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Let’s observe the forest: it is alive, it is powerful, it is fertile soil, yet no one fertilizes it and cares for it. What’s the secret?

The intuition of the Light and Carbon Farming was born in me when I learned of studies dating back to the late nineteenth century, beginning of the twentieth century, on why woodland is so fertile compared to agricultural land.

In the woods there is no one who goes to fertilize or carry out treatments, but there are mighty plants growing like oaks, beeches or cypresses. Plants that can even penetrate the rock on substrates that in practice have only a thin layer of earth. What is it that allows all this strength, this power?

Studies have shown that the merit of so much fertility of the soil is of vegetable carbon coming from the slow degradation of lignin, the woody material that falls and covers the ground like leaves or branches. Carbon contributes in an essential way to the growth of the best micro-organisms in the soil, to the radical development and to the absorption of the mineral salts present in the soil.

The responsible for this process are a series of hundreds of thousands of microorganisms that on the one hand degrade the organic substance, especially the lignin, transforming it into organic carbon of vegetable origin and on the other they enter into symbiosis with the roots, enhancing its functioning.

Do we behave like nature in agriculture?

In traditional agriculture, but also in the organic one, to feed plants we have distributed nitrogen in the soil going to reverse the natural relationship between carbon and nitrogen in the soil. This is because the fertilizers that are of animal origin, the manure, or of synthetic chemistry, the nitrates, are all based on nitrogen. 

In addition monoculture is practiced, we change the weights, we make systemic treatments to defend plants from the attacks of pathogens.

Today, however, fertile soils become impoverished and the plants are weak and need constant human assistance. The fruits are then large and inviting, but often watered down and devoid of flavor. Do you know the difference in taste between a wild strawberry and a supermarket strawberry?

A wrong relationship between nitrogen and carbon causes diseases in plants and in humans.

Classification of the main elements present in the soil according to the atomic and molecular diameter, based on the work of Lothar Meyer.

In nature the fertile soil is characterized by a relationship between carbon and nitrogen in favor of the former, but in agriculture we have reversed this relationship. The problem is that from a chemical point of view, nitrogen-based molecules, which in nature are bound to hydrogen or oxygen, have a molecular volume much higher than that of carbon and this is not good. 

Incidentally, in the forest fertile soil there are all elements with a medium-small diameter: carbon, magnesium, phosphorus, manganese, silicon, iron. Whilst what have we done? With agriculture we have conveyed all elements with a large molecular volume, especially nitrogen and potassium. This has created in the plants the impossibility to absorb microelements, a greater absorption of water, has made them more vulnerable to pathogens and their fruits are watered down.

It is not only the plant that needs molecules with a low molecular diameter, but also man! Those who give health to the human body are just the low-diameter molecules. We are increasingly lacking in microelements such as zinc and magnesium and we tend to acidosis. In addition, in animals and humans, food rich in nitrogen compounds can cause a reduction in the transport of oxygen in the blood, thyroid problems, scarcity of vitamin A and promote the formation of carcinogens.

The allied microorganisms of plant health do not develop on agricultural land.

As we have seen above, fundamentals of the fertile soil of the forest are a whole series of microorganisms. Some degrade lignin transforming it into organic carbon of vegetable origin. Others feed on the substances expelled from the plant itself and in turn alter the environment by modifying the pH of the earth near the root hairs. Furthermore, by triggering a mechanism that allows to absorb in a quicker, more direct and functional way all the mineral elements of the soil. 

In the field these microorganisms are absent. In fact, depending on the type of environment, different microorganisms are developed. In the typical environment of the forest microorganisms are developed to help the plant absorb nutrients and self-defense, because some micro-organisms, especially endo-microorganisms that penetrate the lymphatic system of the plant, stimulate the production of phytoalexins which are naturally produced compounds from the healthy plant as self-defense to the attacks of pathogens. These micro-organisms, if they do not find the right soil, are not there, there are others.

The Light and Carbon Farming rebalances the right ratio between carbon and nitrogen and reintroduces the correct microbiological activity in the soil.

When I go to the vineyards, I see that often there is the Mediterranean scrub or the woods and I invite people to smell the land of the forest and then to smell that of their vineyard. No one has ever done it, as soon as they do they understand it immediately. At that point I say to them: “when your soil smells like the woods, you won’t need us anymore“.

The first step we take to make the soil fertile, is to bring back the natural nutrients of the soil by renewing the right balance between carbon and nitrogen, in favor of the former. Then we use natural nutrients, produced by us, which increase the light absorption capacity and the photosynthetic capabilities of the plant.

The second important operation that we put in place is the reintroduction of microorganisms and microbiological activities of the soil. Obviously the second point is connected to the first: micro-organisms live in an ideal environment for their development.

If a plant is half dead and has little root activity you might not get a result right away, which is why we also created a series of herbal teas that nourish the plant through the vegetative system.