Fungi and the Soil Food Web | Farming with Fungi Part 1 [Replay]

Join us to learn how plants and fungi have unique roles and partnerships that facilitate life in the soil.
✅ Learn more about the Soil Food Web 👉 www.sfw.one/newsletter-youtube
Fungi, and other organisms in a healthy and thriving soil ecosystem are important, including bacteria, protozoa, and nematodes. If plant roots represent the highways of the soil food web, fungi are the side roads, ensuring that resources like sugar are transported to the essential workforce of diverse microorganisms. Fungal biomass is also one of the key factors for soil aggregation, helping to maintain a stable and aerobic environment.
Follow the Soil Food Web Blog: www.soilfoodweb.com/blog/
Follow us on Instagram: / soilfoodwebschool
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The Soil Food Web School’s mission is to empower individuals and organizations to regenerate the soils in their communities. The Soil Food Web Approach can dramatically accelerate soil regeneration projects by focussing on the soil biome. This can boost the productivity of farms, provide super-nutritious foods, protect and purify waterways, and reduce the effects of Climate Change. No background in farming or biology is required for our Foundation Courses. Classes are online & self-paced, and students are supported by highly-trained Soil Food Web School mentors.
About our speakers:
Dr. Adam Cobb's passion for agriculture emerged during his several months of volunteer work on organic farms in New Zealand. His time in graduate school cultivated a broad vision for the restoration of living soils, as well as the power of research and community engagement to address global food production challenges. He joined the Soil Food Web School in 2021, following his dream to help regenerate soils, improve human nutrition, and heal our planet.
Dr. Carla Portugal is a Consultant Training Program Instructor and researcher, at the Soil Food Web School. Since she can remember, Carla was attracted to all life forms but the small and microscopic ones always had a special place in her heart. Carla has a keen interest in the connections between soil microorganisms and how nutrient cycling affects the nutritional value of plants.
Brian came from a background in IT and now runs a successful consultancy (Sprouting Soils) in California.
Over the last four decades, Dr. Elaine Ingham has advanced our knowledge of the Soil Food Web. An internationally-recognized leader in soil microbiology, Dr. Ingham has collaborated with other scientists and with farmers around the world to further our understanding of how soil organisms work together and with plants. Dr. Ingham is an author of the USDA's Soil Biology Primer and a founder of the Soil Food Web School.
#fungi #soilfoodweb #soilregeneration

[@CreedmoorFury]

Gosh, yall are so real. It's been a pleasure to have learned from you all !😊

[@dorokaiyinvil5705]

If only I knew this stuff 20 years ago lol

[@terrafarmer48]

Dr. Elaine I am so grateful to be seeing this today. I started learning about the Soil Food Web in 2017 with a Prairie Horticulture class. I am descended from farmers and gardeners and to have a new set of eyes given to me in my 40's has been an incredible gift. You have been one of my heroes for a long time now and learning about soil has gotten me through some very hard times knowing that I am here for a purpose to help share this message. Wishing everyone growing abundance in 2023 and beyond!

[@recycleme1224]

Your Soil School and the Ecosystem Restoration Camps are the things that give me hope we have a future.

[@gtavtheavengergunnerlegend3340]

studying soil science has opened my mind to the magnificent world of science. it has opened my eyes to how everything is connected in the world

[@anthonyl.kellyakawritedisw9662]

These videos are literally changing my life for the better.

[@christinegust]

Excellent webinar. I like the image of the soil symphony, and the soil food web as a keystone in particular.

[@paulnicholson8524]

The protozoa you can't break the wings off them because if they can't float thru the soil they can't do their jobs, If the protozoans are disturbed they have to move with those wings. If you break them with force they can't swim around and do their job .cillates sux get a count on them and go from there. Great job!

[@SporeBloom_Game]

Thanks so much for sharing the learnings and inspiration as part of your presentations :) Love the education

[@jimbledsoe9083]

27:16 the math term "factorial" comes to mind 2!= 2, 3! = 6, 4!= 24. . . 7!= 5040 and 8!= 40320. planting 8 species in close proximity has been shown to be a tipping point that leads to significant abundance?!

[@paulnicholson8524]

How do you inoculate the protozoa?

[@MongoosePreservationSociety]

Solid star trek deep space nine reference!!

[@dcg1976]

Question: Does the Soil Food Web School/Webinars offer any material specific to silvopasture. Examples given are usually crop/grass land or forest but I'm curious how these principals may change when applied to a mixed biome such as savannah? With livestock and poultry using the land does the approach for composting change?

[@Scott-nx8bn]

From Eugene Oregon, thank you

[@BigWesLawns]

Can you add a link to Amazon for a decent microscope in that $300 range you recommend. I dont have a clue where to start, and amazon has zillions of different ones, with tecgnical specs that are above my head. I want to learn but cant get to a school. Any help from anyone who knows is welcome.

[@paulmcwhorter]

My far sits at the source of the Nile River. The challenge I have is the soil has huge Fusarium Fungi load, and almost anything I try to grow rots from the Fursarium. I have spent 5 years composting, mulching and amending the soil. I have seen slow progress over 5 years. How can I deal with the underlying Fusarium problem?

[@jorgecamachofitopatologo]

Excelent presentation AND information, thank you for changing minds

[@SomehowGardening]

Hey I have literal mushrooms growing next to my veggie bed, is that necessarily a good or bad thing?

[@anniesgardens6994]

Thank you for the information, would you have any recommendations for purchasing your first microscope?

[@soilfoodwebschool]

@Annie's Gardens You may find this link was helpful as all the microscopes are listed "For Soil Studies" so you could have confidence that each one would work with the SFW program: omaxmicroscope.com/collections/specialized-microscopes-soil-research-microscopes

[@CollectiveConsciousness1111]

Brilliant content🙏 Knowledge Is Power Thanks for sharing 💚🌍

[@dorokaiyinvil5705]

If you're growing food or really anything this stuff is amazing

[@SutchiroPete]

Great webinar! I'm looking forward to the next one. One question: what's the difference between the soil food web and the holobiont framework?

[@paulnicholson8524]

My favorite person in the world.

[@HAHA-ho1zz]

Thanks for sharing all those webinars.

[@smokeymcbongwater3561]

Awsame thanks for the lessen

[@tamasurusrex]

I love the concept of holobiont… it’s like the reductionist view of a plant body is incomplete… it seems like a plant body should include all the organisms in the plants orbit that it actively cultivates and needs to survive! I sometimes wonder if I’m really just a car for microbes to move around in space… and if my consciousness is just evidence of that system, a pattern that emerged out of complexity. A little humbling 😂

[@B01]

When we are a majority microbes that are not human, it's not so far-fetched to think lol

[@birantevren8494]

Hey, are there any architectural intervention examples regarding fungi? I know that mycelium is used to create ''bricks''

[@paulnicholson8524]

You are the best

[@100Margaret]

I love is kind of thing! It's so fascinating!

[@GARDENSTATEGARDENER]

So much more to learn.

[@harrybryan7530]

I live in S.W British Columbia , Canada very near the coast. We have a lot of beautiful dark soils here. As I drive around I see many farm fields that are being aggressively tilled and very few cover crops being used and I wonder why. I am not a farmer but have become very interested in understanding what healthy soil is all about. Have the local farmers been so spoiled with dark nutrient-rich soils that they feel that keeping living roots in the soil via cover crops is not necessary and that tillage is automatically needed each spring? THEY are the farmers....... they should be the ones who understand and demonstrate healthy soil practices!!

[@crazypeaches1]

Cover crops and the soil food web are still fairly new to the agriculture world(last 5 years about). I assume Farmers in BC only get one crop a year, so they need to have solid proof that it won't end up messing up the main crop . Otherwise in most cases they could lose the farm if they don't get a crop after cover crops. Insurance companies don't cover losses related to that. That said, it doesn't mean farmers aren't watching others and hoping that they work.

[@soilfoodwebschool]

@crazypeaches1 You may be interested to what farmers are saying: promo.soilfoodweb.com/apr23s-springboard/#FarmerCaseStudies

[@crazypeaches1]

​@@soilfoodwebschoolgreat video. I dairy farm in Minnesota, and I finished the foundation courses last winter. Love how it helped the fields that I used compost extract on last year. In regards to my comment I was talking for the older farmers 50 years old and above who don't have internet or game a younger generation to help them get this info to them(although ag students aren't taught these practices in college either unfortunately). In their eyes they have been farming the same way their whole life and survived. That's part of why not everyone in North America and or the world are not using cover crops and applying bio complete amendments. Hopefully some day we will get there!

[@paulnicholson8524]

That's all I think about everyday. It's in the biomass between annuals and perennials bacterial to fungi to ratio. The protozoa has to digest the bacteria or the fungi. Their are 3 different protozoa. 1 ammiba, figelate, cillate . The last one does not like oxygen

[@eviebee4]

Incredible lecture! I am learning so much from you guys. There is just one thing I am confused about: You say that the fungi (as well as the bacteria) which have used their enzymes to break down the nutrients in the soil need to then be eaten by nematodes/arthropods which then excrete the nutrients in a plant available form. I am wondering, can’t the fungi feed the nutrients directly to the plant through the mycorrhiza? Or maybe it’s only certain fungi that can feed directly to the plant?

[@soilfoodwebschool]

@eviebee4 Great questions. Please send us an email and our science team will consider this. To learn more about our course offerings, please let us know about your goals and interests so that we can help you find the course(s) that will work best for you. Send to [e-mail]

[@eviebee4]

Thanks so much for your reply :). I will send an inquiry to the email provided. Thanks again!@@soilfoodwebschool

[@caitegraceify]

I’m a wild green ecological fiend too!

[@shannondillman8307]

Early in the program Dr Elaine reiterated that taking organisms from non native environments so I ask how do we build these in our soil? Do we cover later in the seminar the how to balance and build the eco systems?

[@B01]

You would ideally find the closest, to wherever you're growing. This ensures that the native organisms which thrive in that environment will be most present and available, without any unhealthy competition

[@paulnicholson8524]

Y'all rock!

[@paulnicholson8524]

It takes your breath away.

[@irkone]

I’m curious how to best get adequate organic matter deep below ground to feed microbes so they are energized long enough for roots to reach them. If a biocomplete extract is applied and the organisms sink ten feet below ground but do not have OM to consume, or roots to feed on, they will starve and die.

[@helentc]

The organisms go where the food is. Why would they be 10 feet below ground when the food is in the top layers? Sometimes on top of the ground, ie; fallen leaves, rotting logs, etc. They would also be more likely to congregate around the root sphere of the plant. They know what to do, we just need to stop the practices that destroy them, and in some cases do our best to restore the areas we as humans have damaged. Actually in some cases, the bio-complete extract is applied to the aerial part of the plant, ex; Orchard leaves & branches. It helps to protect the tree or plant from disease.

[@irkone]

@@helentc You didn’t address the issue.

[@BigWesLawns]

Soil Symphony. If we listen to Mozart's 3rd Violin concerto, there are 3 pieces in it, and each piece has a Violin solo. During the solo, the conductor takes a drink, adjusts his tie, flips the page, and lets the Violin Play without conducting. We are not the conductors tho, we are the composers, and God is the Muse. 😮 Heavy.

[@paulnicholson8524]

There is a ratio between pereñial s and annualls equals ratios

[@nomnommonsterr]

Where does the webinar happen?

[@nomnommonsterr]

Okay got it. It's in description. 😅

[@soilfoodwebschool]

@Mugen Webinars are online. Register here: webinar.soilfoodweb.com/reg-webinar-farming-with-fungi-1

[@nomnommonsterr]

@@soilfoodwebschool thank you. Registered already.

[@paulnicholson8524]

How do you feel about knowing that?

[@toddvance4592]

How do we grow potatoes without disturbing or destroying the soil food web?

[@grapenater3435]

Layer up compost and straw when it’s time to add another layer

[@matthewwest1262]

​@@james_thegirl 100% I'm dreading ripping up my garden bed I've built just to get the sweet potatos😂 not that bad though can rip up the whole bed as long as I feed the biology and put plants back in asap it's not a big deal

[@tyee.5023]

@@matthewwest1262 you could leave some in situ each year to always leave it inoculated for the next year. I think root crops are just difficult unless it's small scale to practice something like non-disturbance. Id say, if you have the space and money to do it, maybe only harvest every other row each year. Something I've thought about. You could also do them in hugal kultur mounds and only harvest alternating sides every other year- that's one of my personal ideas for property in Idaho I was looking at

[@xaviercruz4763]

Its such fun to see a potato 🥔 tomato 🍅 plant 🪴. Theres this guy called thekiwigrower that did the experiment. Back on what you say, you know, when you dig just where you planted and are harvesting is like removing a patch of grass that fights its way back to covering the empty space. Just know God is not going to destroy you and the soil you plant on and what you plant because He gave you the garlic, potatoes and tubers knowing you were going to eat them and be harvesting often. Have peace, for Jesus, by Jesus.

[@B01]

Use a raised bed, then you're not disturbing the native soil lol Or you can just use containers haha

[@Jaredkprimalhealth]

How would you say to change sandy florida soil into nutrient rich soil in 3 steps? lol

[@paulnicholson8524]

Nitrate surge actually because gasses

[@paulnicholson8524]

Fungi the reality is came up out of the ocean. Protozoans you can't break the wings . They float !

[@geraldcox4257]

When you guys are doing a webinar can you check and balance all of the microphones so that everyone is at the same volume. I cant stop listening to you guys. GREAT JOB EVERYONE !!! THANKS

[@dcg1976]

I listened on headphones on a cell phone and everything was adequately balanced. You may need to adjust the audio settings/equalizer on your device.

[@B01]

Early in the webinar it was mentioned that one person was using their cell phone for this specific event due to technical difficulties. I'd imagine that would have something to do with it this time

[@chuckheppner4384]

#SaveSoil #Mycoremediation "In motivating people to love and defend the natural world, an ounce of hope is worth a ton of despair. Soil is an almost magical substance, a living system that transforms the materials it encounters. Acknowledging our love for the living world does something that a library full of papers on sustainable development and ecosystem services cannot: it engages the imagination as well as the intellect. It inspires belief; and this is essential to the lasting success of any movement." George Monbiot “I remind myself that madmen really exist. Sometimes they achieve the highest levels of political power in modern industrial nations. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves. Our very existence in that distant time requires that we will have changed our institutions and ourselves. How can I dare to guess about humans in the far future? It is, I think, only a matter of natural selection. If we become even slightly more violent, shortsighted, ignorant, and selfish than we are now, almost certainly we will have no future. Many of the dangers we face indeed arise from science and technology-but, more fundamentally, because we have become powerful without becoming commensurately wise. The world-altering powers that technology has delivered into our hands now require a degree of consideration and foresight that has never before been asked of us. The visions we offer our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps. The trapdoor beneath our feet swings open. We find ourselves in bottomless free fall. We are lost in a great darkness, and there’s no one to send out a search party. Given so harsh a reality, of course we’re tempted to shut our eyes and pretend that we’re safe and snug at home, that the fall is only a bad dream.” ~ Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space 🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻#SlavaUkraini 🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻 "In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival." ~ Noam Chomsky Let Us Meet In The Mountains To Worship The Mighty Shrump, Let Us Meditate On Being The Mushroom We Want To See In This World, Let Us Eat Mushrooms And Live Forever, In The Name Of The Hyphae, The Spore and The Holy Host, Amen "Animals are something invented by plants to move seeds around. An extremely yang solution to a peculiar problem which they faced. The plants are the pipeline into the Gaian intention. It's just not a coincidence that these plants carry this immense spiritual message. They are the pipeline of Gaian intentionality. The fungi became, or is for some mysterious reason still to be discovered, a pipeline into a mind, an entelechy, which we can only image as feminine and can only associate somehow to the environment, to the ecosystem. This is the Gaian mind. This is what the goddess really is. The goddess is a network of connective intelligence that is operating on this planet. Psychedelic drugs, especially psilocybin, allow a searchlight to be thrown on these deeper levels of the psyche, as Jung correctly stated. But it is not a museum of archetypes or psychic constructs, as he seemed to assume. It is a frontier of wholeness into which any person, so motivated and so courageous as to wish to do it, can go and leave the mundane plane far behind. Psychedelics can carry you farther and faster than most people care to go. Once you get to psychedelics, it's no longer a matter of seeking the answer, you have found the answer. Now the issue changes dramatically, you must face the answer. There’s light at the end of the tunnel. The problem is that tunnel is in the back of your mind. And if you don’t go to the back side of your mind you will never see the light at the end of the tunnel. And once you see it, then the task becomes to empower it in yourself and other people. Spread it as a reality. God did not retire to the seventh heaven, God is some kind of lost continent IN the human mind. There is a spiritual obligation, there is a task to be done. It is not, however, something as simple as following a set of somebody else's rules. Patanjali specifically says that there are three paths to the goal of yoga. And they are, control of the breath, control of posture, and light-filled herbs. It says it right there. Stanza 6 of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. The psychedelic experience is the beginning of the spiritual path. That's why it's not important that yogas' claim that they can deliver you the psychedelic experience, because it begins with the psychedelic experience, and then you go from there. Apparently, in the Avesta classical period no one would have dreamed of having a spiritual experience without resorting to drugs. I'm not an advocate for everything that rolls out of the laboratory. I'm an advocate for things sanctioned by millennia of usage. The psychedelic experience is simply a compressed instance of what we call understanding, so that living psychedelically is trying to live in an atmosphere of continuous unfolding of understanding, so that every day you know more and see into things with greater depth than you did before. This is a process of education. The planet has a kind of intelligence, it can actually open a channel of communication with an individual human being. The message that nature sends is, transform your language through a synergy between electronic culture and the psychedelic imagination, a synergy between dance and idea, a synergy between understanding and intuition, and dissolve the boundaries that your culture has sanctioned between you, to become part of this Gaian super-mind. Now, why should taking a natural psychedelic drug compound like psilocybin give you hope? It's because it connects you up with the real network of values and information inherent in the planet, the values of biology, the values of organism, rather than the values of the consumer. ... Continued ⬇

[@chuckheppner4384]

It is now very clear that techniques of machine-human interfacing, pharmacology of the synthetic variety, all kinds of manipulative techniques, all kinds of data storage, imaging and retrieval techniques - all of this is coalescing toward the potential of a truly demonic or angelic kind of self-imaging of our culture... And the people who are on the demonic side are fully aware of this and hurrying full-tilt forward with their plans to capture everyone as a 100% believing consumer inside some kind of a beige furnished fascism that won't even raise a ripple. We have gone sick by following a path of untrammeled rationalism, male dominance, attention to the visible surface of things, practicality, bottom-line-ism. We have gone very, very sick. And the body politic, like any body, when it feels itself to be sick, it begins to produce antibodies, or strategies for overcoming the condition of dis-ease. And the 20th century is an enormous effort at self-healing. Phenomena as diverse as surrealism, body piercing, psychedelic drug use, sexual permissiveness, jazz, experimental dance, rave culture, tattooing, the list is endless. What do all these things have in common? They represent various styles of rejection of linear values. The society is trying to cure itself by an archaic revival, by a reversion to archaic values. So when I see people manifesting sexual ambiguity, or scarifying themselves, or showing a lot of flesh, or dancing to syncopated music, or getting loaded, or violating ordinary canons of sexual behavior, I applaud all of this; because it's an impulse to return to what is felt by the body -- what is authentic, what is archaic -- and when you tease apart these archaic impulses, at the very center of all these impulses is the desire to return to a world of magical empowerment of feeling. And at the center of that impulse is the shaman: stoned, intoxicated on plants, speaking with the spirit helpers, dancing in the moonlight, and vivifying and invoking a world of conscious, living mystery. That's what the world is. The world is not an unsolved problem for scientists or sociologists. The world is a living mystery: our birth, our death, our being in the moment -- these are mysteries. They are doorways opening on to unimaginable vistas of self-exploration, empowerment and hope for the human enterprise. And our culture has killed that, taken it away from us, made us consumers of shoddy products and shoddier ideals. We have to get away from that; and the way to get away from it is by a return to the authentic experience of the body -- and that means sexually empowering ourselves, and it means getting loaded, exploring the mind as a tool for personal and social transformation. The hour is late; the clock is ticking; we will be judged very harshly if we fumble the ball. We are the inheritors of millions and millions of years of successfully lived lives and successful adaptations to changing conditions in the natural world. Now the challenge passes to us, the living, that the yet-to-be-born may have a place to put their feet and a sky to walk under; and that's what the psychedelic experience is about, is caring for, empowering, and building a future that honors the past, honors the planet and honors the power of the human imagination. There is nothing as powerful, as capable of transforming itself and the planet, as the human imagination. Let's not sell it straight. Let's not whore ourselves to nitwit ideologies. Let's not give our control over to the least among us. Rather, you know, claim your place in the sun and go forward into the light. The tools are there; the path is known; you simply have to turn your back on a culture that has gone sterile and dead, and get with the program of a living world and a re-empowerment of the imagination. The Internet is light at the end of the tunnel. I don't care if it's being used to peddle pornography, I don't care if it's being trivialized in a thousand ways. Anything can be trivialized. The important point is that it is leveling the playing field of global society. It is creating de-facto an entirely new set of political realities. None of the constipated, oligarchic structures that are resisting this were ever asked. Their greed betrayed them into investing in this in the first place without ever fully grasping what the implications of it were for their larger agenda. A global society is coming into being, a global society that is made out of information that was not intended to be ours, but is ours, by the mistaken invention of computers and the printing press, information is power, and information has spilled by the clumsy hands of the dominator culture so that the information is everywhere, never before has the situation been so fluid, we might be able to finally have a crack at this. Sometime in the last 50,000 years, before 12,000 years ago, a kind of paradise came into existence. A situation in which men and women, parents and children, people and animals, human institutions and the land all were in dynamic balance and not in any primitive sense at all. Language was fully developed, poetry may have been at its climax, dance, magic, poetics, altruism, philosophy. There's no reason to think that these things were not practiced as adroitly as we practice them today and it was under the boundary dissolving influence of psilocybin. Inside the boundaries of the old paradigm there's no hope, there's no way out of the box of capitalism, monogamy, consumer fetishism, egoism, money worship, no way out. No way. No way out! What is needed is a spirit of boundary dissolution, between individuals, between classes, sexual orientations, rich and poor, man and woman, intellectual and feeling toned types. If this can happen, then we will make a new world. And if this doesn't happen, nature is fairly pitiless and has a place for us in the shale of this planet, where so many have preceded us." Terence McKenna

[@paulnicholson8524]

I love you

[@xaviercruz4763]

Imports and exportations of plants 🌱 and 🦒 animal life, foods, materials are in the Bible and are normal and good if not based on idolatry. If only local then you would never see a tomato 🍅 in europe, maybe or the USA, and we would not have the precious olive oil 🫒. God is good for us, despite we dont deserve it. God is good!

[@paulnicholson8524]

The protozoa has all the nitrogen inside it's body it ozzes out of it's body and it's a vapor . That is natural nitrogen coming out of it's butt. The miccohizzal funji have to go out and get some food for the plant well the plant said where is my food the little miccohizzal it's ok!

[@grantquinones]

Throw what you can see don't have to eat bug bread

[@forestfloored420]

First! (duh lol)

[@MJ-bg8gn]

this is really bad...