WELCOME TO A NEW YEAR: Thanks for taking advantage of our fall sales and awards program. Two grower families have already qualified for a vacation week in 2002. One eastern seaboard grower has been successfully foliar feeding his hundreds of acres of soys with Fish Agra and Nitrozyme seaweed for the last several years. He uses no other fertilization and tries to feed with 1-2 qt. Fish Agra and 1 pint Nitrozyme at least twice a season. He likes to avoid taxes on profits, so he buys the next years Fish Agra and Nitrozyme on Dec 31 and CSI receives the check in the next year so that he qualifies for a vacation week in the first few days of the new year. An Oklahoma grazier has arranged for 9-10 loads of Tenn. Phos. for pickup throughout this spring as back hauls for his grain delivery to the east coast, so he will hit the $10,000 purchase mark too. Congratulations!

CROP PROTECTION FROM DAY ONE: Several times last summer we received calls from certified organic growers on Friday afternoon [literally], wanting products to rescue their certified crops. Some were aware of our products and technology while others were new callers who found our ad in a desperate search. Crop disease and insect resistance is seated in soil fertility. You cannot expect to have your fertility up to par in the first few years of sustainable/organic growing. Neither can you expect that the weather and earth energy changes aren’t going to throw you a curve some years even though you didn’t have a “problem” before. My humble suggestion, for those of you with “high value”, susceptible crops, that don’t want to use chemical rescue, is to consider CropGuard in Row. CGR is a combination of garlic juice [not oil] and yucca. It is specifically designed by the manufacturer of RepellEX and CropGuard to provide a reasonable cost product to use in the row. The garlic provides highly available selenium and sulfur compounds that are important components of immunity in plant, animal and human. And they are there for your plant when the first root comes out! The yucca compoment provides major biological stimulation as well as anti-nematode, fungal, insect resistance etc. It is packaged in 15 gallon [for UPS] or 30 gallon plastic drums. AND GUESS WHAT? You can use any left over on a foliar basis to continue the immunity building/sustaining and actually stop the feeding of soft-bodied sucking and chewing insects! NO MORE FRANTIC CALLS!

BACTERIA/FUNGAL BALANCE: Dr. Elaine Ingram has certainly made her point about the importance of the bacterial and fungal ratios for optimum crop production. Most tilled cropland becomes highly dominated by bacteria. One of the reasons our Fish Agra has performed so well is that it promotes fungal growth. When used in the row, it helps to restore the critical balance of fungal to bacterial counts. It can be mixed in with the CropGuard in Row to make a potent starter. Both products are fully organic certified.

WHAT IS THE BEST APPROACH?: There are many ways to bring a soil back into biologically based fertility. The “oldest” of the modern scientific ways was the Albrecht Method of balancing minerals based on a CEC test, and then expecting nature to respond when the balances were close enough to open up the soil so that air and water could penetrate and soil microorganism would return. Dr. Reams took a little different tack and looked at the available nutrients instead. In the 80’s my former company, TransNational Agronomy, combined the benefits of both and added the concept of sugar and molasses to speed up activation of bacteria before the “perfect balance” was obtained. We also heavily promoted the use of liquid chelated calcium as a way of speeding up the process. Then Dr. Callahan introduced us to paramagnetism. Along the way, several companies introduced single product recovery systems. The product was usually a broad spectrum trace mineral, finely ground, that provided major microorganism stimulation. Sometimes the product was classified as a humate as they contained humic/fulvic acids and sometimes they were clays with little or no carbon. Now we have radionic or biodynamic broadcasting towers as well as sound machines. It is confusing, but don’t let that stop you from beginning somewhere! Usually, a combination of methods works best. Don’t hesitate to follow your head or your heart. Please call if we can be of help in sorting it out.

NEW MINERAL PRODUCT: CSI can now offer you a chance to use the broad spectrum mineral product approach. We have been approved as brokers for Azomite, from Utah. Prior to this year, we have avoided the product because of price and extreme fineness. The company is now grinding an Ag Grade mesh that is still fine enough to be reactive, but not in a flour state. The price has dropped dramatically when purchased in semi-load quantities. It is still too fine for ordinary dump trucks, so we are offering it in Ton Bulk Bags and 40 lb. bag truckloads. Application rates can vary from 200 lb. to a ton or more per acre.

TRACE MINERALS: Most of the soil samples coming through our lab are deficient in one or more trace minerals. When we make our recommendations, we usually suggest the most basic, least expensive [per lb. of actual mineral] source which is usually a sulfate or oxide or in the case of Boron, a Sodium Borate, such as Solubor. We get many calls from growers saying that their local elevator doesn’t carry one or more of the trace minerals. We usually advise them to ask the local outlet to call up to their next level of distribution and that sometimes solves the problem. However, we also find out that growers sometimes ignore our recommendations to spread the dry minerals or their outlet just doesn’t have the dry sulfates. In an effort to make it easier or more convenient to use the essential trace minerals, we are offering a line of “double strength” liquid trace minerals in 2 x 21/2 cases. These are not certified organic, but they are quite inexpensive and of very high quality. Most of them are in a nitrate form, which is very efficient for uptake and does not have the problems of EDTA chelates. The only one not available is Cobalt, but our Nitrozyme product will take care of that. See the 2002 price list for Eezy Grow “Double Strength” Trace Minerals.

TRACE MINERALS FOR VERY SMALL GROWERS OR GARDENS: The following are grocery store substitutes for the common trace minerals. Manganese = Cranberry Juice; Boron = Boraxo Soap; Cobalt and Molybdenum = Vita B and Seaweed; Zinc, Copper, Iron = pieces of scrape metal, nails or tubing, etc. soaked in 1:1 vinegar and water.

BACK ISSUES OF NEWSLETTERS: Please go to our web site at to find all our back issues plus all current pricing and info. Please notify us at 1-800-260-7933 if anything isn’t working right.

SOUND MACHINES AND TOWERS: Growers call and ask, “which would be better for my operation?” Of course there is no “correct” answer. The Towers were developed/proven on small vegetable acres, but now they cover up to 2000 acres, which makes them very cost effective [50 cents/acre]. In Australia, two Towers more then paid for themselves when they appeared to protect two large paddocks of cotton from hail, while the immediate downwind paddock was severely damaged. I’ll have placed the third tower on the cotton field by the time you get this letter. A large acreage melon grower in Queensland, Au. placed a Veges sound machine last spring after some paddocks had been planted and before others had gone in. I am still waiting for the final tabulated results, but the estimate was that it would be the best production ever. A Colorado vegetable grower has decided to do both for this spring, even though they grow less than 15 acres of produce. His overall costs of the equipment, installation and consulting fees will come out to $25/acre per year if amortized over a ten year period. This is a pittance compared his current gross per acre and I am sure his volume of production will go up and input costs will go down. He may also get some bad weather protection and a chance to draw in moisture.

Towers are readily available, but if you want a sound machine for spring, you need to order it now, as they are built on demand in minimum batches of 10. It takes at least 30 days after placement of our order for you to receive a machine. Ten machines is too big an order for CSI to finance without orders from you and our current inventory is zero.

SOME ESOTERIC STUFF: Esoteric means, “meant for or understood by a select few.” After putting in at least 7 Towers in the US and 8-9 in Au., I have developed a much stronger belief in “human intentionality”. That is a scientific way of referring to a “prayer”. Now matter what words you use, it sure works in agriculture. When I place Towers on a farm, I make sure it is a family affair. I teach all those who are going to be present to dowse for earth energy lines, called ley lines, with dowsing rods and to be able to see the energy patterns coming off of living objects like trees, livestock, people etc. Then we go out to the area where the tower is “supposed” to go in. At that point, I have the family [and sometimes farm workers too] find the exact spot where major energy lines converge. This spot will allow the energy produced by the Tower to spread over the farm. First we dig a hole and put the tower in without any BD energy pattern sources. Within seconds of having the tower placed like a fence post, it begins to put out a visible energy pattern. (Most people observe it as blue.) Next, I have a family member put the BD energy pattern tubes in the upper and lower wells. Again, within seconds, the Tower starts shooting out visible energy patterns from the top of the tower.

Then comes the mind-boggling part. The family has 2 copies of the map property with their boundaries clearly marked. On the back of each map, they have written an intentionality statement [prayer for what they want to happen on their farm] concerning the health and well being of the crops, livestock and people on their operation. The statement also confirms that they only want their intentions to effect the area within the map boundaries [their property]. They place a copy of the map/statement/prayer in the upper and lower wells. Again, within seconds, it looks like an unseen hand comes down and pushes the energy that had been shooting out the top out over the entire field/property.

On two different farms, some workers were able to observe, with their peripheral vision, what they described as small blue dots of energy in an organized pattern spreading out to the exact boundaries of the property. All family members have been able to detect the boundary of the Tower energy field at the boundary of their farm. To confirm/check the observations, we removed the maps from the wells and the workers were able to see the energy patterns start to break up and become more chaotic and dowsing did not detect the edges of the energy field at the property boundaries. NOW THAT’S ESOTERIC!

HUMAN HEALTH: Louisa and I have been “health nuts” since the early 70’s. We know that minerals are the basis of all life on earth. We also know that getting minerals into a plant animal or human is one thing, but having them available or properly utilized is another. We have recently become involved with some new technology, which has greatly improved the efficiency of minerals for human use[From 10-15% to 90-95%]. We intend to put out a mailing about the Eniva minerals to friends and family because we have seen such rapid, amazing results on ourselves and others. Louisa has lowered the blood test counts for arthritis to normal levels, gotten rid of a mycoplasma infection without the usually aggressive antibiotic treatments required, and has a bone density of 122% of normal for her age. If you have a sincere interest and would like to receive the mailing, please let us know by post card or phone. Eniva is sold by multilevel marketing, but you can purchase the minerals without participating in the MLM if you so choose. You can check out Eniva at . Please call CSI if you would like to purchase any product.

STAYING ON OUR MAILING LIST: If you do not wish to receive this newsletter and pricing etc., please have the courtesy to use our toll free # or send a post card to remove your name. Each envelope, contents and postage we send out represents over a $1.00. We have close to 900 on our current list. Thanks!

WEED CONTROL: Weeds need nitrogen to grow just like economic crops. Other than last falls or this springs general application of ammonium sulfate, try to put any additional applications only offset in the rows at planting or as sidedressing. This avoids between row fertilization of weeds.

SCHEDULE: Phil will be in Australia most of the last half of March and June and probably again in Sept. Louisa will run the office as well as the lab in my absence. Even when both of us are out-of-town, we check our recorded messages as often as possible. Please order early to avoid delays at planting time caused by manufacturers running out of inventory. You can always take shipping at a later date, once order is placed.

ACRES USA: The annual conference will be in Indianapolis, IN next year and hopefully a week later so as not to interfere with the big Great Lakes Fruit & Vegetable Show in Mich.

GOOD LUCK, GOOD HEALTH AND GOOD GROWING IN 2002. Phil & Louisa.