Kazunari Yokoyama on soil microbial diversity and healthy soils
• "And whilst investigating many articles and books on this topic, I began to understand the three key elements that play a role in creating a rich soil. These are (1) the physical, (2) the chemical, and (3) the biological." (page 18)
• "At Bergen University, I studied and mastered the technique of observing microbes in the soil using a fluorescence microscope. When I counted the number of reflected dots, signals of the presence of soil microbes, I was shocked. I was able to count more than 10,000 signals in a 1 microgram (0.000001g) sample of soil which, extrapolated, means there are more than one trillion microbes in every single gram of soil." (page 18)
• "This is proof that a biologically-rich soil is indeed filled with the living organisms. However, these soil microbes are invisible, and in conventional science there is still no concept of soil as a biological species. I understand that what was needed was to build a completely new "biodiversity concept" that would be applicable to soil. This concept does not use any taxonomical criteria such as species, because most of the soil microbes have almost no information about them." (page 19)
• 'For example, the soil sample taken from the monocrop agriculture had a remarkable reduction of soil microbe diversity leading to what we named "monocrop disorder soil".' (page 19)
• "Our evaluation provided the scientific proof of microbial diversity reduction in soil that has been used to produce monocrops and yet we know, from many other scientific trials, that the production of high-quality crops requires a rich diversity of soil, and that excessive use of chemical fertilisers sharply decreases soil microbe diversity. Soil microbe diversity reduction in North and South America and the dependency of large-scale agriculture on chemical fertilisers in those regions is far from sustainable." (page 19)
Kazunari Yokoyama, “We cannot end hunger without feeding the soil,” Resurgence & Ecologist, 284, (May/June 2014): 18-19.