Krasilnikov may well have been the greatest soil microbiologist of his era, and Russians in general seem far ahead of us in this field.  It is worth taking a moment to ask why that is so.  American agricultural science is motivated by agribusiness, either by direct subsidy or indirectly through government because our government is often strongly influenced by major economic interests.  American agricultural research also exists in a relatively free market where at this moment in history, large quantities of manufactured materials are reliably and cheaply available.  Western agricultural science thus tends to seek solutions involving manufactured inputs.  After all, what good is a problem if you can’t solve it by profitably selling something.

But any Soviet agricultural researcher who solved problems by using factory products would be dooming their farmers to failure because the U.S.S.R.’s economic system was incapable of regularly supplying such items.  So logically, Soviet agronomy focused on more holistic, low-tech approaches such as manipulating the soil microecology.  For example, Americans scientifically increase soil nitrogen by spreading industrial chemicals; the Russians found low-tech ways to brew bacterial soups that inoculated a field with slightly more efficient nitrogen-fixing microorgamsms.

Soil microbiology is also a relatively inexpensive line of research that rewards mental cleverness over massive investment.  Multimillion dollar laboratories with high-tech equipment did not yield big answers when the study was new.  Perhaps in this biotech era, recombinant genetics will find high-tech ways to tailor make improved microorganisms and we’ll surpass the Russians.

Soil microorganism populations are incredibly high.  In productive soils there may be billions to the gram. (One gram of fluffy soil might fill 1/2 teaspoon.) Krasilnikov found great variations in bacterial counts.  Light-colored nonproductive earths of the North growing skimpy conifer trees or poor crops don’t contain very many microorganisms.  The rich, black, grain-producing soils of the Ukraine (like our midwestern corn belt) carry very large microbial populations.

One must be clever to study soil microbes and fungi.  Their life processes and ecological interactions can’t be easily observed directly in the soil with a microscope.  Usually, scientists study microorganisms by finding an artificial medium on which they grow well and observe the activities of a large colony or pure culture—­a very restricted view.  There probably are more species of microorganisms than all other living things combined, yet we often can’t identify one species from another similar one by their appearance.  We can generally classify bacteria by shape:  round ones, rod-shaped ones, spiral ones, etc.  We differentiate them by which antibiotic kills them and by which variety of artificial material they prefer to grow on.  Pathogens are recognized by their prey.  Still, most microbial activities remain a great mystery.