What happens when plants photosynthesise? And what can this tell us about the soil and solutions beneath our feet?
Kay Baxter, one of our first soil heroes and mentors, has the most incredible knowledge of soil and how it relates to nature. An organic grower for 50 years and the founder of the Koanga Institute in NZ, she continues to be our source of inspiration along with the other Kiwi in our life, the amazing agroecologist Nicole Masters. Between them they have a depth of understanding how nature both above and below ground dances together.
Kay and her film company Regenerative Productions have made a film with her grandson called ‘The Photosynthesis Machine’ which we go back to time and time again. It describes this simple yet sophisticated machine where plants and soil in partnership regenerate life, build humus to sequester carbon, grow nutrient dense food and breathe out oxygen.
This is a summary:
The more efficient the photosynthesis machine the more effectively the plant and soil microbes work together to build and regenerate the soil and to create healthy nutrient dense plants.
At the start, when a seed is planted its electrical current attracts moisture from the soil. A high quality seed contains lots of sugars (which are made of carbon). The higher the carbon the greater the electrical current and the greater the moisture attracted. The size and strength of the root and the shoot is determined by the energy from the seed.
The shoot produces a leaf which starts photosynthesising, making sugars from the sun’s energy. Up to 40% of these sugars (depending on plant stress and species) are actually pumped day and night, down through the plant to feed the soil microbes.
The microbes, especially fungi, feed off these sugars and in exchange give the plants minerals from the soil, bringing nutrients from far away which the roots couldn’t reach by themselves. Phosphate in the soil acts as a taxi for these minerals.
The higher the sugars and the minerals in the plants the higher the nutrient density or ‘brix’ of the plant (German scientist, Adolf Brix, devised a method for measuring the sugar content of aqueous solution in the early 1800s). The higher the brix the stronger the electromagnetic field of the plant. A highly functioning plant will have a greater nutrient density and arguably a better taste.
Furthermore the healthier the plant the more resistant it will be to insect and fungal attacks. Some insects and fungi only digest simple sugars while plants with high sugar levels contain complex proteins and minerals which do not attract insects and fungi.
To conclude:
The healthier the soil the more efficient the photosynthesis machine–the more nutrients the microbes will give to the plant, the more carbon the plant can extract from the air, the more sugars the plant will have and so on in an everlasting circle of regeneration. This is as Kay Baxter says ‘the ultimate regenerative process’.
Chemical farming with fertilisers (eg synthetic nitrogen), herbicides, pesticides and fungicides does not work in tandem with this photosynthesis machine. The plant is unable to catalyse fertilisers in the way nature intended. They upset the healthy microbe balance in the soil, often killing soil microbes and upsetting the phosphate cycle. As a result we grow low sugar, pest and disease affected crops that do not taste good, nor store well, nor do they support the regeneration of the soil. When we grow or choose to eat these plants we deplete the soil of minerals, carbon, humus and life. Our health and that of the planet suffers.
We need the photosynthesis machine to work effectively so we create humus, producing plants with high sugars, high minerals, high electromagnetic fields and high nutrient density. We need to grow high quality food for the optimal health of animals and humans on earth and we need to sequester carbon permanently in our soils to alleviate climate change and build better soils for future generations.