The Fertile Earth: Nature's Energies in Agriculture, Soil Fertilisation and Forestry

212 Pages·2001·1.8 MB·English

by  Viktor Schauberger

Contents
Figures vi
Introduction by Callum Coats vii
Sources xii
1. A DIFFERENT VIEW OF NATURAL PHENOMENA 1
Nature's Secrets Unveiled: In Transmutation Lies Eternity 1
Does an insuperable force of gravity actually exist? 4
Weightlessness prevails over gravity 6
Decomposive energy triggers cancer 6
Effect on Earth's orbit of weight of growing things 7
Distinguishing a genuine emulsion from one created by ultrasound 11
The creation of higher-quality products of emulsion 12
Conditions under which eggs, seeds and cells can engender 13
How is a bird able to become temporarily independent of the ground? 14
All life emerges from the Mr-form of the egg 17
How did originally aquatic plants escape from the medium of water? 18
What role does water, as a carrier, play in these formative and
transformative processes? 19
What is to be understood by a biological vacuum? 20
What is planetary mass-motion? 22
Life is indestructible! 23
All growth must be preceded by decomposition 24
She half-pulled him down; he half-sank on her 24
How can the existence of these reciprocities actually be proven? 25
Distinguishing magnetically charged water from water with the
opposite potential 26
The discovery of a new highly potent form of energy 29
A Small Difference — Decomposition or Life-Force? 32
A Different View of Atomic Fission 32
New Concepts of Electricity 35
How does lightning occur? 38
Electrolysis 39
iii
2. THE INFLUENCE OF TEMPERATURE AND WATER MOVEMENT
(on Forestry, Water Resources Management and the Formation
of Structures) 48
The Formation of Structures 48
The Dying Forest 50
Clear-felling 53
The Circulation of Water Inside the Earth and the Supply of Nutritive
Matter 57
The Effects of Groundwater Removal 68
Incorrect Metabolism Destroys the Quality of Water 72
Postscript 75
The Secret of the Trout Motor 75
3. FORESTRY — AGRICULTURE — THE ENERGY INDUSTRY 91
The Forest 91
Agriculture 92
The Energy Industry 93
The First Doubts 93
The Timber Industry, Forestry and Wood Production 94
The Forest and its Significance 98
The Dying Forest — a Peril of Central Europe 108
The Dangerous Sinking of the Groundwater Table 108
Detrimental Technological Influences 109
1. THE DYING FOREST 112
Nature's Increasing Baldness 112
How the Farmer uses his Scythe and Sharpens it by Hammering 113
How the Cow Grazes 115
About the Wild Boar 115
Concerning Dew-Drops 116
How the Forest Sustains Itself 118
Concerning the Russian Cotton Industry 120
The Dying Forest (Part Two) 121
A Global Perspective 121
The Tree as a Water-Factory 122
Wooden or Copper-Plated Ploughs 124
The Effect of Iron Ploughs 126
The Heart of the Plant 126
5. TIMBER AND WATER IN THE BUILDING INDUSTRY
Caution in the Use of Timber in the Building Industry 131
The Character of Water in the Building Industry 134
Constructional Defects and their Prevention 137
Lost Knowledge of Timber Growth and Quality 139
6. AGRICULTURE — SOIL FERTILISATION — INCREASED
PRODUCTIVITY 142
Noble Fertilisation with the Aid of Planetary Motion 142
Bipolarity 143
The Planetary Movement of Mass 145
Bioecological Agriculture 148
Increase In Soil Productivity 157
Life Force and Natural Fertiliser 163
The Earthworm Sanatorium 166
Building Compost Heaps 168
White Juvenile Earth 175
Concerning the Treatment of the Soil 175
Natural Farm Husbandry 176
Some Pertinent References to 'Tonsingen' and the Use of Water
Barrels 182
A Biological Hint 183
Copper Water 184
Re-enlivening Sick Fields 184
Experiments with Copper Implements in Agriculture 185
Field Trials at Farmleiten-Gut Heuberg 186
Results of 1949 Field Trials with Copper Attachments 189
Appendix: Austrian Patent Office — Description of Patent No. 166644 194
Glossary 196
Index 201
Figures
The Repulsator. 27
Location of other +4°C isotherms in the atmosphere. 37
Annual ring variations in a 33-year-old plantation tree. 51
The combination of H2O and CO2 into H2CO3 (carbonic acid). 61
The Bio-Plough. 72
Cross-sections of naturally and artificially grown shade-demanding
timbers. 104
Unequal growth due to one-sided illumination. 106
The copper-plated plough and harrow. 125
Radiant energies in inorganic (metal) and organic (tree) magnets. 128
The in-ground cistern of amniotic fluid (liquid manure transformer). 154
The subtler processes of growth. 164
The egg-shaped fermentation chamber. 165
The egg-shaped compost heap built around a tree. 170
Sun-ploughing. 179
Showing 15 cm (6 in.) long ears of rye with up to 104 grains per ear. 188
Potatoes grown on alpine farm at Kitzbiihel, Tyrol. 191
VI
Introduction
What is the essence of a tree? How does a blade of grass grow? What
do we really understand of the internal events and forces
responsible for their upward thrust towards the heavens, and on
what conditions do these energies depend? Where do they come from and
how do they interact? What inhibits their proper interaction, and what
enhances it? As the pages in this book unfold the reader will not only come to
appreciate the immense contribution to humanity of Viktor Schauberger's
life-work, but also that humanity must now seize upon his enlightened,
penetrating perception of the energetic phenomena underlying physical
manifestation and apply them to safeguard its future. Through his deep
understanding of the energies responsible for all organic growth and
development, his writings in this volume focus on those domains of Nature
which are at this time in the greatest need of massive rehabilitative
intervention.
These are the world's rapidly dwindling forests and the vast expanses of
arable land, today increasingly threatened by drought, desertification, fire and
flood. This wholesale eradication of the Earth's lungs simply cannot continue.
Present systems of land and forest management are largely responsible for the
present climatic instability. Mechanistic methods of regeneration and
production, which have no truly long-term view and are wholly profit oriented,
give no consideration either to the forest's true function or to a living soil's
continuing ability to sustain future generations. As has already become
evident, the current practice of over-clearing of forest for agriculture and
subsequent tillage leads to soil erosion, desertification, mineral impoverishment
and developing salination. The inadequacies in the management, or even the
actual mismanagement, of the world's stocks of these important resources
have now reached a point where the problems of providing an equitable and
adequate supply of food to an expanding global population appear almost
insuperable. Despite the fertiliser and pesticide industry's extravagant claims,
it is becoming more and more apparent that these methods are no longer
effective and are providing both timber and food of increasingly inferior
quality. It is therefore time to consider fresh approaches.
What is necessary is to employ many more people in developing and
applying methods for improving food quality. With higher-quality food,
Vll
people would not only be healthier physically and in mind and spirit, but
they would also require less food to maintain life. Far from seeing the present
population explosion as a problem, Viktor Schauberger advocated it, posing
the question: 'Is it therefore so illogical to recognise the Will of Nature in the rapid
increase in the number of human beings? Surely several hundred million more people
are needed, who with their energy and strength can help restore this ravished lump of
excrement, the Earth, to its former glory!'
It is here that Viktor Schauberger has a great deal to offer in the way of
remedies and provides us with pioneering insights into what makes the
world's forests and soils tick. While the restoration of these realms cannot be
divorced from the management of water resources conducted in accordance
with Nature's laws, these same laws also apply to the ways in which forestry
and agriculture should be administered. That is to say, the emphasis should
be on long-term continuity and sustainability using natural methods of
regeneration and fertilisation, which requires deep knowledge of the
interconnected energies that govern these subtle processes. This can only come
with both an open mind and a willingness to comprehend the higher
dimensional powers that order physical existence. In other words, we must
learn to think one octave higher, as Viktor Schauberger often urges.
Nature's formative and reproductive processes are extremely subtle, and
are based on a delicate, easily upset balance in the intermixture of energies
and materials on which they are founded. In our failure either to understand
or perceive them, however, we have literally trodden them into the ground.
Yet this is the same ground which is supposed to sustain and nourish us, and
from which life itself evolves. The time has come for a long overdue and
urgent reappraisal of what we are doing; indeed it has now become the
imperative of the hour; more particularly, in terms of the fundamentals of
forestry and agriculture. Instead of the former vibrant luxuriance of natural
forests, where one species fosters the growth and development of another, in
today's plantation forests, monocultures of single species of the same age are
forced to compete with one another for their necessities of life. In other words,
competition, with all its negative consequences, has been introduced into a
long-standing, integrated harmony where it never existed before. Instead of
smaller acreages and holdings, where produce was fertilised largely organically
and crops were religiously rotated, in modern agri-businesses carbon-
dioxide-trapping hedgerows were swept away and crops are grown without
rotation on an increasingly barren heath. These have to be propped up with
artificial fertiliser, which ultimately destroys the soil and its micro-organisms.
All the important preconditions and parameters which ensure thriving
growth have been altered arbitrarily with scant regard for Nature's essentials.
The fundamental flaw in our appreciation of the world and of Nature, and
the roots of our present predicament, lie in our unquestioning belief in the
correctness of our competitive ideology. This we apply noz only to the
treatment of our fellow human beings, but also to long-suffering Mother
Nature who nurtures us. So thoroughly are we suffused with this inherently
divisive philosophy almost from the day we are born, that we have great
difficulty in divorcing ourselves from it and in considering any alternative
approach. As its philosophical offshoot, present economic policy worldwide
is driven by the perceived desirability of quantitative growth without limit,
deemed to be the only solution to international economic stability. Such
unlimited growth, however, is impossible on this finite planet, where there is
an equally finite amount of raw material from which all else is derived. The
only possible future for unlimited growth is therefore a growth in quality.
This quantitative drive has resulted in the competitive manufacture and
marketing of more and more sophisticated trivia, which have no real and
lasting value in terms of natural upward evolutionary progress. Western
society, which largely controls global events, has become fascinated with itself
and its new toys, and concerns itself mainly with the next innovation.
Coupled with this acquisitive urge, of which it is also the cause, there is a
huge distortion in perceptions of what is of real worth, when millions are
spent on the purchase of football clubs, entertainment facilities and other
fantasia. This money should more properly have been spent on redressing the
vastly more pressing problems of widespread famine, disease and the
environment. However, in this world of economic rationalism, which treats
humans merely as the means to an economic end, there is no immediate profit
in such action.
Material acquisition and the pursuit of pleasure seem to be uppermost in
the minds of the majority in so-called 'civilised' countries, who, enclosed
within their cities, are almost totally estranged from Nature. Into this invidious
scheme of things, the so-called 'third world' countries are also being
inexorably drawn in their quest for the same ephemerae. Worse than this, in
the process they have lost their traditional values and practices, their natural
interaction with their habitat, which hitherto had sustained them over aeons.
Culture, in the truest meaning of the word, has become the almost universal
victim of this malevolent philosophy.
This single-minded preoccupation with mundanities and obliviousness to the
gathering storm that looms will propel humanity into a disaster of hitherto
unparalleled proportions. The mistaken belief that people can blithely
continue to dissociate themselves from the demands of the natural world and
continue to bask in the glories of technology, is a dangerous fallacy. Since all
life is inextricably interconnected, the massive disruption that has been
insensitively inflicted on the Earth and its life-giving waters must inevitably
rebound in poetic measure on the perpetrators. Balancing precariously on its
artificially contrived foundations, urbanised humanity has largely lost touch
with its roots, and as Viktor Schauberger states elsewhere in this book, 'Masses
without roots perish!' This is now beginning to happen — and at a rapidly
accelerating pace!
Competition, however, is totally at odds with Nature's ways. The dreadful
irony of the whole scenario is that today attempts are being made to create a
harmoniously integrated and co-operative world with the very philosophy
that must inevitably destroy it. If ultimate survival is indeed what presently
looms ahead, then the chances of real success in achieving it lie in the reversal
of the present code, namely a return to co-operative activity, where the efforts
of every individual are required for the ultimate well-being of the whole. In
this context Viktor Schauberger conceived humanity's foreordained tasks to
be threefold:
1. To make a small piece of the Earth fertile.
2. To evolve oneself to a higher level.
3. To preserve oneself and the species.
Acting on this, we should focus our closest attention on Nature's modus
operandi to secure a wholesome, healthy, long-term future for the Earth's
inhabitants. Which brings me once more to the question at the beginning: How
does a blade of grass grow? All organic and therefore animate growth in
Nature arises from the processes of fusion, in which a given structure is built
up incrementally through the mutual attraction of molecules. This attraction
could be likened to an elementary form of love — a desire to unite in a fruitful
way, when each individual component is necessary for the formation of the
whole. Without this there would be no creative build-up of substance, no
development of physical form. This combinant and recombinant activity is
therefore synonymous with co-operative endeavour. Viewed in this light, it
becomes clear that for the world to exist in all its physical majesty, Nature's
ways must be far more co-operative than we have hitherto been led to believe.
Her order is founded on co-operation and ethical fairness in the interaction
between her countless organisms. In our approach towards the environment
we could therefore not do better than to emulate the behaviour of the bees,
who as Viktor Schauberger states, 'are known to dispense and to give whenever
they take.' Trees too are extraordinarily selfless. They silently and consistently
temper the climate, tame the tempests and supply us with oxygen to breathe
and water to drink. In the light of this knowledge, we should therefore turn
away from the present divisive competitive ideology and follow Nature's lead,
for it is only in this way that the natural world can be truly restored to its
former glory.
All the above tasks demand a long-term appraisal and in-depth
examination of the fundamentals of life and its continuance. This also
involves a reinterpretation of the proper sphere and application of
competition. Instead of its present emphasis on external action, competition
should rightly be strictly applied to the internal assessment of one's own
personal behaviour and performance; to how one's own talents and abilities
and relationship with the outer world can continue to be improved, the better
to co-operate, rather than compete, with others. The transference of this intent
to the outer world, which would do so much to restore human relationships
and the natural world to a universal state of harmony, was so ably expressed,
though slightly paraphrased here, in President John F. Kennedy's famous
exhortation:
'Do not ask what the world can do for you, but ask what you can do for the world!'
Callum Coats — March 1999