[2]William Albrecht was born of German ancestry on a farm on the prairie of north central Illinois in the Mid-West United States.

It enabled him to take a microbiological view of plant structure whilst addressing the soil as a variable environment (either favourable or unsuitable).

[1] Albrecht was a devout agronomist,[4] the foremost authority on the relation of soil fertility to human health and earned four degrees from the University of Illinois.

Instead, he believed that the benefit of liming soil stems from the additional calcium available to the plant, not the increase in pH.

[12]Throughout his life, Albrecht looked to nature to learn what optimizes soil, and attributing many common livestock diseases directly to those animals being fed poor quality feeds.

MVG[13] Albrecht was outspoken on matters of declining soil fertility, having identified that it was due to a lack of organic material, major elements, and trace minerals, and was thus responsible for poor crops and in turn for pathological conditions in animals fed deficient foods from such soils.

[14] He laid the blame as: "NPK formulas, (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) as legislated and enforced by State Departments of Agriculture, mean malnutrition, attack by insects, bacteria and fungi, weed takeover, crop loss in dry weather, and general loss of mental acuity in the population, leading to degenerative metabolic disease and early death".