Spring 2021 EN

Biogas Journal | Spring_2021 English Issue
Paying more attention to the soil
That brings us to the center of the issue. “Unfortunately,
a lot of farmers don’t realize the consequences of
their methods of cultivation and the damage they do to
the soil until a lot later,” Schmidt complains. “The situation
on some of the farms is deteriorating year by year,
the crop yields are declining and cows in the stables
are becoming increasingly ill.” Often, by the time he is
consulted as an expert on animal health and nutrition
at the consultancy firm “mmb”, it is too late.
Uwe Schmidt and his employees have been traveling
to dairy farms throughout Germany, the Baltic states
and other places for the last twenty years to revitalize
the performance and health of farm animals. Schmidt
feels noticeably enthusiastic about healthy livestock;
he himself kept a small herd of suckler cows on his own
land for many years. He feels that the vitality of the cattle
essentially shows whether the agricultural system on
the farms is still working.
That is why a holistic approach to animals, health,
nutrition, excretions, dung, liquid manure, fermented
manure and ultimately soil and plant growth are so extremely
important to sixty-five year old Schmidt. “I’ve
seen so many stables in my consultancy work. I usually
see at first glance what is going wrong,” said Schmidt.
“I can even smell it. If it smells bad, something is out
of balance.”
He has no doubt that humification is important for soil
life and soil structure – not to mention the integration
of climate-friendly carbon. That is why he regrets that
a large percentage of farmers still do not care enough
about it. “They still regard liquid manure as something
like waste. They are not aware of the fact that their liquid
manure is very valuable,” he emphasized. “In the
end, we could fertilize our fields adequately with farm
manure without using any mineral fertilizers.”
He continued by saying that this can only be done
through biological diversity on the fields and in the
soil. Which is why he uses a special herb biology to
“In the end, we could fertilize our fields
adequately with farm manure without
using any mineral fertilizers”
Uwe Schmidt
reactivate the biology in dairy feed that has a favorable
impact on the health of the cows’ liver, on their hooves
and ultimately on the (rotting) liquid manure. “But if
everything is biologically dead, we shouldn’t be surprised
if the soil is ultimately dead, too,” says Schmidt,
with a warning against the stubborn continuation of
conventional agriculture that always lags too much behind
quantitative reasoning.
It is not surprising that Uwe Schmidt works with Dr.
Sonja Dreymann. The soil expert, who lives in Kiel,
pursues similar approaches as those of Schmidt.
Maize treated with plant
biology compared with
untreated crop.
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