Michael Martin Melendrez: Making the Soil-Food Web Work MP3

Michael Martin Melendrez spoke at the 2008 Acres U.S.A. conference about growing trees in difficult climates and soil conditions, especially in the American Southwest. "Most of the hard work of water and nutrient uptake is done by the biology in the soil," he says, expanding on this premise by discussing the negative influence that chemical fertilizers have on the reproductive systems of trees.

Michael Martin Meléndrez owns three New Mexico agri-businesses based out of Los Lunas, New Mexico. Michael is also the curator of a private botanical garden called the Arboretum Tomé, a site developed on toxic soil that was fixed with Michael's science. Today the arboretum has a huge collection of oaks of the world, many species of redwood, giant timber bamboo, maples, and others

Michael is a founding member of the International Oak Society, officially started in 1994 at the Morton Arboretum in Chicago, Illinois, now represented by plant scientists from every continent and many nations of the world.