Soil Health is Also Human Health
It is estimated that 95% of our food is produced directly or indirectly from the soil. It’s no secret that soils are the foundation of our food system. Like all living things, our food needs a healthy environment to live and grow well. During the last decades of our agriculture, soils have been degraded, which has caused a low environment for the quality of food.
Today, we produce food with excessive application of synthetic inputs. But if we want to use and depend less on these synthetic inputs, it is necessary to change the form of production from a conventional system to a more environmentally friendly one. Soil is the source of nutrients for plants, which implies that it is nutrition for us humans. From this reading, I want you to take the phrase “we are what we eat” because integrating the right conditions to produce our food is key to human health. Due to the excessive use of agrochemicals, our foods can not only lose nutritional quality but also affect the quality of the environment. That is why it is essential to emphasize the importance of healthy soils, to recover the nutritional quality of our food, make changes to improve the quality of our health and take care of the environment.
To give you a better idea, healthy soil is a living and dynamic ecosystem, full of microscopic and larger organisms that perform many vital functions, including transforming organic nutrients into minerals for plants. Not to mention that healthy soils contribute to mitigating climate change (FAO, 2015).
All this dynamic process takes time to use, and conventional agriculture does not wait for these processes to happen naturally. Thanks to the indiscriminate use of synthetic inputs (fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, etc.), today, we find ourselves in need to talk about recovering the health of soils. First, because we are clear that almost all our food comes from it. Second, because we have come to understand that it is not enough to produce quantity, we have already executed that quite well, but also quality. From the amount to quality, the recovery of soils plays a vital role in the quality of food, as a deteriorated soil with harmful agricultural technology is giving us large quantities of vegetables and fruits with a reduction in their nutritional value.
A report made by the University of Texas summarizes studies clarifying that, during the last 50 years, the increase in production due to fertilization, irrigation, and other factors, decreases the concentration of vitamins and minerals in plants. One of the studies took 17 vegetables, produced conventionally, and reported a significant decrease in nutrients such as magnesium and zinc, compared to those grown organically. Another case was an experiment carried out with 16 growers in Mexico. The experiment lasted three years; At the end of the study, they noticed that each year the capacity for concentrating minerals in plants decreased more (Davis, 2009). These studies categorically show that the concentration of vitamins and minerals was reduced by up to 40% in all plants, especially vegetables.
Healthy soils provide us with nutrient-dense foods. Today, soil management has left us with plants that retain fewer nutrients, high in carbohydrates, and low in protein. Another study carried out by Harvard University shows that by 2050 the increase in CO2 due to human activity and poor soil quality could worsen the nutritional composition of our food, resulting in zinc deficiency for 175 million people and protein deficiency for 122 million people. Not only that, but the study also found that roughly 1 billion women and children could lose their regular iron intake, putting them at significant risk for anemia and other diseases. Currently, 2 billion people around the world are deficient in at least one or two nutrients (Smith & Myers, 2018). It is alarming data, do you know why? Because the most affected are the developing countries.
Mismanagement of soils not only depletes their nutritional capacity but also accelerates the possibility of reducing arable land. The current rate of topsoil loss tells us we only have 60 years before no food can be produced. All this is thanks to the fact that we have lost too much organic matter. Just as the earth needs living organisms that allow it to grow healthy plants, we need healthy plants that enable us to stay healthy.
Among fruits and vegetables, we can find the richest sources of vitamins and minerals. These nutrients help us fight disease, help us live a healthier and more stable life. Fresh food contains everything our body requires; the “medicinal qualities” of such foods depend on how our foods are grown. If something is not done, over time, we will lose more and more this natural source of medicine that we have had since the beginning of our existence.
As Hippocrates, the founder of modern medicine, said, “let food be your medicine, and let medicine be your food.” We are all the same sustenance, while the deficiency of the health of the soils seriously affects the planet; it also affects our health. We are against the clock, but there is hope if we start to make the change now. For example, regenerative agriculture techniques can be used to restore the quality of agricultural soils. That would be like bringing those medicinal conditions back to our food, while the soils regenerate. It is about reducing toxic waste, thus making it nutritional agriculture.
I invite you to see yourself as an integral part of nature, and you can see that this is not only an issue that suits environmentalists, agronomists but everyone, because we are all benefited from good management of natural resources.
You wonder …
What can I do?
I leave a couple of some ideas you can start practicing:
- Create a compost, help yourself with the information that MEE gives to carry it out.
- The change is not just an individual. Find environmental groups that you can get involved with. Work with your community to do projects that help care for the soil.
- Grow your garden at home or at least start by planting some herbs in your apartment window. It will help you to have more connection with what you consume and to be clear about where your food comes from.
- Find out about the laws that are proposed to regenerate soils in Congress.
- Follow useful content on social media. Content will help you educate yourself more about this topic.
Bibliography
Davis, DR (2009, February). Declining Fruit and Vegetable Nutrient Composition: What Is the Evidence? HortScience, 44(1), 15–19. Retrieved from https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/44/1/article-p15.xml#:~:text=Recent%20studies%20of%20historical%20nutrient,of%20foods%2C % 20especially% 20in% 20vegetables.
FAO. (2015, February 19). United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Retrieved from Healthy soils are the foundation for healthy food production. : http://www.fao.org/soils-2015/news/news-detail/es/c/277721/#:~:text=Un%20suelo%20sano%20es%20un%20ecosistema%20vivo%20y%20din % C3% A1mic% 2C% 20 full, nutritious)% 3B% 20control% 20las% 20 diseases
Sait, G. (2017, August 2 ). Hummus Gardening. Retrieved from Nutrition Matters: https://blog.nutri-tech.com.au/humus-gardening-1/
Smith, MR, & Myers, SS (2018, August 27). Impact of anthropogenic CO2 emission on global human nutrition. Nature Climate Change. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0253-3.epdf?referrer_access_token=U9I9ylghWQszPPMsbuOs5tRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0O5J0oP_LhVUOgym62AyF5ghuOS5aOCa4g0Agd33biHRPVvzshteII8s6f0432vmaDtwx28IbA_1rUF6bUFrcpPQmlkW8yIrssI3hK9jpJ8kZzTEIuIQmPgiyqj0FPn0ncunCPKX2
