instead. The fish ate the critters and became perfectly healthy.

When the snails I had introduced with the pond mud became so
numerous that they covered the glass and began to obscure my view,
I'd crush a bunch of them against the wall of the aquarium and the
fish would gorge on fresh snail meat. The angelfish and guppies
especially began to look forward to my snail massacres and would
cluster around my hand when I put it into the tank. On a diet of
living things in a natural ecology even very difficult species began
breeding.

Organic and biological farmers consider modern "scientific" farming
practices to be a similar situation. Instead of imitating nature's
complex stability, industrial farmers use force, attempting to bend
an unnaturally simplified ecosystem to their will. As a result, most
agricultural districts are losing soil at a non-sustainable rate and
produce food of lowered nutritional content, resulting in decreasing
health for all the life forms eating the production of our farms.
Including us.

I am well aware that these condemnations may sound quite radical to
some readers. In a book this brief I cannot offer adequate support
for my concerns about soil fertility and the nation's health, but I
can refer the reader to the bibliography, where books about these
matters by writers far more sagely than I can be found. I especially
recommend the works of William Albrecht, Weston Price, Sir Robert
McCarrison, and Sir Albert Howard.

Making Humus