Bill Liebhart work is a big mess.
Did you read it?
Bill Liebhert worked on a tec 3 soil, in Delaware, with no contact
with Kinsey and with little undersatnding of how to make the system work,
obsiouly.
He did NOT guard the micronutrients or increase SOM or anything else.
I went to U/C Davis, met with Bill, along with my soil scientist and
other guests. We asked Bill for his development papers from his work. He
said that they were not available and so there is not documentation of the
subtle aspects of how the trial was conducted. He said that he felt like
we were "wasting hte farmers money" with out endevors. This statement was
made in a isolate framework and does not account, obviously, for human nutrition
and ecology...let alone many other factors.
In those years, Kinsey had not worked out the rules that are now used
to handle with these very low exchange capacity soils. The "system" essentially
works with the medium range CEC 10-25 and behond that has several rules,
tricks to the trade, that need to be considered with low or high CEC soils.
I work with soils that range from TEC 3 to 61 in two states on 15
crops and I can see the system working as long as I employ farmer based,
expereience based, skill like SOM management, foliar feeding, carefull choice
and handling of fertilizers and compost understanding.
Bills paper is often cited and should not be as it represents a tiny
fraction of soils acceptable to farm on and was not carried out with knowledge....cec
3 shows that it was a sand dune or an extraordinary low CEC clay species...possibly
amorphous materials or something odd.
I respect Bill for what he has done for organic farming...but this
paper is worthless....in my opinion.
Bob Shaffer