Better Nutrition Magazine recently spoke with HMI’s Executive Director, Ann Adams PhD. During the interview, Ann spoke about how the success of the industrial farming model has led to degradation of soil quality, stating that living, fertile soil is very different from dirt that’s being used to grow food by putting in synthetic fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides.
The article also spoke about decreased nutritional values, citing a USDA study that has found that the nutritional value of foods, particularly vegetables, has dropped between 5-80 percent. And while organic farming helps by eliminating the use of toxic chemicals, organic certification does not require improved soil quality.
That’s where regenerative agriculture comes into play – with an aim to not just eliminate toxic inputs, but to actually regenerate the land by enhancing the soil and creating more resiliency, particularly important when dealing with climate variables.
Soil health can be assessed by how efficiently the land absorbs water. Holistic Management practitioner Gabe Brown recently talked about how his land was able to absorb upwards of 13 inches of rain without flooding, while a neighboring property remained flooded weeks later, due to degraded soil unable to absorb water properly.
You can read the entire article here.
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