Many scientists have warned about the health of the soil affecting our bodies for decades and centuries. Rudolf Steiner, originator of the idea of the biodynamic movement, talked about this extensively. So did William Albrecht, a professor at the University of Missouri. He said that putting only NPK into the soil and extracting plants for
profit only without being caretakers of the soil will lead to obesity, diabetes and malnutrition, even in well fed people. That is what we have right now. His most famous study showed the link between the health of people by region and how much rainfall that place received.
Areas with more rainfall had many of the nutrients washed out, particularly when people there treated the soil as something from which to extract profits, instead of the basis for our health. This seems to make sense to me in terms of why so many indigenous people around the world, particularly in rainy areas, tended to use more
biochar, or burn their areas intentionally on a regular basis. The Willamette Valley in Oregon where I live, was burned on a regular basis. The Amazon, where the original terra preta came from, is also a rainy area.
Because the point of biochar is "hotels for microbes", that makes sense in a rainy area, where the biology can hold the micronutrients in a biochar soil, even when it's rainy. A soil neglected for extractive profits lets many key nutrients be washed out. Then the right mix of microbiology doesn't happen. Many scientists like Elaine Ingham have shown that this process leads to plants being attacked by pests and diseases.
The answer is not more pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, which make the soil worse. The supplement industry has gone wild, as our soils aren't giving us the nutrition we need. Maybe a zillion different pills for breakfast is not the answer, especially when studies have shown that one quarter of them have 0% of the supplement they are claiming. New, increasingly weird fad diets are exploding in popularity. Perhaps what we really need is to take care of the soil, so that it can take care of us?
John S
PDX OR
http://web.missouri.edu/ikerdj/papers/Albrecht%20Lecture%20-%20Healthy%20Soils%20Healthy%20People.htm
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