Healthy Soil is Healthy Food
This article by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization discusses the nutritional role of soil health in the context of modern challenges of climate change, a booming global population and developing the Global South equitably and sustainably. This article’s emphasis on sustainably managing land with a focus on the microbial health in the soil — and its explanation of why — is fundamental to our vision at Precision Ecology. By maximizing our understanding of the farm’s unique terrain from the nutrient distribution in the soil to the social and administrative channels the farmer must navigate, we are seeking to bring the most advanced tools for creating efficient soil health to farmers everywhere as a service.
It is always important to emphasize the connection between the nutrients in the ground and those in our stomach because they have such a direct, yet often overlooked relationship with one another. As our soil suffers from industrial agriculture practices the food we consume from those systems offers us less and less nutritional value. Since the introduction of pesticides in the 1950s critical vegetables have fallen to as little as one percent of their previous levels of nutritional value.
It is especially important that this study comes from the Food and Agriculture Organization because it is often the countries and people with the least resources who are most affected by this trend. By bringing these issues to light the FAO does an important job of providing this critical information to these populations in need, and to those in positions to create the change they require. At Precision Ecology we see it as our responsibility to be one of the organizations making that change.
-Benjamin Kling
Director of Administration
