The Fungi Working on Your Farm and the Changing Life of Soil
A fungus barely two millimetres across can fire a packet of spores several metres through the air. Another builds a microscopic net, catches a passing worm and digests it.
These are real organisms with specialised ways of surviving, feeding and reproducing. Their lives reveal something farmers have good reason to understand: the conditions we create in soil influence what can live there, what becomes dominant and what struggles to persist.
Change the soil environment and you change what can thrive there.
The cannonball fungus, Sphaerobolus stellatus, is a remarkable place to begin. Its tiny fruiting body opens into a star-shaped cup containing a single packet of spores. As water enters specialised cells, tension builds. An inner membrane suddenly turns inside out and launches the packet into the air.
Credit: Photo: Sheryl Holliday / Nature Glenelg Trust.
The Australian National Botanic Gardens describes a firing distance of up to six metres. For an organism only a couple of millimetres wide, that is an extraordinary piece of biological engineering. www.anbg.gov.au
The purpose is dispersal. The fungus sends its next generation away from the parent towards another potential food source.
Italian naturalist Pier Antonio Micheli described and illustrated it in 1729. Almost three centuries later, its tiny artillery still catches people by surprise. In Australia, it can be found on decaying timber and wood chips, including garden mulch. www.anbg.gov.au
Where did this come from?
Sometimes the organism or its spores arrived with the mulch. Sometimes spores were already present and suitable conditions allowed them to grow. Damp organic material provides an opportunity, and the fungus takes it. extension.psu.edu
Cannonball fungus is a decomposer. The nuisance comes when its sticky spore packets land on buildings, windows or vehicles and become difficult to remove. It is not the livestock parasite discussed later in this story, and its presence alone does not establish that the soil is damaged. www.udel.edu
Take note: Every unfamiliar fungus is not a disease, and every organism we find inconvenient is not an enemy of the farm.
Elsewhere in the same biological world are fungi that actively hunt.
Arthrobotrys oligospora can grow on organic material, then produce adhesive trapping networks in response to nematodes, microscopic roundworms. Once caught, the nematode becomes a source of nutrients, including nitrogen. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Researchers have identified receptors that help this fungus recognise chemical signals from its prey. Under suitable conditions, detecting those signals triggers the development of traps.
A fungus can sense that a potential meal is nearby and change its growth to capture it. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
For livestock producers, related biological research has already moved into practical trials.
Australian researchers tested a particular strain of the predatory fungus Duddingtonia flagrans, supplied through a livestock feed supplement. Its spores pass into dung, where the fungus can trap developing parasitic nematode larvae before they migrate onto surrounding pasture.
Trials in Queensland and New South Wales reported reductions of 53–99% in larvae on pasture around dung from treated horses, cattle and goats over eight weeks. These were results from a specific fungal strain, dose and delivery system. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
The broader lesson is substantial. A parasite’s success depends partly on what happens outside the animal, in an environment where other organisms can interrupt its life cycle.
The same principle extends to crop roots.
Research into disease-suppressive soils has identified microbial communities that help protect plants against particular soil-borne pathogens. A study published in Science identified bacterial groups and genes involved in suppressing a fungal root pathogen, demonstrating the protective capabilities of the community around roots. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
This is where the farming conversation needs to widen.
Identifying a troublesome organism is essential. Understanding why it keeps succeeding is equally valuable. What food supports it? What moisture conditions favour it? What competitors or predators are present? What is happening around the roots?
Those questions bring us to Earthfood.
Earthfood Life is a certified organic living soil microbial system intended to support nutrient cycling, soil structure and root-zone function. The purpose is to rebuild biological work within the soil, with attention to the conditions in which roots and their surrounding communities function.
As those conditions change, the opportunities available to different organisms can change too. A problem favoured by the previous environment may become less persistent if the conditions supporting it are reduced.
That is the ecological reasoning behind Earthfood’s approach. It gives us a basis for investigating changes in pest and disease pressure alongside changes in soil function. Earthfood can assist in consummation of cannonball fungus and provides environments that produces the livestock-parasite reductions measured in the separate fungal trials, because the ancient soil microbial function has a history in soil repair merely from the capabilities of the environmental changeforce.
The practical task is to follow the changes: roots, aggregation, infiltration, plant performance and the persistence of the particular problem. Document what happened, compare areas where possible and establish which explanation the evidence supports.
Farmers already understand the power of changing conditions. A paddock responds differently when drainage improves, groundcover returns or desirable pasture establishes. Its biological inhabitants respond to conditions as well.
The cannonball fungus shows us how specialised a decomposer can be. The carnivorous fungi reveal predators working at a scale we rarely see. Together, they offer a glimpse of the capabilities already present in the living world.
For Earthfood, that is a compelling reason to keep working on the soil environment itself.
Change the soil environment and you change what can thrive there. The next step is to observe and measure what follows.
Illustration in banner: Illustration of cannonball fungi on decaying wood beside a separate magnified view of nematode-trapping fungal networks near plant roots.