Soil is Our Soul

Learn Why Soil is our Soul

Every great story has a beginning, middle and end. This is the story of soil, and today we find ourselves somewhere in the middle.

 
This story is interactive and live! You get to, or if you’re like us, have to be part of how it ends. The situation is at a tipping point and requires unprecedented attention because – you guessed it – the industrialization of food production. According the United Nations, the world’s remaining topsoil will be gone in 60 years. That’s 60 remaining harvests friends. How old are you? How old are your children?

Soil needs us to ensure a happy ending. The planet needs us. 

The “grow your own food” movement in the past 5 years has skyrocketed. According to the National Garden Association, 16 million Americans began growing food in the US during the pandemic. The reasons to grow food are for an entirely different article (stay tuned). This article is about “how” to grow food at home. 

Home food growers have choices: aeroponic, hydroponic, raised bed, or the not so subtle modern furniture (fully equipped with very bright lights) for indoor growing. Here’s why we think it’s essential to get a little dirty and grow in living, organic soil. Innovations which make it possible to grow food in space are wonderful if you’re in space, but while on the earth, we aim to maximize earth’s potential. What’s the old saying? Use it or lose it. If you are going to do the work, and you should, get the most out of it.

Soil contains a super highway of microbial activity and carbon that quite literally fuel the planet. That activity is energy and nutrition and it’s what makes your food! The same microbes live in your body and regulate your human health.  As part of the perfect design of nature, our bodies have the same microbial activity inside. It makes sense that optimal health and overall performance can only be achieved when the entire system is working together. Growing and eating food grown in soil is part of the system. No one else handled your food, no one else thought about buying it but changed their mind and put it back. 

Like many things, war time innovations and the Industrial Revolution created scale, activity and progress. Everything seemed to be heading in the right direction…. except for this, modern agriculture didn’t care at all that it was killing our soil. In fairness, they probably didn’t understand the long term impacts of clearing and pounding the earth decade after decade. 

Crops were engineered to grow underneath the pesticides, and heavy machinery hasn’t stopped tilling and rolling over our top soil since the machines were turned on more than 60 years. We have deforested this planet at alarming rates. While you may not be a refugee in the traditional sense, you will certainly be impacted by a massive reduction in food quality and scarcity.

We are in the middle of this story about top soil on this planet. If we don’t get involved now, at this rate, the end does not look great for any of us. If we all commit to doing our part, we can make a difference.