Finally I completed reading the book and got a good understanding on Ivan's findings and practical advices as well and on the evolution of things. As in our time he was inspired by the latest technology, in this case the deep plowing technology as quintessence of agricultural science until he questioned it as being too complex and too expensive. He tried shallow plowing and early and continuous maintenance of the soil as guiding principles. Until he made first successes he was not at all accepted and even laughed at. This in my eyes explains the verbal attacks against current practices at that time in some sequences in the book. After his method has shown successes he started to explain the method why it works so well and refined it. I think this is a good example of finding a solution in supporting nature rather than try to be better than nature. The book contains a lot of details on the interaction of living and nonliving things, a description of critical success factors of plant cultivation and a very practical guideline on the how to. There are advices one can use right away like preparation of soil, seeding, weed management and other things which are good for the understanding, as the soil irrigation by dew. Looking at todays agriculture we are still on the way to regenerative agriculture. The technology on machines and chemistry enhanced further and the understanding of processes of nature enhanced further - and there is still the same question - Do we need all this technology? Let me give you some links which I find very interesting in this respect: Feeding the soil, building top soil Establishing the right milieu for plants: Fungi Bacteria Ratio Design of permaculture Regenerative agriculture and Humus built up The way we treat the plants and soil is of course dependent of the quality of the food the customer wants. So whether the customer wants food grown w/o chemical fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides. Respective trademarks in Germany are 'bioland' and for a biodynamics standard 'demeter'. This trademarks are very well accepted by the customers. Looking at the bare fields of conventional agriculture a lot of changes are still required, but I think we are on the right track. PS: Now Valerie I know that you are a man, but ... Could you let me know a bit more about you? Heribert

Interesting, Netla, that you mention authors of a certain class. This was very true and not only of book writers. My grandparents were put off going to a Noel Coward musical show in the 1930s because they heard there were French words used which they wouldn't have understood. I read the script when I was studying drama in the 1950s and found there was only a small amount of French in the text but the rumour would have put off a lot of theatre goers. Such a pity! They were keen theatre patrons and would have enjoyed it.

Google Translate - you may already know of this site. It does a pretty good job. https://translate.google.com/

I have Journals 1 thru 16 and it's still far cheaper to buy the DVD with all the issues than to buy 17 thru 33 to complete my set. I prefer pages I can turn in my living room rather than viewing images on a computer, but the difference in price is $26.52 vs $205.40 if I did the conversion right. RobZ, does the $26.52 DVD price I calculated seem about right? It's odd that issue 33 is from 2015 yet the DVD face indicates issues up to 2014 but includes #33. I assume issue 33 is simply the cutoff point for the DVD. It's a tough job keeping articles flowing and publishing can be a nightmare, hopefully the ISS is still alive and has produced issues in 2014 and 2015. I had to drop my membership, any members here that can verify? Russ