighter aircraft in an aborted attempt to “super” from the  air. Bagged “super” soon gave way to bulk super where sheds were built on properties to store it.  Later it was just dumped on the ground and covered with tarpaulins.

The Superphosphate fertilizer industry got started in the 1930’s on the new  wheatland areas of Australia, where the decrease in wool prices turned farmers to grain production  where there was a ready income. The concrete silos built in those times still stand on the skyline of railway sidings in South East Australia. One other outcome from this supering was the rise of the skeleton weed pest in wheat crops, whose elimination was brought about by chemical spraying, as an additional cost to the wheat farmer.

The Department of Agriculture and the  University of New England were producing favourable statistics about the increases in production from “supered” country and the banks were there ever ready to loan money for this scheme.  All manner of new industries came to the New England,  first the various aircraft, then the huge tip trucks, and an increase in rolling stock on the railways.  Agencies flourished and one vetinary supplier became a millionaire just selling sheep drench!   Slowly as more and more graziers got further and further into debt the effects of Sodium Fluoride began to become  visible.

“BLOAT”

The  increased production of cattle led to national news headlines one year when “Bloat” wiped out hundreds of head of cattle on the new clover rich properties.  Even some sheep on the longest supered country perished from “Bloat”.  All hell was let lose in the region when a new Vet came to the district and in a letter to the local press asked that “bloat” to called by its proper name, namely  Fluorine Poisoning. He was almost put down with the cattle as there were a lot of powerful interests who needed this truth to be concealed behind the label of “Bloat”.

I was called to a property nearby to witness 5 dead steers in the cattle yards where they  had died from fluorine poisoning. They had been left in the yards that  morning where they were later to be picked up by truck to go to the sale yards. It was thought that being locked in the yard would have prevented them eating too much clover, as recent rains had really brought the clover on.  They had been poisoned after drinking  from the  water trough in the yards.

The recent rain had leached so much fluorine from the recently supered pasture into the creek from which the water was pumped for the trough, that it was enough to cause this “bloat”. The “experts” insisted this was impossible, but an undergraduate from the University involved in the New England Rural Development Association [NERDA] scheme, demonstrated how possible it was when he mixed several shovel fulls of superphosphate  with water in a small drum, then dosed two calves with a small amount of the mixture, who both bloated within the hour.   He then drenched one calf with a dose of Epsom salts (Magnesium Sulphate),  and waited. The calf  dosed with Epsom salts survived but the other calf died two hours later from terminal bloating. . The student was never heard of again in the NERDA.

Fluorine poisoning is more deadly for some  animals than others.  Horses  can tolerate around 60 milligrams per kilogram body weight, but pigs can tolerate far more than most animals. Sheep can tolerate 32 milligrams/kilo, but cattle have the lowest toleration of all being  able to tolerate only  6 milligrams/Kilo of body weight.

CAUSE & EFFECT

The ingested fluorine in ruminants rapidly kills some of the micro-flora species in their digestion system. The resulting vacuum is filled by a fluorine tolerant gas producing species that have a population explosion.  The increase in this gas extends the rumen, forcing the animal’s diaphragm up so preventing it breathing and it dies from suffocation.  This process is an excellent example of the principle of Cause & Effect, where the Effects are removed in time and space from the Cause.

The Clovers and Medic species are indigenous to the high fluorine soils of the Middle East which has made them and their root flora highly tolerant of fluorine. When ruminants graze on these nitrogen producing plants which circulate the fluorine through their leaves. The hotter the day with increased transpiration the more fluorine is available in the leaf.

I often contemplate the phenomenon about no cattle being in the Holy Land, only sheep and pigs, donkeys, mules and camels. The tolerance to fluorine by donkeys and camels is certain to be high, if anyone knows! The same vicinity is where the earliest cases of cancer are recorded, along with the origins of the word “cancer”.

Ten years later into this “supering” program, landholders started to notice the death of certain species of native trees, which later was pronounced to be “Die –back”. This was seen to be the calamity it was. Experts declared that the death of the trees came about after seven annual consecutive defoliations.  Slowly after years of “research” it was pronounced that the defoliation was caused by the scarab beetles annual summer population explosion, a phenomena of which life long residents had no memory.

DIE  BACK

The scarab beetles (alias  “Xmas beetles”) emerge from the ground  from their larva stage at eventide in mid summer and immediately seek the trees they favour, where they feed on the leaves during the night.  They were now appearing in numbers never witnessed before and some trees were completely stripped of their foliage in two or three nights. I first noticed this when feeding my dogs at night who were kenneled under one of the chosen trees.  You felt the droppings falling on your head and there was the  constant murmur of their chewing and short flight noise, but they remained invisible in the night sky.

The nocturnal defoliation went unnoticed by most people in rural areas, but home gardeners  wondered about all the debris under the trees in their garden, for the scarabs were not to be seen by day.  Rabbiters returning to their campsite under a tree after several days’ absence were astonished to find two windrows of tree debris each side of their tents, but no sign of the culprits, because they did not look above their camp site at night!

Meanwhile University lecturers were explaining to NERDA groups and others all about the many species of Scarabs, their feeding habits  their life cycle and of course the ever interesting sex life of the species!  The scarab’s predators were the ever increasing flocks of Ibis to be seen in the New England and the wild pigs  which fed on the larva in the ground. This is not surprising as the Ibis were connected to the same problem in the Middle East, where it was a symbol of the ancient Egyptians,  still to be seen on their jewelry along with the scarab.

Strangely the trees plight was discussed only by the environmentalists and gardeners, while the photographers and travel agents used the “Die-back” phenomenon   for their own purposes. But all the time the “research” continued, always centered on the various effects.  Like all other big money making problems there was to be no research about “Causes”, money was  available only for “Research”  into the quagmire of effects.

PIGS & SCARABS

On the periphery of the fluorine drenched areas wild pigs had proliferated.  Like the Ibis they lunched on the shallow scarab larva, rooting up large areas of open country. Once we thought about this we could see again the connection with the Middle East, where the disturbed ground made by the pigs seeking the scarab larva became known as “scarified”.  On the Western Slopes & Plains an instrument towed by a tractor  used to scratch up cultivation land was called a “Scarifier”.  Like the smaller garden tool it replicated the pig’s scarab feeding actions.

 Confusion proliferated amongst the experts until a young entomologist working for the United Nations in the Middle East returned on holidays to her parent’s home near Uralla. Confronted with the problem she laughed and laughed, for it had been known for a very long time why the Scarab’s had periodic  population explosions!

It was the same story as what occurred  inside the ruminant cows’ stomachs.  The Scarab larva is highly tolerant of fluorine, but many of its micro-flora food competitors in the soil perish in the presence of fluorine.  The additional abundance of soil food favoured the Scarab resulting in the subsequent population explosion, not seen before in these regions before “supering”.

The increase in sheep numbers which were to pay the farm  debts, brought another fluorine associated problem. The stocking rates per acre had doubled, but this was accompanied by an enormous increase in intestinal parasites in the sheep and cattle population.  Drenching sheep became a monthly occurrence.  Then a wonder drench ”Thibenzole” came on the market  which killed everything except the sheep, but was very very expensive, it was nicknamed “Liquid Gold”.  The parasite problem was so critical you could not afford not to use the new “wonder drench”.

GENUINE RESEARCH

Twenty years before this “super” scheme got under way several scientists from a British veterinary supply House came to Australia to find a solution to the sheep fly strike problem. In the course of their investigation they discovered a big discrepancy of fly strike in mobs of sheep grazing on different soil types.  Accompanying this discrepancy in the incident of fly strike was a corresponding difference in the level of internal parasites. Goats running with the trial mobs of sheep, were unaffected by internal parasites and never suffered from fly strike. 

 Goats do not normally have internal parasitic problems because they graze across the whole food chain available to them and obtain an adequate intake of magnesium (and other scarce elements) which are often not available to their cousins the sheep, which have restricted grazing habits. The worm afflicted sheep were drenched with Magnesium Sulphate, (Epsom Salts!) and the parasite problem was reduced. This brought at the same time a reduction in fly strike in that group. Soil analysis indicated a much higher magnesium content in the soil type that had the healthiest and lowest incident of fly blown sheep.

It was suspected because of the goats ability to survive almost anywhere in the wild (and in the world!) in continual good health, was dependant on an adequate intake of magnesium.  If magnesium is withheld or is unavailable in a sheep’s diet, internal parasites will almost certainly increase together with external parasites.

 [A recent David Attenborough documentary showed elephants entering caves in the dark to gouge magnesium Sulphate from the cave wall!  If humans only had the same intuition!]

 Fluorine as an element does not exist on its own, always found in association with another element. Magnesium is one of the elements it associates with very readily and rapidly.  Most of the soils of the New England are not rich in magnesium, so the  fluorine present in the superphosphate readily locks up  available magnesium in the topsoil, which suites the scarabs  but deprives the sheep of its benefits.

The addition of super for pasture improvement  increased production, but the fluorine content of the super, was causing unforeseen problems which had to be solved.  More of their income was now being paid to those offering to solve these problems that  flowed from the locking up of the previously available magnesium. The farmers new prosperity was being distributed to all but the farmer whom it was meant to save!

NERDA

The problems of the scarabs and “Die-Back” was taken up by many concerned people and some of the NERDA groups. This aspect of the fluorine problem was easy for all to see, unlike the other invisible problems confined to the graziers.  The obvious place for them to seek help and confirmation of the whole problem was the Agriculture faculty at the University of New England, which had given enormous impetus and external education from the beginning. 

However overtures for their assistance were met very coolly, as there were no funds available for this type of research. It was suggested that if funds could be raised from the “wealthy graziers” in the suffering areas, something could be done. Those who then pursued this line of action went to the “wealthy” grazier family who were the main founders of the University having donated the land and buildings on which the University stood. It was here, from just one sentence of information that the whole story was to unravel.

We were informed  that the Agriculture Faculty was mainly financed by the fertilizer manufacturers and the  major financiers were named!   The New England harbored quite a number of prominent people who instantly understood what this message meant.

The “Die-Back” problem had reached the home gardener circles where the problem was discussed in gardening magazines. This was noticed by an emerging ecologist, Peter Bennett, who lived in South Australia  and was giving public lectures on ecology wherever he was invited.  He had already discovered much of the magnesium story and was recommending a book, “Magnesium The Miracle Mineral”, a copy of which I purchased.

PETER BENNET ----ECOLOGIST

A NERDA group decided to invite Peter Bennet to come to the New England to speak on the ecological problems being generated there. One meeting was organized at a homestead at Walcha, right in the middle of “supered” holy ground. The owner of the heavily supered property was in ecological trouble and caught in  increasing debt and his erstwhile advisers had no answers, except, put more “super” on!

Peter Bennett’s lecture attracted a surprising number of locals who it was thought would not want to hear a story about the ecological folly of “supering”, but they were all silently getting further and further into debt, a subject that was verboten.  At question time there was an undercurrent of resentment about this intrusion into the “holy land”, but for the first time here was another part of the program they had not been previously told about.  Supper time was friendly, but there was a studied silence on a lot of faces.

I was reading the reaction, “What if this fellow is right”?

Peter Bennet stayed with us the several days he was in the New England.  Any doubts I had about his credentials were dissipated as I drove home after picking him up from the bus in Uralla.  It was dark and the track home through this “supered” country wound through our lightly timbered front paddocks which were illuminated by the headlights.  Just before we reached the house he remarked, “I see you have a magnesium deficiency here”.   My long drawn-out puzzled  “Yeagh?” invited his explanation.

‘Your cattle are eating the bark on the northern side of your Stringybark trees, a rich source of magnesium not available in your topsoil”.

In an instant I knew why we had wrapped wire netting around the trees that surrounded the homestead to stop the cattle “ringbarking” them.  From Peter’s explanation I knew we were now more than half way to remedying the problems associated with magnesium deficiency. 

The next morning a daylight excursion around the property witnessing the pig scarified areas and confirming the tree bark damage everywhere, now  provided  answers to so many of our man made induced problems. But our hitherto expert academic advisers just scoffed at the suggestion. How dare we challenge their part failed advice!

A REMEDY

Four times a year the vet came to the property to remove “cancerous” growths from the eyes lids of our cattle.  The cattle were divided into 4 mobs to facilitate this expensive exercise.  Each mob consistently had 27% of their number with the growths on their eyelids and some were repeat cases. To determine if this magnesium deficiency had anything to do with the eye growths, one mob was supplied with magnesium rich licking blocks  initially for twelve months.  Each quarter this mob came in for treatment the incidence of growths fell, until the 5^th quarter when just one cow had a growth. All this time the  mobs without the magnesium still had the same 27% of growths  The Vet was  skeptical and silent as he saw his income diminishing.

It remained to the groups concerned with the “Die-Back” to take matters to a source of the destruction.  The grazier’s problems were seen to be the grazier’s problem, but the tree “Die-Back” was more of a community problem of which the same community was not a party to the “cause”.  It was easy enough to say to the departing graziers “It’s your pool you swim in it”, but the common ownership and benefits from  trees was a public matter.

VISITING THE SHRINE

A local Vet organized a small party who now understood the cause of the problem to visit the Professor in charge of the Agriculture faculty at the UNE to find out what help he could offer to solve the problem.  After all we were  constantly being told that they were there to solve problems “through research” where they had almost reached “elite” status.

The meeting was brief and to the point. Like the Vet the Professor knew what the problem was, but also like the Vet he had a family to provide for and an overdraft to service and again like the Vet, if the problem was remedied he may lose his source of  income.

The little band departed the University but  the Vet had discovered another part of the problem he had not had occasion to think about before. His proper public and personal morality was vulnerable to the same invisible financial force as the good Professor’s.

JOBS FOR ALL

This is not an isolated case of the economic ecological disasters brought about by trying to find “jobs” for everybody by creating economic problems to be “researched” forever,  instead of removing the problem forever.  For over 50 years “scientists” have consumed billions of dollars “researching” cancer, when the cause was  discovered and partly solved in 1901, by Professor John Beard at the Edinburgh University.  No researcher is going to re-discover the cure and put himself out of work, for that is where his income comes from. The 50 year, billion dollar research program employing thousands of “researchers” has not led to less cancer , only an increase in the number victims.  This situation is applauded by the  United Nations world population “explosion” brigade, who see  disease as a way to limit the population “explosion”. now that wars no longer do this.

The blind spot in everybody’s vision with the cancer “problem” is that nobody notices that the only people who do not die from cancer are those making  money from the problem.  This is similar to what is known as the “fish experience”.

ECOLOGICAL WORLD OF THE FISH

Fish of course live in the water, which like the air is relatively invisible. Something opaque or solid has to be present to reveal the presence of the water, as dust or debris reveals the presence of the atmosphere, or whatever  moves in either.  Fish know everything about what surrounds them in the water, except the water itself. They identify other fish, food, predators, a change of temperature or a foreign object, night and day and depth, but not the element they live in – water.

Humans now behave the same way about the invisible world of finance, which like the water and air only becomes visible when notated as numerals in a book or computer or “Bank account”.  It is a costless super efficient invisible mathematical abstraction that licenses  the whole world economy to function  in the way it does and controls almost all human exertion and endeavour.  Its invisibility is controlled by those who sanction its appearance and disappearance.   Our minds accept it the same way as religion -- by faith, as all invisible things,  can only be accepted, but in the case of money – blind faith.

MEANS & ENDS

If money will only be distributed to people who work for someone else or the state or a corporation it clearly means work has been elevated into an end, instead of a means to an end.  Money, an entirely invisible “thing” has itself been changed from a means into an end.  Elevating means into ends brings all the problems possible for man to bring upon his fellow man and woman.

If there is an edict or a religion that demands all of our youth must work, then  the machines and devices and computers we invented so that we did not have to work,  should be destroyed.  There would be plenty of “work” for all once again. This Luddite solution is avoided because everybody wants the machines and devices to remain that have taken the “Curse of Adam” from our backs.

The answer lies in the known financial solution, where a financial dividend is paid to all citizens as shareholders in the nations capital, just as shareholders in corporations are  paid a dividend  for their contribution of financial capital to the  corporation, especially those who are no longer required in the work force because another machine has replaced them.

GLOBAL VANDALISM

The major part of the Global pollution problem  and wasting of natural resources, arises from getting people to work each day, keeping them there in comfort, then getting them home again at night for a short rest, so they can start the whole wasteful soul destroying process again next day. 

In this way we remain wasteful economic slaves to an invisible man made controlling force, slowly poisoning the natural environment and capital of the earth and ultimately ourselves.

Everybody knows we can do better and just a few know how to do it, but they may have to go up on the Cross, as the last man to whip the Bankers was forced to do 2,000 years ago.  An event that changed the world for the next 1,500 years, until the Bankers got control once again!

CAUSE & EFFECT

Curing sickness and disease revolves about removing the cause of both, which brings us into conflict with our professional medical adviser, who must avoid removing the cause if possible, as his income and financial security and future depend on him being allowed to treat the effects of the sickness or disease, preferably in perpetuity.

John Brett

The following email was came through in January 2012 from a person (all names have been removed) in the food industry in Victoria in comment to the proposed NZ Food Bill. It is quite a chilling read.

This is a letter from Global Star Services to their customers regarding their popular Black Salve aka Cansema product (the letter is signed by another Carolyn, not me). Oh dear - I had great success with this personally. You have to wonder why...

In response to an article The Peak of Scientific Endeavour? in the last newsletter, a subscriber penned the following reply:

The note below, taken from your recent newsletter “The Peak of Scientific Endeavour” is less than accurate and quite misleading.