The Fungus Exchange

This article first appeared in The Leader Vindicator Newspaper.

Fertilizer interrupts the relationship between photosynthesizing plants and mineral mining fungi.  Absent this biological affiliation, the cycles of life collapse.

Plants and their photosynthesis are the connection between solar energy and life on Earth.  Sunlight is collected and converted by vegetation, and then is stored and distributed to every other non-photosynthesizing organism in the form of food.  Such a monumental transfer of energy is not the work of plants alone; it takes a team to accomplish the job. 

Photosynthesizing plants can create sugar from sunlight, but they’re not great at seeking minerals.  Fungi are mineral experts and can pull the elements out of hard rocks, stubborn soils, rotting detritus, and even scraps of discarded metal, but fungi don’t photosynthesize.  These relative shortcomings would be a dead end for both parties, except they’ve developed an exchange program.

By tapping the root system of plants, fungi are able to exchange minerals for sugar.  The plant likes the exchange because it doesn’t have to go looking for what it needs to thrive; Micorrhizal fungi amplify the root system of a single plant many, many times, even going so far as delivering hard-to find water during dry seasons.  With the help of soil fungi, plants become healthy enough to ward off disease and recover from attack, thus promoting additional photosynthesis, which yields more sugar for the fungal network, which in turn provides more minerals, and so on.

This sugar – mineral exchange is the base of a massive energy infrastructure, benefitting everyone along the way from bacteria, to earthworms, to moles, to raccoons, to deer and bears and you and me.  As long as everyone gets their cut, natural processes hum along nicely.

Fertilizer is readily available mineral supplementation for plants.  When we give fertilizer to a plant, delivered directly into its root zone, the plant gets lazy.  Why should it trade hard-earned sugar to a fungus if a tractor drops what it wants at the doorstep?  It shouldn’t.  Fertilized fields of plants terminate their relationship with the fungal network.  Without sugars from the sun, the fungi die.  After they’re dead, the underground hook-up for solar sugar is gone, so all the other life departs, too.  All that’s left are the plants at the surface, waiting anxiously for the next tractor trip to drop some concentrate right at their root zone.

Here’s the problem: Science can’t come close to replicating the complexity of nature, so the tractor trips never deliver a full range of minerals.  As a result, the plant becomes vulnerable to disease and pests.  It gets thirsty between precipitation events, but there is no water-holding humus because plant litter, instead of rotting into the soil via digestion, oxidizes back into the atmosphere now that the bacteria, worms, and beetles are gone.  What we’re left with after the fungus dies is a really great looking field of very vulnerable plants dependent on tractor trips to deliver chemicals.  We lose the carbon cycle (evidenced by increasing atmospheric gasses), the water cycle (flood / drought, but no optimum), and the mineral cycle (food isn’t nutrient dense).  Look around the landscape at every crop field you pass; we’ve literally turned out the lights on that piece of land.  When we black out enough of Earth’s surface, the power goes out for all of us.

It would seem that humans, with our immense power of reasoning, should feel inclined to stop the abuse once we recognize the effects of it, which we do.  Alas, fertilizer is a self-supporting addiction; remove fertilizer, and plants are left alone in dead soil to survive.  They struggle mightily.  Unfertilized plants’ poor performance is used as proof that the fertilizer industry is critical for the future of food production.

Industry leaders continue to invent new fertilizer formulas, new application methods, and new crop genetics that can survive in soils that no longer function properly due to the effects of previous generations’ fertilizer use.  I equate this with the massive push for solar power as discussed in my previous article; officials are inventing more technology so we don’t have to change the root of the problem.  The greatest charade of technology is the promise that we can purchase our way into a brilliant future of less.

What is the solution?  Perseverance in the pursuit of better systems, I suppose.  Everyone wants to make a difference in the world, and understanding is the first step towards successful outcomes.  Now you can appreciate the value of healthy underground relationships, and you’ll recognize when the natural system is broken.  This knowledge will help make lifestyle decisions without being swayed by propaganda or societal inertia.

Humanity, in all its glamour, depends on an exchange program between plants and fungus.  Isn’t that the irony of life?  The greatest of things can be destroyed by the smallest.  And the greatest of things are quick to overlook ‘the unimportant stuff’.  Let us not forget to appreciate, my friends, the underpinnings our existence, for attention to the minutiae yields tremendous results for everything else we value.