microbes, glyphosate, fertilizer, famine and pillbugs
Some of you may recall this February post in which I wrote about how Bayer/Monsanto has been lobbying Trump, the US Supreme Court and Congress to gain liability exemption from injury and death lawsuits due to people becoming sick after exposure to their toxic RoundUp product. Monsanto/Bayer was able to get their liability exemption included in the current farm bill, but thanks to readers like you who wrote to your representatives, that exemption was removed from the congressional version of the farm bill. That bill is now before the Senate. Trump, on the other hand, ignored the will of the people and signed a sweetheart proclamation on behalf of Bayer/Monsanto making glyphosate, the active and very toxic component in Roundup, a national security item, giving its manufacture in the US protected status.
Glyphosate is listed by the state of California as a probable carcinogen. The lawsuits against Monsanto/Bayer over its Roundup product are proving that there are no questions about it being carcinogenic. This is born out by the fact that Bayer/Monsanto has already payed out over $10 billion in settlements with many tens of thousands of lawsuits still pending.
Among the many problems associated with glyphosate is it’s lifespan. Unlike other pesticides, glyphosate is highly stable and can remain in the soil for years. Knowing this will become helpful as we go along.
You might ask, why doesn’t Bayer/Monsanto just make a different product? The reason is because of all the built-in patents and partnerships they have with crops that have been genetically modified to tolerate the glyphosate in RoundUp.; corn, cotton, canola, soybeans, sugar beets, alfalfa (gmo wheat is ready to go but has not yet been approved). Because RoundUp is an herbicide (kills plants), any crops sprayed with it need to be genetically modified to tolerate being sprayed with RoundUp.
As I’ve explained before, glyphosate works by destroying the shikitmate pathway (SP). That pathway is part of the metabolic process plants utilize in partnership with beneficial microbes to derive nourishment from the soil. Copper, Manganese and zinc are all required for the cell walls of plants to become fully turgid to function properly. Without the SP many plants cannot access those minerals. Once this pathway is shut down, plants quickly die. Crops that have been genetically modified have that aspect of their metabolic process blocked, so they’re much less affected by being sprayed with glyphosate. Less affected means they survive on much less nourishment.
In the poisonous food industry many of us call big ag, this genetic modification is known as the NK603 trait. It’s often stacked with other traits such as built-in insecticides like Bt Cry proteins and/or RNA interference, which silences essential genes in plants. Tolerance to glufosinate, another wide spectrum herbicide, may also be part of the stack.
The result of this is that these crops are no longer capable of deriving a full compliment of nourishment from the soil, which means they’re no longer capable of delivering a full compliment of nutrition to livestock or people who eat those crops and livestock. Put another way, these foods have been so far removed from what God intended us to eat that our bodies don’t recognize them as being nourishing. Of course, the soil in which these crops are grown is so dead from the use of these herbicides and pesticides that the chances of crops deriving any nourishment from the soil, even without being genetically modified, are slim to none.
Monsanto has a huge investment in creating these gmo crops. Abandoning glyphosate would mean going back to the drawing board to create a whole new set of gmo crops that would tolerate a brand new herbicide. That would be a very time consuming and costly endeavor. So far, it’s been cheaper for them to settle lawsuits in court. But now settlement costs are really beginning to pile up, so they’ve torn a page out of big pharma’s vaccine legal immunity playbook to try and gain legal immunity for their poisons.
In it’s early use of glyphsoate, Monsanto told customers that RoundUp was harmless to people because we don’t have a shikamate pathway. Research proved them wrong. It turns out, some of the beneficial microbes in our gut utilize the shikimate pathway to nourish us. Research has shown that the disruption glyphosate causes in the human gut can lead to numerous health issues.
Approximately 90% of corn, canola, cotton and soybean crops grown in the US have been genetically modified to tolerate RoundUp. This means about 30 to 35% of US crop land is sprayed with RoundUp every year.
the part of the fertilizer/famine story no one is talking about
The results of this globalist, technologically dependent, corporate agriculture model are now coming home to roost. Because the soil is dead, because crops will not grow without the addition of fertilizers, because the Strait of Hormuz has been closed by the Trump/Israeli war on Iran, and because half the urea and 30% of the ammonia (a form of nitrogen) that big ag depends on to grow food in dead soil comes through the strait of Hormuz, we have to consider the possibility of famine raising its ugly head.
In other words, if our soils were not dead, we would not be facing possible famine. The reason we are now facing that is because big ag and the chemical and genetic technologies big ag has foisted upon us have made the cultivation of crops impossible without the addition of countless tons of fertilizers.
Whatever fertilizer that’s currently in existence is quickly rising in price due to shortages. Even if the Strait of Hormuz was opened on the day this gets posted, it would take one to two years before fertilizer production facilities damaged by the war in the Gulf States can be repaired, and for those fertilizers to be manufactured, loaded on ships and shipped half way around the world to reach US shores. Meanwhile, the FAO is already warning that current fertilizer shortages will result in much lower crop yields, which, in turn, will result in shortages, higher prices and… possible famine.
Things could get very ugly.
To bring back self sufficiency and resilience, we need to restore all of the soil that Monsanto/Bayer and other big ag interests have destroyed over the last 75 years. The Iran war provides the perfect example of why we should never have become dependent on a fragile, globalist, ponzi scheme for food production.
Instead of thinking of soil as something to be mined with the latest toxic technology, we need to move away from the antiquated idea that the use of new technology to overcome the problems of old technology is a good thing. If we have learned anything from the problems stemming from this technologically induced agriculture debacle, it’s that the more technologically dependent and globalist our food production becomes, the more susceptible it becomes to disruption.
Maybe that’s the real plan… eugenics by starvation.
my proposed solution
I propose that we move toward a mindset that considers farmland as one of our most vital resources. To achieve that, I recommend that we haul into court all of the parties responsible for this current debacle, sue them out of existence, ban the use of all forms of pesticides, ban genetic engineering of food crops and animals, and use the financial windfall all of that will generate to do the following on all farm land across the US.
enter microbes
In April, during one of their weekly Beyond Labels podcasts, Dr. Sina McCullough told Joel Salatin about a recent study that showed how microbes in sauerkraut can break down the molecular structure of glyphosate. The primary microbe responsible for this amazing feat is Lactobacillus plantarum. Acetobacter, found in sauerkraut, apple cider vinegar and kombucha, has also been shown to be somewhat effective at breaking down glyphosate.
She begins by telling the story of a sauerkraut maker who had acquired a large batch of cabbage from an organic farm that used poultry manure from an organic commercial chicken farmer to fertilize the cabbage. The cabbage turned to mush in the fermentation vats - a big loss for the kraut maker. After looking into why it turned to mush, they found that the poultry manure used by the cabbage grower had a large amount of glyphosate in it from organic feed fed to the chickens. When that manure was spread on the cabbage field it blocked the uptake of copper, manganese and zinc by soil microbes that utilize the SP. Because the cell walls were inferior due to the glyphosate in the manure, the cabbage turned to mush when fermented.
In other words, the loss of that big batch of sauerkraut was not the fault of the kraut maker. Nor was it the fault of the chicken farmer. It was the use of glyphosate as a desiccant on non-gmo grain and bean crops that were then fed to the chickens that caused the loss of that batch of kraut.
At this point I should say I have no idea how an “organic farmer” was able to get away with using glyhposate as a desiccant on their grain and bean crops. Technically, that’s not allowed under organic certification. If I was the kraut maker I would have sued that grain/bean farmer for damages.
Put another way, that glyphosate had survived use as a desiccant on grain/bean crops, probably the year before. Those crops had then been processed and sold as chicken feed. The chicken farmer then fed some of that feed to his flock and sold the manure to the cabbage farmer. The cabbage farmer sold the cabbage to a sauerkraut maker who lost a pricey batch of cabbage due to the glyphosate used the year before by the grain/bean farmer.
Here’s where we get into the meat of this story. Up to this point we’ve been assuming that cropland where glyphosate has been used may be unfit for healthy food production for decades to come.
Sina goes on to tell the story of Dr. Monika Krueger, a veterinary pathologist from Germany, who discovered that putting raw sauerkraut juice in the feed of dairy cattle broke down glyhposate in their rumen. Even better, she found that doing so prevented the overgrowth of clostritium botulinium, which was causing botulism to manifest in many dairy cows fed commercial feed contaminated with glyphosate.
Here in the US, in Dr. Don Huber (1935-2024) wanted to see what would happen when raw sauerkraut juice was sprayed on crop land contaminated with glyphosate. When the juice was sprayed at the rate of 15 gallons per acre, after 6 to 7 months the glyphosate in the soil was reduced by 80 to 90%. Interestingly, it wasn’t just broken down into less toxic components, it was broken down into constituent elements like phosphates and amino acid nitrogen, usable elements in the soil biome. Corn grown in soil treated with sauerkraut juice showed a jump in production and dairy cows fed crops treated with juice showed increased milk production.
The minerals are there in the soil, but the plants can’t access them because they need the assistance of the SP from microbes. It would be like being in a room with lots of food behind a counter but you can’t access it without someone behind the counter handing it to you. The problem is, the person behind the counter is dead because they were sprayed with glyphosate. Then someone comes along and sprays the person behind the counter with sauerkraut juice and miraculously, the person comes to life and hands you the food you need.
pillbugs
A few days ago I had a friend over for dinner. We began by going out to the garden to harvest some scallions, onions, garlic, chives, kumquats, peas and endive for the meal. While I was preparing the first part of the meal I had her clean the endive. Due to the dense, frilly nature of this huge head of endive, cleaning it was no easy task. Because I use no toxins in my gardens and because the endive provides a good habitat for them, the endive had become home to a number of pill bugs. Some of you may know pill bugs as roly poly bugs because they can roll up into a tight ball.
These are crustaceans, not insects. They belong to the order Isopoda, which makes them cousins to shrimp, lobster and crabs. Unlike their cousins, they opted for life on land, but they’ve retained a preference for moist habitat. Like their cousins, they breath through gills on their underside.
Officially, they’re known as Armadillidium vulgare.
They feed on decaying organic matter; decomposing wood, rotting leaves, old fungi. A garden with pill bugs will recycle organic matter more quickly, generate a wider diversity of soil microbes, generate better soil structure and maintain better fertility than a garden without them. All of this makes them a beneficial addition to your yard and garden.
If that isn’t reason enough to not kill them, understand that they can remediate heavy metals like lead, cadmium, aluminum and arsenic. In a world where hubristic globalists spew a concoction of toxic heavy elements in the air and call it geoengineering, where one man (Elon Musk) is responsible for releasing tons of aluminum into the atmosphere every day via his Starlink program, in a world where big pharma has injected billions of people with toxic heavy metals that are now being shed everywhere, in that world pillbugs provide a glimmer of hope that all of that may some day be cleaned up.
Pill bugs do this differently than the previously mentioned microbes. In the process of foraging on decomposing organic matter, they consume heavy elements. Those elements are then placed into specialized cells called S cells in the Pill bugs mid gut where those heavy metal ions are sequestered in crystalized spheres. Those elements are not processed or excreted back into the soil.
When a pillbug dies, all of the heavy metal spheres sequestered in it’s gut over its lifetime are passed up the food chain in a crystalized form that is significantly less bio-available than the original free ionic form released by into the biosphere by the ruling class and their governmental/tech-bro minions.
Be free.
Pillbug info -
https://entomology.mgcafe.uky.edu/ef439
https://www.treehugger.com/roly-poly-pill-bug-facts-important-environment-4864410
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/detritivore
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-08/documents/mgwc-gwc1.pdf
https://plantersplace.com/pest-patrol/pill-bugs-are-the-clean-up-crew-in-the-garden/
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1502956112
"Control oil and you control nations. Control food and you control the people." Henry Kissinger
.....Henry's legacy lives on......
Stephanie Seneff has written a book about glyphosate; "Toxic Legacy". I highly recommend it. She has recommendations on how to mitigate exposure and tocicity. Through GMOs is not even the major avenue into us. In 1992. RoundUp began to be used to dry wheat, barley, oats, and other crops like legumes before harvest. The dying plants put all their remaining energy into their seeds in order to survive and the plants all dried at the same time, making harvesting more certain. The farmers/commercial big Ag benefitted. Those in the US who tested highest in glyphosate ate oats and not GMOs. Do not give your kids Cheerios.
Glyphosate is patented as a broadspectrum antibiotic, but it does not kill salmanella, clostridia or candida and so those and others that are not killed take over. The C. dif and Candida explosions are not accidents and Bayer knows it. Cancer is not even close to being the worst thing about glyphosate. Parents with autistic kids will agree. Bobby Jr. knows that, but he settled on acetominephen. He knew he could not win the glyphosate battle. If you want to clinch the idea that Tylenol can cause pregnant women to give birth to children that are a higher risk of autism, search Tylenol caused liver failure. Tylenol suppresses the production of glutathione which is necessary for proper neuro development.
Thank you Kyle for the info on pillbugs. I do not think pillbugs will be able to do the job on lead. On Mercola's site is an article on lead poisoning and there is a free pdf on The Secret History of Lead published in The Nation Magazine in 2000. Lead arsenate was the go to insecticide before DDT. that is why there are high levels of lead in apple seeds and brown rice. FDR;s polio, infantile paralysis that he got at age 39 after fighting a fire in a forest that had been sprayed with lead arsenate to kill the white linden moth. The info that lead poisoning can cause polio like symptoms was at the end of the Wikipedia article on lead poisoning when I first read it. That info has since been deleted. The Tooth Fairy is a repository of data on the epidemiology of lead poisoning going back decades. Lead is so toxic to the body that it is hidden away from blood in hair, nails, teeth and bones. Lead attacks the myelin sheeths that cover our nerves. They say the blood levels of lead in children has dropped since leaded gas was banned does not provide enough info. Have baby teeth analyzed. I could go on, but dinner is ready.