Talk:Bokashi (horticulture)

Benefits of organic matter in soil
"Another side effect is to increase the organic carbon content of the amended soil. Some of this is a relatively long-term carbon sink – insofar as the soil ecosystem creates humus – and some is temporary for as long as the richer ecosystem is sustained by measures such as permanent planting, no-till cultivation and organic mulch. An example of these measures is seen at the Ferme du Bec Hellouin in France.[18][24][25] Bokashi would therefore have potential uses in enabling communities to speed up the conversion of land from chemical to organic horticulture and agriculture, to regenerate degraded soil, and to develop urban and peri-urban horticulture close to the sources of input."

This citation indicates that the benefit of bokashi is conditional "insofar as the soil ecosystem creates humus" and refers to an organic farm in France to illustrate its effect. However, when checking the sources, I could not find any reference to bokashi. This seems to be misleading.

Hskoppek (talk) 09:58, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Accepted. I have altered the citation to a newer, encyclopaedic reference that thoroughly discusses the use of bokashi. Manofcarbon (talk) 12:21, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Drive-by tagging
Three tags have been added to this page (21 Nov 2021) without the tagger adding to the talk page to explain or justify them.

The article was accepted as Start-class and Low-importance. It has since been amended to account for criticisms and suggestions and to incorporate new information from the subject literature.

The first tag asks for a new lead section. Certainly there could be more info in it but I'd appreciate pointers to what would improve it. For reference, here is Wikipedia's own guidance:

"It should identify the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies. The notability of the article's subject is usually established in the first few sentences. As in the body of the article itself, the emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic, according to reliable, published sources. Apart from basic facts, significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article."

The second tag accuses the article of not having a neutral point of view. If the offending text is identified it will be corrected. Right now this looks like the tagger merely disagrees with something so I will remove this tag until actionable points are made. In fact the article has had to be defended from malicious edits by commercial interests who don't like its neutral doubts about their marketing messages. Perhaps the tagger is one more?

The third tag says the article may contain excessive or inappropriate references to self-published sources. No sources are from me or from any acquaintance. Some sources are amateur web pages, especially in the Alternative Approaches section where they explicitly indicate how users push the boundaries of mainstream bokashi. Their presence is one reason why this is a Start-class article, which is fair enough. Again I will remove this tag until actionable points are made. Manofcarbon (talk) 11:23, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose merging Effective microorganism into Bokashi (horticulture). I believe that bringing them together will enable a more complete explanation of the subject. Petecarney (talk) 09:33, 9 January 2023 (UTC)


 * We cannot do that, Pete. The Effective microorganism page makes clear that this is a trade name. As such I don't know why the Wikipedia powers that be haven't taken the page down. To their credit, various of the page's editors have soundly debunked several claims that were made in the original version. Your suggestion would (a) destroy their work, (b) ruin the balance of the Bokashi page (b) give EM some spurious credibility.
 * About the only thing that cannot be debunked is that EM starts lacto-fermentation. That's because a few of the bacteria in EM are lacto-fermentative! A culture of only those bacteria would do a better job and be less expensive, and thus encourage greater use of this valuable technology. Sadly, EM's brilliant marketing has given it a virtual monopoly in the public mind, where EM = Bokashi. I have no intention of adding to it by equating the two in Wikipedia.
 * I cannot explain this in the page as it is not referenceable scientific knowledge yet. One university is working on it. Manofcarbon (talk) 15:44, 17 February 2023 (UTC)