How Soil Health Affects YOUR Health
Guest blogger Nancy W., of Regenerative Mama fame, is taking over the blog today to talk about a little known aspect to our health and wellness: soil health.
Why does soil health matter?
Did you know that the historic Dust Bowl of 1930s happened as a result of over tillage of the land? Severe drought coupled with a failure to apply sound farming practices resulted in the death of thousands of people and severely damaged the ecology of the land. There have been some efforts in soil conservation since but it has not been nearly enough. Modern farming practices are damaging the land, producing food that is subpar in nutrient density, and is full of harmful pesticides known to cause cancer and reproductive harm.
It wasn’t always this way
10’s of millions of years before the onset of the glacial era, millions of acres of rich, thick soil was created across America and Canada from the weathered rock of northern Canada. When US settlers arrived from Europe, the native grasslands had formed a super thick turf layer. The turf was so thick that the farmers had a hard time cutting into the land with their hand plows. What lay beneath the grasses, created millions of years ago, was called loess, some of the most biodiverse, microorganism-rich soil on earth.
The Environmental and Health Impacts of Tillage
John Deer wanted to make farming easier for farmers and did so by mechanizing the plow, introducing a process called tillage. In doing so however, he inadvertently ushered in the mass destruction and erosion of this beautiful loess soil. How? Well, tillage:
breaks up soil structure
speeds the decomposition and loss of a soil’s nutrients
increases soil erosion, and
destroys the habitat of helpful organisms.
Each of these negatively impacts soil quality, which also impacts the quality of the food grown IN that soil. Food grown in subpar soil is subpar in nutrients.
The Introduction of Fertilizers and Chemicals
Adding insult to injury for our soil, post the Second World War and Vietnam War, the United States redistributed chemicals leftover from the war in the form of fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides, and it became common practice to use these in everyday farming and production. Today, Four Billion Pounds of chemicals are sprayed on our soil, this wrecks havoc on soil health. Things like Glyphosate (aka Roundup), that were introduced in the US as spot treatments to be used sparingly to control weeds are now wildly used across the world in forests, pastures, urban areas, and in people’s homes.
Spraying Chemicals Damages More Than Just the Crops
Today, the United States sprays these microbiome-killing herbicides on everything from wheat to sugar beet crops to the tulips you buy for your home. The mass spraying of the these chemicals has effects far beyond just the soil or crop it is sprayed on. “Spray drift”, groundwater runoff, and deep water runoff mean they end up on everything and go everywhere:
For example, the runoff from chemical spraying has created 400 dead zones in our oceans.
In one prominent study on Roundup, Glyphosate was detected in 36% of a total of 154 water samples collected from Midwestern states, where glyphosate is extensively used on corn.
Excessive chemical spraying has also been linked to an increase in crop diseases, because these chemicals reduce the overall growth and vigor of plants and reduce the availability of nutrients required for disease resistance.
Not to mention, the affect of all of these chemicals on our health!
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention measure pesticides and other chemicals in the bodies of Americans every few years. In the most recent study, they tested for 212 chemicals, including 44 pesticides — and found most of them. The Pesticide Action Network points out that every infant born today carries a chemical body burden passed from mother to child during pregnancy. This burden will grow throughout a lifetime due to exposure to pesticides and other chemicals in our food, air, water and everyday products.
Scientists tell us that even in tiny doses, many pesticides can derail the delicate systems that control our development, health and reproduction, and the evidence continues to mount. We know more than enough to act.
You can ditch the grocery store, pick up the phone, and develop relationships with local, beyond organic and regenerative farmers who are using techniques that regenerate the land and protect your health. Or you can visit my website where I’ve done the work for you!
Check out my list of vetted farms and products, try our Trade Up service where you send me the top 20 things you buy at the grocery store and I give you a list of regeneratively farmed or beyond organic trades, or get a sampling of some of my FAVORITE regeneratively farmed/beyond organic dry goods with my Better Box.
You don’t have to be at the mercy of the big farms and their chemical practices. When you know your farmer suddenly this all changes. Take back the control of the home, take back the soil! Take back your health.
