Mother Jones - What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health, by David Montgomery and Anne Biklé. In
their latest plunge into the earthy world beneath our feet, the
husband-wife team of Montgomery (a geographer) and Biklé (a biologist)
train their expert science-writing chops on a claim made by pioneers of
organic agriculture 80 years ago and generally dismissed by conventional
agronomy ever since: that human health depends directly on the health
of the soil that feeds us. “Soil-dwelling bacteria are the worker bees
of the subterranean world,” they write. “They produce the enzymes and
organic acids that release the minerals held in rocks and organic matter
for plants to take up.” Decades of assault by toxic chemicals and heavy
farm machinery have robbed farmland soil of organic matter and
impoverished its microbiome, they show, drawing from rich veins of
emerging peer-reviewed research. The result: a steady decline in key
minerals and inflammation-fighting phytochemicals in our food supply
since the post–World War II launch of industrial farming—and a rising
tide of diet-related diseases. Montgomery and Biklé don’t have much to
say about the political economy that makes industrial agriculture such a
durable force, but they will have you itching to start a vegetable
garden, fed by the produce of a nearby compost pile, as an alternative
to it. —Tom Philpott
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