BELIZE CITY, Tues. Dec. 10, 2019– A couple weeks ago, I wrote an article called “Economy and Independence”, in the leading newspaper of Belize — the Amandala, in which I wrote that the reasons that first the United States of America, and later Germany, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and today’s China have been able to supply a high standard of living for their citizens was because every one of them followed a version of capitalism that was known during the nineteenth century as the American School/System of Political Economy. In Belize we know it as George Price’s Mixed Economy.
The major concepts of the American School that distinguish that version of Capitalism from the British School are:
a. Exploiting nature rather than men.
b. Tariff Protection of local agriculture and manufacturing as free trade has always benefited the strong at the expense of the weak.
c. High wages to workers, because as E. Peshine Smith, wrote: “In order to make labour cheap, the labourer must be well-fed, well-clothed, well-lodged, well-instructed.”
d. Money creation is a public utility and should be under the control of elected representatives of the people, not controlled by private individuals for private gain and control.
e. Technology and innovation always cause new methods to enter production and thus profits and wages don’t diminish but instead lead to higher productivity and thus higher wages to workers. Therefore the theory of Diminishing Returns is not valid to physical reality.
f. A view of soil fertility and agricultural productivity as a product of capital investment – not nature. Science is the way to solve the problem of “mining the soil”.
g. Public infrastructure as a means to lower costs in an industrial society by introducing new methods of production and communications, and the public support of research and development.
h. Government intervention in an economy. Government as the “brain” must put a bridle on corporate bodies, and must establish the pursuit of happiness as a natural right of citizens. In Belize this principle is enshrined in the PUP’s Constitution as a sacred duty of government to create full employment and completely end poverty.
One of the eight principles that distinguish that American School’s version of capitalism from the British School is a view of soil fertility and agricultural productivity as a product of capital investment – not nature, but human intervention. Ricardian (British economist, David Ricardo) rent and trade theory assumed that the addition of fertilizers to stop the “mining” of the soil by plantation agriculture was of no consequence, because we just moved to better soils and when the local lands run out of fertility we conquer foreign lands and create colonies. Plantation export agriculture – cotton, sugar and grains involves the “mining” of the soils in India, United States and the West Indies, and the soil in today’s Belize is still being mined.
“Mining the soil” means taking out the minerals that are contained in the soil and not replacing them in the correct quantities, or not replacing some at all. The average soil contains about eighty minerals. In the 1950’s the agriculture schools and petrochemical firms thought that only three minerals — NPK (nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium) were needed to be replaced. Today they say that about eighteen minerals are necessary.
But, from the 1930’s the Americans knew, because of the tremendous government-supported research that was done, that at least eighty minerals are necessary for a healthy plant, a healthy animal, and a healthy human.
Readers need to understand how crops grow. Every “living” thing – humans, animals and plants, including marine creatures, need one thing for life – ENERGY. No energy, no life. Fertilizers are concentrated forms of energy. Some synthetic fertilizers are good, while most, especially the cheap muriate of potash and anhydrous ammonia fertilizers, are dangerous to the soil.
Energy is studied in physics. Agricultural practitioners need to know not only basic chemistry, but also physics and biology. Not one but ALL three, plus mechanical engineering.
Schools mostly only teach chemistry as it applies to agriculture, because of their subservience to the giant chemical corporations. Thus students graduate from schools with a piece of paper saying they know about the workings of plants, soils, etc. in agriculture, but in reality they only learned a part of the nature of agriculture.
When they run into trouble with pests or low yields, they turn to the advice of the giant chemical companies, whose advice is very simple – spray and spray until all weeds and insects are dead. If yields are low, add more NPK fertilizers for quick energy. But God/nature created insects as “garbage collectors” to destroy crops that are not fit for animal and human consumption, and weeds are nature’s caretakers. And more important, most of the soluble chemical fertilizers create more problems for plants than they solve – they weaken plants, who then fall prey to insects. First, the giant chemical companies sell you poisons and explosives as fertilizers, and when the “garbage collectors” come to do their jobs, the giant petrochemicals firms sell you, the farmer, more poison as “plant protection” and cause more problems. The result is sick individuals, low yields, sick plants and huge profits for the big boys.
Between the years 2009 and 2012, I spent a lot of money on a farm and could not grow grains that were both nutrient-dense (healthy for humans) and profitable. One season the rice grew well, but after that yields started to decrease. Corn was the same. In fact, I lost 20 acres of sweet corn to bugs and diseases. I went to all the experts in Belize from Central Farm, the fertilizer companies, the Mennonites who sold and grew crops, and local roots farmers. I got no answers from anyone.
The late Mr. Singh from CARDI gave me sweet corn seeds from Thailand, India, Guatemala, and Kenya. All failed. The insects just devoured the corn, especially sweet corn. I then decided to use the internet to try and find a solution.
As an aside, humans learn best by reading original works of authors. Anyone who can read can learn and teach themselves any subject of human knowledge on planet earth, provided one has the discipline to read without being pressured or checked in a formal school setting by a teacher or tutor. Knowledge is an inner spiritual intuition and appreciation. It is not gained from textbooks. Take the late Philip Callahan as an example. Many scientists have textbook learning similar to Dr. Callahan’s, but few possess his consciousness of nature to explain how insect antennas are omni-range radar devices, how viruses are self-contained communication satellites, how blood vessels are wave guides or how ancient “religious” structure such as Mayan temples, Egyptian pyramids are tuned to radio or UV/IR transceivers.
I had read a book, Angry Testament (about the death of the American family farmer), by an American School economist named Charles Walters, Jr. Mr. Walters used to work for the National Farmers Organization (NFO) as an economist and saw first-hand the push of the American farmer into dependence on expensive farm machinery, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides – about which little was known at the time. His economic idea was known from 1920 to 1960 as Raw Material Economics. The intellectual author was Carl H. Wilken. Charlie Walters, as he was known, made a breakthrough when he realized how the methodical cheating of small farmers and the enforced swing towards chemical agriculture were gears in the same machine, working to change rural America for the worse. Corporate power and politicians were colluding in the destruction of the family farm and with it rural livelyhood. In 1970, frustrated with the NFO, he left and formed his own magazine, Acres USA, and began to publish many works on scientific agriculture.
For people like me who knew nothing of what was going on, his response to rescue the science of agriculture before the takeover of US agriculture by the petrochemical/drug giants, made very important scientific works available, especially through his publishing business.
The books and scientific literature rescued from the dustbin of history were the eight volume works of that great American scientist, Professor Emeritus, Dr. William A. Albrecht, the brilliant head of Soil Science at the University of Missouri who in the 1930-1940’s had discovered the science of mineral composition of the soil – calcium as the king of minerals, needed more than any other element by weight or volume and the prince of the minerals in soil: phosphate. NOTE: The calcium and phosphate must be available to the plant, not what the soil contains.
Other prominent writers of scientific agriculture were Dr. Carey Reams, Professor Phil Callahan, Dr. C. F. Bey, Professor Don Huber (Dr. Don Huber of Purdue University was in Belize last month, November 2019. He was brought to Belize by the people from Belize Ag Report), Dan Skow, D.V.M., Russian scientist N. A. Krasilnikov and Dr. Arden Andersen – PhD and medical doctor, whose magnificent work, Science in Agriculture, explains a professional farming system designed to enhance biological activity in the soil, provide energy to the crop, and build internal resistance to pests and diseases. The French produced the brilliant biologist, Dr. Francis Chaboussou, whose theory of Trophobiosis explains how plant nutrition affects plant health.
One of the major reasons for our unhealthy crops is the overuse of nitrogen leading to incomplete proteins. A healthy plant, or a plant in metabolic balance, is either in hibernation (called repose) or it is growing very fast, depending on its supply of water, nutrients, and weather. Regardless, the plant is in repose or growing vigorously, it is poor in amino-acids. Intensive protein synthesis uses up the amino-acids produced in the cells as fast as they appear. Insects need soluble food to build their own proteins, including sugars, and mineral nutrients to build their complex proteins such as enzymes. But if the plant has used it all, then there is none for the insect and they die due to a lack of food. The late Dr. Phil Callahan in his ground breaking work on insects has shown that insects use the infrared frequency to locate sick plants and then go do their job of “garbage collectors”.
NOTE: This same Phil Callahan was the discoverer of many military applications, such as the heat-seeking missile, methods of communicating with submarines, and others while he worked for both the US Defence Dept. and USDA insect laboratory. Belize’s Dr. Kenrick Leslie also did pioneering work on submarine communications for the US Defence Dept.
Reading and studying these brilliant scientists, I came to the conclusion that if the plant is healthy, that is, it has adequate fresh water, sunshine, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and the five bases of soil minerals, first energy; second, the foundation minerals of calcium, and phosphorous; third, humus and biology; fourth, the trace elements; and finally, the para-magnetic properties of the soil), that such plants will resist insects and diseases, and produce healthy humans who consume such crops.
In early 2012, I learned how to make and apply foliar sprays to speed up the supply of good energy, in addition to supplying good fertilizers to the soil. I had replanted some vegetables and about 6 acres of sweet corn. I was shocked. I could not believe my eyes. The sweet corn had grown to over 10 feet, all leaves were dark green, yields were over 6,000#/acre, and there were no insects – none. The sweet peppers were one-and-a-half-times heavier than those from the market, and about the same sizes as those grown in covered sheds. Ours were grown in the wide-open under God’s sun.
A few months later, a friend asked for help with 20 acres of oranges in the Stann Creek Valley. His farm had citrus greening, or HLB. My wife and I visited his farm and took soil samples for testing. We had bought LaMotte chemicals/instruments to do our own soil tests to determine the nutrients available in the soil for the plants. The tests revealed that calcium, phosphorous, ammonia, manganese and sulphate were very low, but his soil had very high levels of aluminium. His pH was okay, but his energy levels were low, as were his para-magnetic readings. Think. High levels of aluminium mixed with muriate of potash and Glyphosate and your soil’s clay will age, roots will die and eventually the plant will die.
My wife and I concluded that his problem with citrus greening was a problem of his soil, not the current theory that an insect, the Asian citrus psyllid, was the cause of citrus greening. I later wrote an article in Belize Ag Report. I was laughed at and made fun of by the elites in the agriculture sector. However, in April 2014, University of Florida published a report that researchers had discovered the citrus greening starts in the roots, not by an insect, 18 months after my wife and I had discovered it here in Belize. The quiet then became deafening.
Later my friend gave management of a 20-acre grove to my wife and me. In one season we increased his yields from 70 boxes of oranges per acre to 342 boxes of oranges per acre. Under extreme pressure from the big boys in citrus, we stopped our intervention.
In Belize as previously in the United States, corporate interests along with politicians are closing out family farms, in citrus, sugar, and other crops in Belize. And in the Stann Creek Valley, the small farmers have mostly abandoned their small groves as the citrus greening has wiped out their groves of oranges, lime and grapefruit. Recently, the industry reported that many of the new citrus trees, with new root stocks that have been replanted, have also contracted citrus greening. Sugar is reporting insects and diseases. All their problems are the same – dead soils with little or no energy caused by bad fertilizers and dangerous chemicals.
The current British System of capitalism which believes in “dog eat dog” is running wild in the sugar and citrus plantations. If the big boys and the current Minister have their way, small farmers will mostly disappear from the sugar and citrus sectors, as they have in the rice sector. Recently, the Minister of Agriculture in an interview said that Government will not intervene in the citrus sector because the large growers are doing well – they can afford to use massive amounts of soluble fertilizers.
Research has shown in Belize that for the years 2012 to 2017 yields of rice, corn, beans, citrus and vegetables have all fallen. But pesticide use was increased by some 38%/year, and synthetic fertilizers use increased by nearly 98%/year. So what’s going on? The farmers have been “mining the soil” – they have literally killed their soils in obedience to the giant petro-chemical firms.
Part of the problem is philosophy – the schools and giant petrochemical firms look on agriculture as reductionist: the whole equals the sum of its parts and nothing more. The whole is entropic and linear. However, the real world is holistic – the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and is non-linear and everything, including the universe, is non-entropic. Remember this – no reductionists have or can discover anything in this world. Until Belize’s farmers learn scientific agriculture, our agriculture sector will continue to collapse and with it rural poverty will continue to increase, as the small independent farmers are turned into wage peons.
Belizeans, little by little our country is being pushed in the direction of a Fascist state with a democratic veneer, where the big boys gobble up everything and turn the rest of us into their modern slaves. Look up the words Mussolini/Hitler on the internet and you will learn about Fascism. At the recent December 4, 2019, House meeting, all the giveaways were for the big boys. The little man and woman got nothing, just more misery.
Long Live a Free, Independent Belize!