There is a discussion we should all be having about our soils, but some of us don’t want to admit it’s of concern.  It’s a discussion about how life in the soil is critical to the quality, and nutritional value, of everything we eat.  Life in the soil is similar to a life of Eros above ground.  It’s diverse, subtle, nuanced, and requires our attention and care in order to thrive

It could be that some of us are not aware there is even a problem with our soils, but I believe most of us, by this time, notice the problem.  The problem being the enormous amounts of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and chemicals we are putting on all of our crops, on our food, and in our soil’s.  Most people have noticed by now that we are destroying our crop lands and poisoning our food.

So maybe the reason we’re not talking about it is because people don’t know HOW to talk about it.  Like the world of Eros, we don’t know the language for it yet.  We don’t know what’s going on in the soil, who lives in there, or how the microbes and plants interact with each other.  We don’t know how all these microscopic beings are working together or how they are affected by all those chemicals we’re adding to the soils.  

In our weekly discussions, I plan to introduce the latest concepts about the soil food web and how all those little microbes in the soil form the foundation of all life on the planet, including ours.  We’ll talk about our well intentioned farming practices and how they inadvertently destroyed the soil ecosystem we need for our crops.  We’ll take a look with a microscope at some of the living microbes in the soil and we’ll talk about what the latest research is showing us for how we can change the direction we are going in.  And we’ll talk about how we can help our farmers save our crop lands. 

I’m a soil restoration engineer and GM for Compost Teana’s in Los Angeles California, where we grow microbes critical to plant health and apply those microbes to plants and soils with large scale liquid sprayers.