It's true, you have to make mistakes and hit rock bottom to find enlightenment, and that's the case with John Kempf, who through his passion and selflessness has made accessible the information we need to feed plants correctly in a productive and ecological way.
John Kempf has been one of the pioneers in spreading the method of regenerative agriculture and is the founder of AEA (Advancing Eco Agriculture). John claims that "healthy plants can become completely resistant to diseases and insects". In his videos he explains that apparently healthy plants can be divided into four levels of health in the plant health pyramid and what results are achieved at each level. He also explains the role of biological activity in the soil and the strategies to progressively reach a higher level of health, accompanying the technician on his way with numerous other videos with in-depth information.
La pimamide della salute della piante
The primary objective is to optimise production, drastically reducing the use of pesticides and herbicides and synthetic fertilisers. This is possible through the balanced feeding of plants with organo-mineral products that maintain a symbiosis of mutual benefits between plants and micro-organisms that are able to build the ideal habitat for growth on their own. The measuring instruments available to us today allow us to understand with a good approximation what is happening in the plant. In the past, the Agronomist was forced to rely on traditional water and soil analysis to understand how to make an approximate fertilisation programme, relying on numbers and the often very complex and controversial bibliography. This is because it is well known that chemical reactions in the soil depend on many factors and the expected results can vary greatly according to a whole series of variables, which are as complex as nature itself. Today, technology offers us the possibility of understanding what is happening in a very short space of time by analysing the plant sap, which provides fairly precise indications of the nutritional balance in the various phases of plant growth.
The impact of eH and pH on soil biology
The modern fertilisation plan should therefore not aim to enrich the soil with mineral nutrients but to nourish the plant according to its needs and to encourage the development of rich populations of bacteria and fungi useful for the mineralisation of nutrients into organic forms, more assimilable by the plants. A symbiosis of plants with bacteria and fungi in the soil is thus promoted, exploiting the potential of photosynthesis and the nutrients produced by microbiological activity in the soil.
The virtuous mechanism is created when plants supply useful bacteria and fungi with the soluble carbon they need while they take nutrient minerals from the soil and the atmosphere and metabolise them during their life cycle to release them to the plants. Bacteria and fungi have a very short life cycle, so as they die they release nutrients in the form of organic building blocks and amino acids that are more easily assimilated by plants, which do not have to consume energy compared to direct mineral nutrition. The ideal conditions for growth and resistance against pests and diseases, according to scientists, occur in a certain habitat of eH and pH that plants are able to modify. In this context, the agronomist's job is to understand how climatic variations can affect and use the nutrient, irrigation and drainage systems he or she has available to alleviate biotic and abiotic stresses on the plant.
By optimising the nutritional balance, plants become more resistant to common diseases and less attractive to insects, which are known to feed on plant debris, i.e. anything that is unhealthy and therefore easily assimilated by their simple digestive system. By progressively improving the health of the plants, they increase their natural defences and become immune to diseases that are difficult for insects to digest and therefore avoid. This makes it possible to drastically reduce the use of pesticides, which often play a devastating role in biological activity in the soil and in our health.