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JADAM Organic Farming
16. Ferilizer for nutriional balance
What is fertilizer about? Fertilizer is all about how to skillfully apply
base (applied before planting) and additional fertilizers (applied during
growth) so that they provide the optimum nutritional balance for crops.
Current widespread methods of applying fertilizer, or fertilizer
programs,
all take an “individualized” approach where they consider each and indi-
vidual nutrient elements and add or subtract them in fertilizer application.
is individualized method gained such dominance that nobody raises
any question. Most farmers believe this method to be scientiic and study
it for years after years. Farmers, in hope that they can become a master
one day, pursue a concrete answer, a practical method, but they ind them-
selves still confused after having spent decades. It is because they are still
confused that they give up designing their own fertilizer program but
eventually entrust it upon the “experts.” Fertilizer program for each crop is
so complicated and difficult.
Even if you read all the fertilizer
books taught in universities, it is still
near impossible to ind the answer to the perfect fertilizer program. But
pause and think of it then it is no coincidence that knowledge and tech-
nique have evolved into this complicated and difficult form. Behind it, lurk
the expert group and fertilizer companies that seek to forever be the exclu-
sive owner and beneiciary of this knowledge. When
I travel to countries
with highly modernized and advanced agricultural industry, I cannot erase
the feeling that the taking-over of agro-technology by the corporation has
been completed. All around the world, it has
become nothing unusual for a
farmer to receive full services from businesses ranging from soil analysis,
fertilizer program to pest control. But of course, nothing is free. Large
lump of money earned by farmers will low into the service providers’
pockets. No wonder why careercast.com announced that by 2012-2022,
the second job to disappear would be farmers.
Modern medicine elaborated complicated theories on human health so
that people feel they cannot take care of their own health. Such theories ex-
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plain human health in extremely sophisticated mechanism. e result? Peo-
ple buy medical services to maintain their health. rough a person’s life,
one will spend 0.1 million dollars on average just to keep healthy.
Farming
is becoming something similar. is business group continues to make
technology more difficult, frequently partnering with scholars and media to
dissuade farmers. It is violence disguised in kindness. German philosopher
and revolutionary Karl Marx (1818-1883) pointed out that “When com-
mercial capital occupies a position of unquestioned ascendancy, it every-
where constitutes a system of plunder.” Unfortunately,
in agriculture, we
now evidence this system of plunder constituted in every corner possible.
JADAM takes this very seriously. Farming is becoming more high-cost and
less proitable. Farmers are becoming more technology-dependent and less
self-sufficient. It is JADAM’s mission to bring farming back to the farmers.
JADAM cannot but look back at traditional Korean agriculture. Farmers of
those days valued what was cheap and easily available;
farming costed al-
most nothing. ey did not buy sophisticated inputs but still did very well;
this small land of Korean peninsula successfully fed its people for ive thou-
sand years which was possible only because the method of farming they
practiced made soil richer by the season. ey did not have complicated
fertilizer programs, back-breaking turning of compost, sophisticated pest
control technologies, no difficult books or trainings; but still they did well.
ey were self-sufficient down to the seeds.
It was a farming completely
free from commercial capital.
Fertilizer experts will tell you that in the early stage of plant growth
(nutritional growth cycle), the plant needs a lot of nitrogen, so you need
to come up with high-N fertilizer program. When the plant lowers and
fruits, it needs a lot of phosphorus (reproductive growth cycle) so you
need a high-P fertilizer program. When fruits grow larger, you need high-
K and when fruits mature, you need high-Ca. ey go on to elaborate
about at which period you need to apply Mg, B, Mn, Mo, etc. en they
bring in plant hormones such as cytokinin, gibberellin and auxin. Learn
all this, and farmer’s brain will overload.
Dividing growth cycles and applying fertilizer for each cycle looks scien-
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