Yeah, I'd say thats alive. I started growing organics and everything I read said the salt will basically choke out most, not all of the beni's. They just said to keep inoculating the soil. But now I'm running whats said to be half organic or Natural and half salts. Not 100% on how they got it to work or anything but I can say there working great. So the salts are not killing my beni's either I guess.