Rooted in Wellness: How Soil Health Shapes Your Diet's Nutritional Value
Embracing regenerative agriculture and ecological thinking, impact on soil health and nutrient density.
Hi there! Join Fernanda Eats Plants as we explore the plant-based diet world with an axis on health. Stay tuned every Monday for evidence-based content. This is a place to get inspired and exchange. Thank you for reading, sharing, and taking the best care of your health.
Takeaways
The health of our soils is endangered
Regenerative agriculture improves soil health, including its organic matter
Enhancing the nutritional value of foods with regenerative farming practices is possible
“The nutrient density in the foods we produce has declined enormously in the last few decades,” says Jake Robinson in his fascinating book Invisible Friends. Jake is a researcher in the fields of ecosystem restoration and microbial ecology. His work points out how microbes shape our lives and our environments. He exemplifies further, “Some reports suggest you’ll need to eat:
🥕🥕🥕🥕 (4 carrots) today to get the same amount of magnesium from one carrot as you did in 1940, or 🍎x26 (26 apples!) today to get the same amount of iron from a single apple back in the 40s."🥺 Holy smokes! And this isn’t really big news…
Authors studied U.S. Department of Agriculture nutritional data from 1950 and 1999 for 43 different vegetables and fruits, finding “reliable declines” in the amount of protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, vitamin B2, and vitamin C over the past half-century.1 This research outcome dates back to 2004.
How is this decline in nutrients possible?
🙉 The same study above concludes that one explanation goes to the breeding of new varieties of crops. While improving yield, pest resistance, climate adaptability, crop size, and rapid growth, breeding did not favor the crops’ ability to synthesize or uptake nutrients at the same pace as their growth.
🙈 Soil depletion is another factor in the equation. Away from our visible sight, symbiotic communities of soil bacteria and fungi work relentlessly as plant nutrient providers. Today, we know that farm practices shape these communities and, therefore, the types and quantities of health-promoting compounds that the invisible creatures will produce, be absorbed by plants, and ultimately be consumed by humans.2
What transformation is needed to go back on track?
Healthier soils.
🪱 Studies point to regenerative agriculture to improve soil health, stop erosion, and enhance soil organic carbon (organic matter), microbial diversity, and richness.3
🌳 Regenerative agriculture has been on my mind as we move along with a project to rewild and restore the biodiversity in our plot of arid-prone land. This is not a novel way of cultivating. On the opposite, it derives from traditional practices that are environmentally conducive and soil-respectful. In a nutshell, we are considering allowing different types of trees and vegetables to cohabit together. We plan to put into practice the fundamental principles of regenerative agriculture:4
1️⃣ Little machinery usage to ensure minimal tillage
2️⃣ Cover cropping to armor the soil with vegetative litter
3️⃣ Maximize the diversity of plants, animals, and microbes
4️⃣ Leave roots in the ground for as long as possible to capture carbon from the atmosphere and feed it to the microbes in the soil
5️⃣ Integrate livestock (this point is under debate, although we know animals bring microbiology and fertility back to the degraded soils.)
What brought us to this adventure?
🐾🪲 The desire to bring biodiversity back into our daily lives and cultivate nutritious foods ourselves. But will our food be more nutritious than any other available in the markets? This is an excellent question that remains partially open. We hope so and have good reasons to believe our approach goes in that direction (see below). However, our current soil has suffered from decades of monoculture. Although we have been regenerating it in the past few years, much more remains to be done to allow the intricate microbial and invisible network to return and finally flourish.
At this point, you might ask yourself, “To what extent does regenerative agriculture impact the nutrition of our crops?”
Preliminary comparison of regenerative vs conventional farming
Montgomery and colleagues investigated the impact of soil health on the nutrient density of crops by analyzing soil organic matter content and soil health scores on 8 pairs of regenerative and conventional farms across the USA (North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, Tennessee, Kansas, North Dakota, and Montana).5
What is exciting?
😀 The higher micronutrient content of crops from regenerative farming practices suggests that these methods may enhance the nutritional value of foods. This, in turn, may impact human health and the risk of chronic diseases.
Nevertheless, understanding the complexity of soil ecology and the human microbiome presents challenges in linking soil health to human health more comprehensively. Still, it is fantastic to see nascent research going in this direction.
🌾 Next time you go to a farmer’s market, discover how your favorite veggie and fruit suppliers work on their lands. It might be interesting to understand why they follow environmentally conducive practices (or not).
Inspiration read
For those of you who are interested in the beauty of the invisible ecosystems surrounding us, I recommend ‘Invisible Friends’ by Jake Robinson. He covers so much ground, from human and soil microbiomes to building microbiome-respectful architectures. Can you imagine how it could be to invite invisible biodiversity into our homes? Lush green walls inhabited by tiny creatures and health-promoting invisible friends seem to be one idea… Quite a shift from today’s sterile indoor reality, don’t you agree?
On top of it, Jake has a particularly entertaining narrative.
On another note, while I wrote this article, I started reading ‘What Your Food Ate’ by David Montgomery and Anne Biklé. It is a deep dive into the world of soil. I’ll undoubtedly return to the topic with recent, crispy scientific info in future newsletter numbers. Stay tuned.
💚 Until next week, keep the biodiversity in, on, and around you healthy!
“It is health that is real wealth” - Mahatma GandhiXoxo,
Fernanda
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Press article: Dirt Poor: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? Scientific American, 2011 (link)
Singh I. et al., Regenerative agriculture augments bacterial community structure for a healthier soil and agriculture. Frontiers in Agronomy, 2023 (link)