Healthy Soil, Healthy People

To my much beloved and neglected blog

A post composed between January and March of this year, never published, perhaps through a fear that once I start to describe my stronger opinions I open myself up to critique... but do you know what? I really don't mind. This is a topic I think is of great importance, and critique can only deepen my own understanding through further questioning, so go ahead....

This blog isn’t intended to be an intellectual rhetoric or polemic. Just my thoughts and feelings as I immerse myself in a year farming, and the consequences of those reactions on my choices in life. I have refrained thus far from writing to seriously on the matter of food and farming however, I began to write a piece in early January just after I had been to a conference and listened to an inspiring talk on soil health. The talk focussed on the nutrient levels found within our land and consequential uptake of those passed on directly through our food system.

We are bombarded with information on diets and how we should eat in order to be healthy. In my household I was certainly aware of calories from a very young age, and later salt, cholesterol and now sugar have become important considerations for various family members’ wellbeing. Whilst at university I spent more time with people who considered natural remedies. Local honey for hayfever, plants rather than their chemically controlled extracts for common complaints – a controversial topic I know.

At a really basic level though I had never spent any significant time thinking about the carrot I was eating, for example, where it had grown, and what quality of soil it might be in. This now seems wondrous to me, what could be more important than the quality of the basic food we feed our bodies with. If I had to eat five carrots today to find the same nutritional value as someone in my family might have done fifty years ago there seems to be a problem somewhere. So why aren’t we all talking about this over the dinner table instead of how many weight watchers points our meals contain?

To those who may see this way of thinking as an old fashioned or hippy in its ideal I can affirm to you that the speakers at this particular talk were of established professional backgrounds, scientific, academic and more practical. A focal concern was that the present drive for yield and appearance neglects the mineral content of our produce.  The complex mix of nutrients required for healthy plant growth goes a long way beyond common agricultural fertiliser; and those artificial fertilisers often leave our land wanting, making farmers dependent on their use.

I have witnessed how difficult farming without chemical assistance can be, and I appreciate the grand scale of providing food for our population. However, I do feel that the quality rather than the quantity of the food we are producing and consuming is paramount to our own health. The word organic has a hundred negative connotations which I won't even begin to discuss here, but please consider what has gone into produce your fruits and vegetables, and what state the land they departed is in. We are after all a direct product of what we eat.