In the last two centuries, many individuals investigated soil renewal, and left records of their insights, discoveries, methods, and materials. Their wisdom on soil fertility and human health is about the simple relationships of animal, vegetable and mineral, and about the power of the least—micro-nutrients and micro-organisms. Some of them warned of dangers to human health of continued mining of soils by chemical agriculture, but consistently their message fell on deaf ears, or they were silenced by government and industry.

Over and over again, in farm fields, forests, gardens, compost, and laboratories, these pioneers studied soils to discover the power of minerals and microbes to renew topsoil. Powdered rocks, composts and inoculants are the simple, timeless, natural materials they used to restore fertility and assure plant vitality. Stories of these experimenters and visionaries are told in the link-list below:

Julius Henzel was a German farmer who founded a movement to spread stone meal on farmland in the middle 19th century, before invention of soluble chemical fertilizers.

Dr. George Earp-Thomas, New Zealand research scientist, discovered early in the 20th century that New Jersey soils were losing their minerals—especially trace elements.

James Ruegg, retired New Jersey engineer, used ground-up lava rocks to restore the productivity of a worn-out farm early in the 20th century.

Rollin Anderson, driving his Model T Ford to investigate a gypsum deposit in Utah, picked a hitchhiker who told him about the pink hills near Nephi that was growing farmers the biggest, finest produce in the state.

Dr. Maynard Murray, medical doctor and research scientist, demonstratred the effectiveness of sea solids to restore trace elements to topsoil and grow superior crops and healthier animals.

Dr. Allen E. Banik was selected by TV comedy pioneer Art Linkletter in 1958 to fly into remote northern Pakistan to study the longevity and virility of the Hunza tribes. He found the secret in their soil and their diets.

Don Jansen bought Dr. Murray's hydroponic farm in south Florida, and continued Murray's work with sea solids, eventually founding Ocean-grown Foods of Fort Myers.

Barrie Oldfield, President of The Men of the Trees in Western Australia, leads research into using granite dust to renew and thus reforest The Outback's ancient weathered, worn-out soils.

Joseph Lionel discovered an ancient mineral spring deposit rich in trace elements in Colorado makes an excellent fertilizer for farmlands, and animal feed supplement.

John Hamaker, retired engineer in Missouri, discovered in the middle of the 20th century that glacial gravel dust can improve the yield quantity and quality of corn and grains from farmlands.

Tom MacDonald, an organic farmer in upstate New York, discovered in the 1980's the benefits of glacial gravel dust to create an abundance of healthy, disease resistant vegetable crops, and lower his fertilizer bills.

Dr. Robert Bruck, a North Carolina forestry expert, conducted experiments in the 1980's that showed rockdust trace element fertilizer renews dying forests and assures healthy, vigorous seedling growth on southern Appalachian mountaintops deforested by acid rain and air pollution.

Robert Able, salesman for sand & gravel industry, funded a three-year study by the USDA Agricultural Research Center of mineral fines and compost on corn, wheat and soybean rotation in which they performed as well or better than conventional fertilizers.

Tom Spereano, communications laser engineer and Missouri aquafarmer, found in 1997 that additing a dime of trace element fertilizer to his hydroponics beds boosted productivity over 20% to yield several extra dollars of tasty profit.

Jared Milarch, tree farmer and college student in northwest Michigan, discovered that a few ounces of trace element fertilizer produces bigger, stronger, healthier, faster maturing trees and tomatoes.

David Marsh describes the the role of minerals in evolution, biology and ecology, and the purposes and practices of remineralization as a strategy to restore the Earth, regenerate forests and revitalize our food quality.

Robert Cain, with a new Masters in agronomy, was hired in 1976 to run Dr. Maynard Murray's hydroponic farm in Ft. Myers, Florida. Bob recognized the brilliance of Murray's sea mineral methods, and tried to start a business delivering sea minerals to farmers. In 2003, Bob Cain and David Yarrow started SeaAgri, and by 2006 was shipping two million pounds to organic growers across North America.

Mohammad Yacob, an elder Muslim farmer in Aceh, Indonesia, whose farm was flooded when a tsunami—a 100-foot-high wall of seawater—swept away all his neighbors on December 26, 2004. The next year, he harvested the finest rice he had ever seen.

Mark Kuhar, editor of Pit and Quarry magazine, has initiated a second round of research by the aggregate (sand & gravel) industry into the use of industry by-product—mineral fines—for soil remineralization in agriculture.

David Yarrow, Earth advocate and activist explains the need to initiate Earth restoration, and to teach the next generations ecological literacy to prepare them or a lifetime of sustainable stewardship.

This is not a complete list of soil remineralization pioneers. This list is simply those individuals about whom I have some kind of written documentation. Many others have studied the minerals and microbes of the soil and left us their own legacy of research and writing about the key role the life of the soil plays in ecology, in human life and in the life of civilization.

Today, around the earth, we are facing a crisis of topsoil depletion and soil exhaustion. The usual cycles of topsoil depletion have been accelerated by deforestation, intensive agriculture and fosil fuel industrialization, and soil renegeneration systems have been disrupted by human intervention. In nearly every nation and on every continent there exists a critical and urgent need to restore soil by renewing the minerals and trace elements, and reviving their microbial life.