What you Eat Matters: Why Healthy Soils Mean Healthier People

It’s easy to forget that the earth beneath our feet is far from being a lifeless backdrop -  it’s actually the foundation of our health. How our food is grown or raised is a decisive factor in the nutrition we receive from it, and it profoundly impacts other areas of our health as well. We are not separate from nature but part of a connected ecosystem. The environment we live in and the food we consume shapes us as much as it does the animals and plants around us.

I have long held a partial understanding that soil

health impacts food quality, and

engaging with the research of What Your Food Ate by David Montgomery and Anne Biklé affirmed my previous rudimentary understandings and cemented them into a set of unshakable convictions. This book masterfully compiles a vast body of research into an accessible narrative, revealing several eye-opening insights. One key takeaway is the existence of long-standing evidence that synthetic chemical fertilizers and sprays are inferior to natural soil systems in producing nutrient-dense foods and healthy pastures. The relationship between soil biology and the nutritive content of food crops is profound—rich, biodiverse soil leads to food with higher concentrations of essential minerals, vitamins, and beneficial phytochemicals.

The authors also present compelling data showing that natural systems can yield food quantities comparable to conventional farming while naturally taming pests and disease. Healthy soils foster resilient plants with strengthened immune systems, reducing the need for harmful synthetic pesticides, making a strong case for fundamentally changing how we farm.

Put simply, this book shows clearly that the foundation of human health is in soil health. Supporting practices that cultivate living soils is vital for producing food that truly nurtures us and the ecosystems that we depend on for healthful living.

Science supporting these theories does exist, and has for a long time …

I was a little floored by the history of the studies investigating food quality in relation to the soil where it was grown. There are accounts from as far back as the 1930s discussing physicians and agriculturists asking questions about why people were suffering health problems. Their results, again and again, appeared to be related to the nutritional content of the food they consumed. One particular example that caught my attention was about a 1939 panel of 31 English physicians who gathered “to discuss the medical evidence and connections they saw between diet, farming, and health.” The evidence compiled included 28 pages of references which concluded that use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides damaged human health. (Montgomery & Biklé, pg29, 2022). They knew about this then, AND had lots of evidence to support it. Since that time, there have been a great number of studies to support the correlation between how food is grown or raised and its end nutritive value. A quick query in the research AI, Perplexity, showed that hundreds of studies since the 1930’s have resulted in just over 2,300 scientific papers published globally all indicating that food quality is improved by healthy soil biology.  Suffice to say, that there is A LOT of research out there supporting that healthy soils generate healthier food. So, I can’t help but ask, HOW is it that we are still doing it the other way? The answer? 

Montgomery stated it best in saying that it boils down to industrial pressures and the implication that we should not question the advances of industrial

. Additionally, it is hard and risky for many farmers to change their routines. When your entire livelihood rests on the outcome of your fields, I can truly understand why it is difficult for farmers to take this perceived  leap of faith instead of sticking with the things that have been producing (relatively) consistent, tangible results for generations. Additionally, this chemical-heavy methodology has been the focus of agricultural education and research, often overshadowing the work on the organic alternatives. Top that with the outcomes of the dust bowl, where we were “saved” by chemical fertilizers, and the consequent yield is generations of farmers who adopted this as the standard, resulting in a set of ideas that is difficult to shift.  

There is a different trend gaining traction, however. Consumer awareness and concern about these long-held agrochemical practices has forced  a lot of discussion to come to the public sphere. Research that affirms the negative health consequences for people, animals, and the environment that results from these “conventional” practices is gaining attention. Since the 1990’s the organic movement has gained recognition and paved the way for funding to study organic and other alternative methodologies. We can see this success in the dramatic increase of organic labels in the majority of supermarkets over the last 20 years as a notable public trend. Still, there are many who do not fully understand the ramifications on soil health of what is now known as “conventional farming.” 

So what do we mean by healthy soils?

Healthy soils are defined by being rich in microbiology activity. A variety of indicators are used to determine how well the soil supports plant growth, nutrient cycling, water retention, and overall ecosystem function. These indicators measure values such as percentage of organic material, microbe population diversity, including the very important presence of a robust population of mycorrhizal fungi (good fungus). They also measure how the soil clumps, filters water, and supports a visible diversity of life (worms & plants & such). Each of these plays an important role in helping the plants grow by capturing and processing nutrients. For example, phosphorus, a key element for plants, is often bound up with other minerals in tiny rock bits. Plant roots cannot access it that way, but fungi have their own type of “root” called hyphae, and these are able to penetrate the solid mineral bits, secrete an acid that breaks down the mineral bonds, absorb the phosphorus and pass it along through its hyphae network to deliver it directly to the plant roots in a form that the plant can use. In return, the plant supplies carbon to the fungus, which it gets from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. This symbiotic relationship is beneficial to both, and to the greater ecosystem of the soil. If a plant is getting its phosphorus from a chemical fertilizer, then it has no need to develop this relationship and exude nutrients into the soil. This is obviously not good for the soil lifeforms that depend on this partnership, and before you know it biology starts dying off, and that’s bad.

The various life forms in the soil also help

supply plants with micronutrients and

signal defense mechanisms causing plants to produce certain phytochemicals.  There is real magic in the production of phytochemicals, which “stocks [plant’s] green bodies with a pharmacy and an arsenal - time-tested medicines and weapons essential to their health and defense” (Montgomery & Biklé, pg 88, 2022).These benefit the animals and people who eat them, too.  One compound you may have heard of is sulforaphane; this is made by plants to dissuade insects from chewing on the plant. In humans it appears to reduce inflammation may help defend against some chronic diseases and cancers. The amount of sulforaphane is significantly higher in plants grown in healthy soil with lots of biodiversity. 

Interestingly, when we try to give plants these nutrients artificially through chemical fertilizers, the process simply doesn’t work the same.  Partially because many chemical fertilizers only supply macro nutrients, but also because it makes the plants “lazy” - they slow or stop sending out exudates into the soil which turns the soil “from a bustling biological bizarre to a ghost town, unraveling the defensive strategy of crops - and nature’s grand plan that has a half-billion-year track record of keeping green bodies humming along” (Montgomery & Biklé, pg 91, 2022). Biologically active soils are healthy soils, where a whole complex web of factors works together to produce beneficial symbiotic relationships which naturally make plants healthy and resilient.  

How does this affect our food?

Agrochemistry has not been able to replace or one-up this natural ecosystem, despite its very best efforts and many attempts. Unfortunately, our food sources have suffered because of it. Reduced phytochemicals and flavonoids diminish our food’s beneficial effects, from flavor to its influence on our own immune system responses - and the same is true for the animals that eat the plants, too. 

This book is positively stuffed with research showing how researchers have been able to measure the increased levels of nutrients in food raised where soil biology is thriving. There are several comparison studies discussed where paired farms were studied, growing the same crops, but one set used conventional methods and one used organic methods. In each instance, the organically managed farms showed crops with significantly higher levels of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and phytochemicals. One example was of a study done by UC Davis, completed over a 10-year period. They focused on just two phytochemicals, quercetin and kaempferol. Both of these help plants defend against stress and support photosynthesis (how plants make their food).  For people these compounds play important roles in shutting down inflammation response systems, helping our immune systems function better, and protecting us from a variety of things from neurodegeneration to general gut imbalance. This study showed that quercetin was 79% higher and kaempferol was 97% higher in organically grown tomatoes than in their conventional counterparts.  Montgomery and Biklé provide study after study after study with similar results, demonstrating without a doubt that food grown in healthy, biologically active soils is ACTUALLY better for us. Those nutrients enter our systems and support us, just like they do in plants.  

The same is true for the animals that we eat as food as well. Humans need certain fatty acids that our bodies can not make; these help to regulate inflammation, support proper metabolism and brain function, keep our cells healthy, regulate hormone production and a whole gaggle of other important functions in our bodies. These fatty acids are key components to several different chain reactions in our systems.  Two you may have heard a lot about recently are Omega-3 and Omega-6. These two chains have a profound influence on the function of our cells. Omega-6 helps create inflammation - which is actually a good thing in certain circumstances - it is the healing signal. Send out the troops! (AKA white blood cells that heal things). We need this response to heal cuts, fight infections, and clean out old cellular debris. The problem is when there is no shutdown order issued.  That’s what omega-3’s do. They help calm the situation and send everyone back to their regular posts.  

These omega-3’s come from meat in their best form. Quality plant sources can provide a version of these chains, called ALA, that can be made into the other chains we need. What is really interesting is that researchers have been able to measure that what animals eat directly impacts the kind of fatty acids present in their meat and milk. When a cow eats living pasture grass, they have a much better ratio of omega-3’s to omega-6’s. Ideally, we should maintain a 1:1 ratio with a ratio of up to 4:1 (omega-6 to omega-3) being acceptable. Leaves and grasses are nature’s largest source of these omega-3’s, though humans cannot access it in that form, however, ruminant animals (cows, sheep, goats, deer) can. When these animals consume healthy, diverse pasture forages, they pass those health benefits on to us through their milk and meat. Inversely, when they eat diets based on processed TMR rations and silage, the ratio of omega-6’s can spike up to as high as 15:1 - which is then also transported to our systems and bam - now you have a system where the inflammation emergency crew is running rampant and there’s not enough omega-3 around to calm everything down, so you get chronic inflammation and negative chain reactions in the body.  These negative side effects are also true for the cow, which is one of the major contributing factors to high disease rates in large meat and dairy operations where animals eat more processed feed than pasture.  One particularly telling experiment came out of Utah State University which measured these levels in steaks cut from cows given 3 different finishing diets (finishing is the term used for the last bit of growth before an animal goes to butcher, about 6 mos on average for cows). The grass-fed, legume-finished meat and organic, grass-finished meats had ratios between 2:1 and 4:1. The grain-finished research facility cows were at 6:1 and steaks purchased from a big box store where the cows are feed-lot finished tested at 15:1 (Montgomery & Biklé, pg 224, 2022).  What the cows ate just weeks before slaughter had a huge impact on their meat.  

So at this point, the picture should be pretty clear.  What your food eats, matters, because it is also what you eat.  When we have pastures that are well-tended and have diversity of life, then the animals that feed there are healthier, and so are we. When we grow fruits, vegetables, and nuts in healthy, biologically active soils, the plants are healthier, and so are we.

Organic and Regenerative Can Feed Populations

Costs and yields are real things to consider in the schema of trying to feed a whole population. Montgomery and Biklé point out that when soil health is high, pests and disease are low, and that organic, no-till, and regenerative farming practices are able to yield nearly as much food as big conventional farms. The USDA and Rodale Institute show that organic methods can produce, on average 80-90% of the yield of most conventional farms, and that in times of challenge, like a drought, organic farms out perform conventional ones due to soil resilience. 

In the grand scheme of things, 10% - 20% reduction in crop output can be a significant number to a business’s bottom line, but nonetheless, it means that it is possible for organic and regenerative methods to compete in the food market. There are current investigations to look more closely at this aspect and discussions around how to best support farms in the transition. Past data seems to show that organic farms and their similar alternatives may exchange input costs for labor costs. However as technology and systems continue to evolve, we will likely see that shift. In the meantime, proponents argue that the small farms, which make up 85% of all farms in the U.S, do have the capacity to be a viable food source, what they lack is support and access in the current system. Purchasing direct from farmers and alternative distribution models (i.e. food hubs, local grocers, etc) is making an impact on the success of these smaller producers. In a global view, we may always need large farms, but our goal is to show that we can

feed the world without the synthetic inputs and continuous tilling that are counterproductive to soil health, quality food production, and human health. These authors suggest that we are well on our way to addressing these issues and showing that there are viable alternatives.

Healthy Soils Create Healthy Ecosystems, Including Healthy People

Building healthy soils is foundational not only for producing nourishing food but also for sustaining vibrant ecosystems that support the well-being of animals and humans alike. Conventional farming practices that rely heavily on synthetic chemicals and intensive tillage degrade our soils, pollute our water, and decimate biodiversity. The consequences ripple through our environment, harming farmers, rural communities, aquatic life, and wildlife, and even compromising human health through contaminated food and water.

In contrast, methods focusing on soil biodiversity and microbiology, create soils that function like natural sponges—absorbing and holding water, reducing harmful runoff, and fostering resilient plant growth. Healthy soils enhance plant immunity, reducing the need for chemical pest controls that damage beneficial insects and the broader ecosystem. They also sustain water cycles by facilitating transpiration and atmospheric moisture, contributing to rainfall and climate regulation (which is a whole other topic).

Science increasingly shows that investing in soil health is an investment in the entire system—supporting healthier food, cleaner water, biodiversity conservation, climate resilience, and ultimately healthier people and animals. Organic methods offer proven pathways to halt pollution, rebuild natural cycles, and foster sustainable farming that nurtures the land rather than depletes it. By prioritizing soil health, we pave the way for a future where agriculture supports life in all its forms and secures the health of current and future generations. You can support this with the choices you make when you purchase food. Steer the market with your dollars; what you eat matters. It matters to your personal health to support avenues to uncontaminated foods rich in nutrients and beneficial phytochemicals and clean water, and it matters to the health of the spaces where you live. We are components of our ecosystems, not above or outside them.