Good food security and nutrition start with plentiful and healthy food. Abundant, nutritious food starts with good seeds and, perhaps more importantly, good soil.
David Montgomery and Anne Biklé are book authors and fellow food security advocates. David has a background in geology and biology. Anne is a biologist and science writer. Together, they’re a powerful pair of public speakers spreading the word about the benefits of regenerative agriculture and why it’s not only good for farmers, but also good for human health.
It all starts with the soil, they said.
“What’s good for the soil, our crops, and our livestock is good for us, too”, Anne said.
“The foundation for healthy, fertile soils”
Last Friday, November 8, Grow Further hosted a special webinar featuring David and Anne, part of our Virtual Speaker Series. The title of the talk was “The Soil-Body Connection: Unveiling the Impact of Agriculture on our Health.” It received a lot of positive feedback. David and Anne’s presentation was also the perfect follow-up to a recent report appearing in our newsletter discussing the importance of the gut microbiome to human health.
In the event, they delved deeper into the literal “roots” of nutrition, delivering a fascinating explanation for how regenerative agricultural practices that foster soil rich in organic matter lead to healthier, more nutritious crops, and how our own internal microbiomes take advantage of these nutrient-dense crops to deliver the benefits to our bodies.
David kicked things off with a discussion on regenerative agriculture. He explained how alternative, more eco-friendly farming techniques prevent erosion and encourage better soil health.
Farm soil degradation and erosion are serious problems worldwide. “We’re on track over the course of this century to lose about a third of our food production capacity as our population continues to rise,” David warned, pointing to a statistic showing that 0.3% of the world’s food producing capacity is lost to soil degradation every year. That may not seem like a lot, but after a decade it amounts to a huge loss in productive farm soil.
The solution is simple, David said: keep the soil covered in plants, which means no-till agriculture.
“Heavy, routine tillage is a recipe for losing soil,” as is the overuse of nitrogen fertilizers, he said.
Other tricks include abandoning monocropping to plant a variety of different crops in the same field. He also advised against letting fields go fallow and other soil-unfriendly farming practices.
David told the audience that there are four basic steps to regenerative agriculture, which his research shows leads to healthier soils, more nutritious crops, higher crop yields, and better profits for farmers. He presented evidence from Ohio and Ghana to make the case.
Step one is to minimize any physical or chemical disturbances to the underlying soil. That means “ditching the plow” in favor of low or no tillage, he said, along with much lower nitrogen use.
The next step is to keep the soil “always covered with living plants,” which means “keeping living roots in the soil.” As he explained it, this step physically prevents erosion at the surface. The roots also help retain the soil’s beneficial microbes.
Step three is to plant a greater diversity of crops. A more biodiverse field leads to a greater variety of soil microbes that encourage healthy plant development.
Step four involves the “reintegration of animals in cropping systems” since animals’ manure helps return nutrients to the soil.
The result is blacker, richer soils high in organic matter, soil ideal for plants to draw energy and nutrition from. And that’s good for us because the same nutrients that feed healthy plants feed and help humans, as well.
Meanwhile, farmers gain better yields and better profits in turn. That goes for large-scale farmers and smallholder farmers in places like Ghana.
“Environmentalism and economics line up in this case,” David said.
The microbiome factor
Anne took over the second half of the presentation to discuss how soil nutrients end up nurturing us through the foods we eat.
“Really, what it comes down to with sort of these connections between agriculture and human health are that there’s these four sort of categories of compounds and nutrients,” she explained. Anne and David call these the “Fab Four,” a playful reference to the Beatles.
The Fab Four are micronutrients, fat balance, phytochemicals, and microbial metabolites. These four factors hold the key to understanding how the nutrition plants draw from good soil ends up in our bodies. Encouraging soils to enrich foods with the Fab Four yields real rewards for human nutrition, Anne explained.
During her talk, Anne pointed to data showing foods like cabbage, corn, peas, soybeans, and sorghum grown using regenerative agricultural techniques boast 15% to 20% more phytochemicals than crops grown at conventional farms. Phytochemicals are naturally occurring chemical compounds that help plants fight diseases. Crops grown using regenerative agricultural techniques also boast 15% to 30% more micronutrients.
It’s all thanks to healthy soil microbiomes, which later feed and fuel the microbial colonies of beneficial bacteria found within our own bodies.
“This place beneath our feet is quite special,” Anne said, referring to the soil, “and it’s paramount that we let it function as it’s supposed to.”
Grow Further is grateful for Anne and David taking the time to share their knowledge with us and our members and friends. We highly recommend you take the time to view their presentation if you couldn’t catch it last week. You can find the link here.
David and Anne’s talk was a fascinating tour of how simple yet efficient farming practices can encourage complex and healthy colonies of microorganisms that nourish soil, crops, and people. Because, as Anne put it, ultimately what’s good for soil is good for us.
— Grow Further
