Did you know that having more carbon in our soil is the best way to increase the nutritional content of food?
Recent research shows that by increasing the amount of carbon-rich organic matter, the abundance and activity of microbes in our soil, we harvest more nutritious food.
The researchers compared vitamin, mineral, and phytochemical concentrations in cereals and vegetables, and unsaturated fatty acid profiles in beef and pork, from ‘conventional’ farms and farms using regenerative practices.
The findings are significant as the nutritional content of our food has declined.
But adding more carbon and microbes to our soils using biofertilizers, compost, mulch, and other organic materials isn’t the solution. Organic matter and microbes, in and of themselves, don’t make our food more nutritious! To produce healthy food, we need ecosystems in our soils capable of recycling nutrients, supplying them to plants, and maintaining the soil infrastructure.
How do we repair our soil ecosystems?
By growing more vegetation in our veggie gardens, orchards and fields to provide a generous, diverse and preferably year-round food supply for the soil organisms that manage our soil ecosystems.
Using this eco-logical approach to growing food, we harvest nutritious food and our plants take carbon out of the atmosphere and into our soil