AdAgrA 2014 Conference

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Soil Health

Whitmar McConnell

1- Many Voices and the Model Soil

2- The Three Legged Stool Part 1, Chemistry

3- The Three Legged Stool Part 2, Physics

4- The Three Legged Stool Part 3, Biology

5- Environmental Influences, the Other Part of the Growing System

Shawn Speidel

6- Good Information, Good Decisions, Good Outcomes

7- Choosing the Right Resources, The End Matters

If that wasn't the 1 you were planning on being in, then I'm not sure where the rest of them are, but that's the 1 we're going to have here.

Let's go ahead and have a prayer and then we'll get right into it here.

Father in Heaven, this morning I just pray that You would hide me behind Your cross, that Your Spirit would overshadow my thoughts and my words, that Your glory might be revealed, in Jesus' name.

Well, my technology failed me, So I don't have any of my PowerPoint presentations because we're going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.

How many of you have no idea what you're doing?

At ASI a couple of years ago I was visiting a booth of a project in Charlotte, North Carolina and we were talking and he found out that I knew how to farm.

And he said to me, he said, could you come help us in North Carolina?

I just get on the tractor and I go out and go, but I just have no idea what I'm doing.

Well, God doesn't want us out there not knowing what we're doing.

He wants us to be fully informed and understand.

You'll see on some of the other sessions that they're going to talk about the big 3 problems.

Weeds, disease, insects, and various things like that.

Well, in this tract here, we're going to get at the root cause of all of those things.

Because as the Bible says, the curse causeless shall not come.

And in our modern agricultural culture, Our solution is to do what the people of Israel did to the messengers that God sent.

And so the idea is that if we kill the messenger somehow or another, the problem goes away.

But until we learn the lessons that God has for us, the problem won't go away.

And I believe that in what God has said, and also in what God has done, what God has made, his righteousness is testified to.

So in order for me, the title, we're looking at soil health.

And the title of this tract was supposed to be Some Seeds Fell, Understanding the Character of the Soil and Restoring the Image of God.

And so, there are a lot of voices out there saying, no, conventional agriculture is the way to do it, organic agriculture is the way to do it, biodynamics, permaculture, hydroponics, aeroponics, closed system.

How many of you have heard or seen or heard about the video Back to Eden?

The reality is, folks, that the devil is not going to give you the whole truth.

He's just not going to give you the whole truth.

And So we have all these voices out here, and please, if I say something and it offends you, I don't mean to offend you, but what I want to get to is what God is calling us to.

And we have to stop listening to the voices of the world, and we need to start listening to the Word of God and the truths that are there if we want to really prosper in what God's called us to do.

And so all of these schools of thought, all of these voices that you hear, which are confusing, the world is a confusing place.

And just in the last couple of years I've actually started doing consulting.

Not because I went looking for it, but because somebody came looking for me.

And unfortunately, it's taking so much time away from my growing that I'm either going to have to hire somebody or train somebody to do the consulting, or I'm going to have to hire somebody to do the farming.

But I love farming, and so it may be the other way.

I was going to try to shovel it off on Sean here, but he's now taken on a pretty big responsibility at Daystar Academy and has his work cut out for him there.

When God told Noah to build an ark, did he give him a catalog of boats and say, pick the 1 you like the best?

He gave him a pattern to follow, didn't he?

What about when Moses was told to build a sanctuary?

Did he give him a catalog of houses and buildings and say, whatever 1 of those you like, let's do that.

No, he said, build it according to the pattern.

I know we live in a world where everything goes and everything's the answer, but the reality, folks, is there's only 1 way.

And when we look at that, so what we have to do here is we're going to spend the majority of this session actually trying to get a biblical and scientific basis for what we're going to establish as a model soil.

Because that's what we want to know what God deems the correct model.

Because the truth is Christ is our model.

And so there's some criteria that we have to look at.

And then once we have those criteria, then we can look and say, okay, what meets that?

And then we're going to discuss what constitutes that model.

And we actually have to go back to the beginning, because we have to get some framework.

If you have Bibles you're welcome to follow me, but I want to go to the parable of the sower because we have to establish something else here too.

You've all heard the parable of the sower.

What is the, rather than me reading the whole thing, What is the problem in this parable?

It's the character of the soil is the problem, right?

And this parable, you know, the spirit of prophecy points out that there's there's a lot in this parable that we never avail ourselves of and The reality is that God spells out where the problem is right here.

It's in our character It's the character of our hearts It's incomplete and imbalanced And so let's back up now and let's go to the beginning.

And again, we have to establish what is the basis of what I'm going to share.

And believe it or not, all of those problems that they're gonna talk about, how they wrestle with them and all that stuff, when you restore a correct model, they go away, which is what they should do.

We're not about managing disease and pest pressure and weed pressure.

And I'm sure there's some of you out there saying, oh come on, that can't be.

But I've been doing this for 25 years and I assure you when God says what he says he means what he says.

And so let's go back to Genesis, the beginning.

Then God said, Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.

Series

Soil Health

1- Many Voices and the Model Soil

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Plenary

My Testimony

1h 44m

Seminar: Live the Light: Personal Testimonies

From Trials to Triumph, From Atheist to a Theist

48m

Emmanuel Institute Bootcamp

8. State of the Dead

1h 44m

Breakout Sessions C

A Special Key in Developing the Mind of Christ

1h

Sabbath School

52m

Breakout Session B

Metabolic Syndrome: Addressing Root Causes

55m

Nicholas Drozé Weekend

Through the Eyes of Our Beholder

28m

Testimony of Christian Berdahl

2h

Is Jesus The Only? Q&A

43m

ASI 2011 Seminar: Health

Triumph in Trial: Responding to Life’s Difficulties God’s Way

1h 15m

Educational Excellence

50m

ASI 2012 Seminar: Evangelism

Bible Studies Made Easy

1h 22m

Sound Doctrine