June 10, 2022

What our food ate. How to heal our land

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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