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Does an apple a day really keep the doctor away? Not anymore,
according to soil health experts—unless the apple comes from a
tree grown in healthy, organic soil.
According to Australian soil scientist Christine Jones, as
reported by Courtney White in his book,
Grass, Soil, Hope,
apples have lost 80 percent of their vitamin C.
And that orange you just ate to help ward off a cold? It’s
entirely possible that it contains no vitamin C at all.
A
study looking at vegetables from 1930 to 1980, found that
iron levels had decreased by 22 percent, and calcium content by
19 percent. In the United Kingdom, from 1940 to 1990, copper
content in vegetables
fell by 76 percent, and calcium by 46 percent. The mineral
content in meat was also significantly reduced.
Food forms the building blocks of our bodies and health. Soil
forms the basis for healthy food. Unhealthy soil grows poor
quality food. And poor quality food means poor health.
Even our mental health is
linked to healthy soil, rich in
microbes.
So what’s happened to our soil? It’s been under assault since
the advent of modern industrial agriculture, with its monocrops,
fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides.
The term “biodiversity” evokes images of a rich variety of
plants—trees, flowers, grasses, fruits, vegetables—mixed in with
an equally diverse collection of animals, insects and wildlife,
all co-existing in a lush environment.
But there’s a whole world of biodiversity that lives beneath the
surface of the earth—at least in areas where the soil hasn’t
been destroyed. And that biodiversity is essential for the
growth of nutrient-rich foods.
The Earth’s soil is a dynamic mixture of rock particles, water,
gases, and microorganisms. Just one cup of soil contains more
microorganisms than there are people on the planet. These
diverse microbes compose a “soil food web,” a complex chain
beginning with organic residues like decaying plant and animal
matter, and ranging from bacteria and fungi to nematodes (worms)
and bugs. Just by going about their daily
lives in the dirt, these organisms decompose organic matter,
stabilize the soil and help convert nutrients from one chemical
form to another.
This rich diversity of microbes affects most soil properties,
including moisture content, structure, density, and nutrient
composition. When microbes are
lost, the properties of soil that allow it to stabilize
plants, convert chemicals, and perform other vital functions are
also reduced. The microbe content of soil—its biodiversity—is
nearly
synonymous with soil health and fertility.
As Daphne Millier, physician, author and professor,
writes, “soil teeming with a wide diversity of life
(especially bacteria, fungi, and nematodes) is more likely to
produce nutrient-dense food. Of course, this makes sense when
you understand that it is the cooperation between bacteria,
fungi, and plants’ roots (collectively referred to as the
rhizosphere) that is responsible for transferring carbon and
nutrients from the soil to the plant—and eventually to our
plates.”
Unfortunately, human interactions have negatively impacted
almost all aspects of soil health—we are responsible for the
degradation of more than 40
percent of worldwide agricultural land.
What have we done to the soil? For starters, we’ve destabilized
our soil ecosystems through the widespread and reckless use of
chemicals—herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers—that destroy
nearly everything in sight, except the plants themselves (many
of them genetically engineered to withstand herbicides and
pesticides). We end up with corn, soy, alfalfa and other crops
that may appear “healthy,” but in truth, are nutrient-deficient
because the nutrient-cycling quality of the soil has been
destroyed.
And we do it as a matter of routine, even though it’s
estimated that in the case of pesticides, for instance, only
0.1 percent of pesticides used actually interact with their
targets; the rest pollute plants and soil.
As any gardener knows, nitrogen is one of the three essential
soil nutrients. (Potassium and phosphorous are the other two).
In order for nitrogen to “feed” plants, it must first be
converted to ammonium or nitrate. Soil microbes, which are
critical to the
nitrogen cycle, achieve this conversion by feeding on
decaying plant matter, digesting the elemental nitrogen
contained in the decayed matter, and excreting nitrogen ions.
The newly available nitrogen is taken up by plants, where it
becomes available to humans either directly (when you eat the
plant) or indirectly (through consumption of grazing animals).
What happens when soil is stripped of the microbes required to
complete the nitrogen cycle? Farmers often resort to fertilizers
that contain nitrogen. But the over-use of fertilizers leads to
nutrients (like nitrogen) building up beyond the capacity of
soil microbes to convert it into usable, absorbable nutrients.
Too much nitrogen actually klls plant life.
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, factory
farming, where thousands of animals are confined in small spaces
and fed grains (supplemented with antibiotics and hormones),
rather than the forage nature intended, is behind much of the
damage humans have inflicted on the soil.
At the core of industrial food production is monoculture—the
practice of growing single crops intensively on a very large
scale. Corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton and rice are all commonly
grown this way in the United States.
Monoculture farming relies heavily on chemical inputs such as
synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.
In a monocropping system, what soil organisms aren’t destroyed
by chemicals and over-tilling, are edged out when their plant
symbionts are
lost.
The impact of the loss of soil biodiversity is
linked to the increase in asthma and allergies in western
societies. The human immune system is developed early in life
through exposure to environmental stimuli. When meat or
vegetables are lacking in certain bacteria and microbes,
children can’t formulate that early immune response and so may
develop an allergic reaction later in
life.
If the numbers are any indicator, there’s a crisis in worldwide
soil health that is rapidly becoming a crisis in human health.
Converting from factory farms and conventional crops to
pasture-grazing livestock and organic farming are the solution.
According to one
study, it’s possible to more than double soil biodiversity
by replacing conventional farming methods with organic farming.
But we shouldn’t be satisfied with simply scaling back the
problem.
Regenerative agriculture is a crucial tool for actively
reversing the harm caused by Big Ag practices. And there’s no
time to waste—scientists
say that a single square centimeter of soil can take from 20
to 1000 years to form.
Hannah Bewsey is a
writer/researcher for the Organic Consumers Association.
Katherine Paul is associate director of the Organic Consumers
Association.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_30899.cfm