The Soil Whisperers
Photos left to right: Elsi Pereira teaching visiting farmers how to adjust soil composition to match different types of plants. Nery Gonzales demonstrates how to sustainably collect “good” bacteria and fungi from the nearby old-growth forest.
By Lynsey Miller, Equal Exchange Sales Director & Vice President
It’s hard to talk about the coffee farmer organization COMSA in Honduras without talking about soil. And after visiting them in January, where they repeatedly astounded me, I wouldn’t want to be soil silent. To the contrary, I hope to share a few insights to spread my newfound soil enthusiasm.
COMSA’s broad vision of success considers the needs of their coffee plants as well as the needs of their coffee farmers. The plants need healthy, rich soil. The farmers need inputs that are easy to access, effective, cheap, and won’t cause harm to themselves or the environment. Many contemporary (read: chemical) inputs are the opposite of what farmers need. Through their commitment to innovation and to creatively using the resources they have around them, COMSA convinced me that they are soil whisperers. Although they could—and do—teach a version of a master course in organic farming through creative soil management, I found even their fundamental insights compelling. Here are the top three “ah-hahs” that changed my appreciation for soil.
1) Soil is like the plant’s digestive system.
“Good” bacteria and fungi collected from nearby old-growth forest.
Just like a human needs a digestive system to break down food into usable basic parts, soil does this for plants. A human body needs vitamins, minerals, and nutrients. But when those things are all wrapped up in a complex food, say an apple or a plate of lasagna, our body needs to process those foods, breaking them down into tiny base nutrients that our intestines can absorb. To accomplish this, we have a veritable biome of “good bacteria” in our gut. Some people proactively cultivate that bacterial community by eating and drinking probiotics (think yogurt, kombucha, sauerkraut, even probiotics taken like a daily vitamin).
The bacteria and fungi found in soil serve that same purpose for plants. A plant can’t readily absorb an apple or a plate of lasagna either. But with the help of bacteria and fungi in the soil, organic matter can be broken down into base vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients, which the plant’s roots can then readily absorb. Similar to the turbo boost that probiotics can give our system, farmers can give their soil a turbo boost, organically, by adding specific good bacteria and fungi.
2) Nutrient-rich, healthy soil leads to nutrient-rich, healthy plants.
Beautiful organic coffee at COMSA.
That may seem obvious. But to an organic coffee farmer, this can be the difference between having a successful farm and a stable income or having their farm wiped out by disease or plague. Just like the human body, if a plant is dehydrated or deficient in one nutrient or another, it will be more susceptible to disease. Healthy coffee trees are more able to withstand attacks from pests, ranging from insects to pathogens.
If a coffee tree becomes ill, it can be quite difficult to cure. The costs of a sick tree can quickly compound: the cost of treatment inputs, plus the reduced income due to lower yields, plus the threat of disease or pests spreading to the rest of the trees on the farm. Prevention is the best medicine. And prevention starts with healthy soil.
3) Farmers can tinker with the soil to get targeted outcomes.
Soil is complex and dynamic. Just as soils in different countries or at different elevations can vary, farmers can manage factors such as pH or ratios of specific macronutrients, vitamins, and minerals. They can purposely change soil composition—and even the composition of the plants growing in that soil—to have higher levels of things that pests find off-putting. The pests then move on in search of other more palatable plants to consume. The same strategies can be applied in reverse to attract helpful insects, such as lady bugs, who themselves are neutral to coffee plants but who helpfully eat other insects, like aphids, that can damage coffee plants. Managing the soil pH and nutritional composition can be an organic tool not just to manage the plant but also other living things that farmers either want or don’t want living among the plants.
Photos, left to right: COMSA’s teaching tool highlights the building blocks of healthy organic soil: minerals, organic matter, microorganisms, living molecules, and “gray matter,” meaning human critical thinking. Nery demonstrates how to process good bacteria and fungi into a rich, organic biofertilizer to boost soil health on coffee farms.
In an even more dramatic fashion, farmers can use certain fungi as a biological control. There are certain fungi that do no damage to the coffee plant but are parasitic to the pests that attack coffee. These fungi infect and eventually consume the pests, halting them in their tracks and preventing them from reproducing. Adding these fungi to the soil can target an offending species without causing harm to plants, humans, or the surrounding ecosystem.
Good soil management, and particularly good organic soil management, is not simply the lack of chemical inputs. In the hands of the capable farmers at COMSA, it’s an exercise in creativity, innovation, and working with natural systems instead of against them.
Photos, left to right: Some of the COMSA farmer experts who inspired me and taught me about soil health, mycology, farming specialty coffee, and building a strong co-operative culture. Me in beautiful Honduras.
