Grit, Minerals, and Humus

Prior to industrialized food production, when local food was society’s only option, it was relatively easy to spot soil deficiencies in various regions because the people and livestock in those regions suffered from the deficiency, too. 

Andre Voisin devoted considerable effort to exploring this relationship in his tome Soil, Grass, and Cancer.  Soil is such a foundation of life on Earth that mismanagement of it and insufficiencies in it create chronic diseases in mammalian life.  For example, if soil lacks in copper, then mammals eating exclusively from that location will show the crippling effects of copper deficiency.  That’s simple enough to understand.

In developed countries the days of sick populations tending lackluster stock on demineralized ground is largely over.  When a deficiency in humanity erupts, foods get fortified with the lacking element.  Consider enriched white bread and Vitamin D enhanced milk.  This is why people can eat a diet consisting of bleached starches and sugar drinks without dying (immediately); somebody somewhere did the thinking for them and added missing vitamins and minerals where none existed.  Problem solved, right?

Not really.

Andre’s book repeatedly emphasizes the complexity of mineral interactions and the effects of those relationships on our diet.  Enriching food with supplements is not as complete of a solution as enriching soil, then feeding food grown from that soil to ill patients.  To paraphrase the Frenchman, taking supplements completely misses the wholeness of eating.  Following this logic, every doctor in the world should participate in farming as an extension of their craft.  Imagine.

It becomes apparent that a farmer should emulate a doctor.  Certainly we should not make diagnoses and promise cures, but the aw-shucks dirty dumb farmer persona needs replaced with a more professional air.  As are our thoughts, so are we.  Instead of thinking about growing crops, farmers must focus on growing a vibrant, intelligent, robust population of people by way of the soil. Crops are just the vehicle in between.

We get distracted from this objective by technology.  Equipment, computer precision, and chemical technology will not do the job, yet such advancements are the sole focus of proper agriculture and its participants.  Allow me to quote Louis Bromfield at length on this subject:

“It is a great error to suppose that modern agricultural machinery is in itself the means of better farming, better crop yields or of maintaining or increasing the fertility of the soil … Modern machinery badly or unintelligently used may simply intensify soil destruction by making it possible to farm more acres carelessly, rapidly, and badly.”

This admonishment to farmers was penned in 1947.  What a unique perspective we have today, looking back through the decades of progress that wholly ignored his warning.

I’m sure critics will roll their eyes and proclaim that it’s impossible to micro-manage the millions upon millions of acres of farmland in the United States.  That’s probably true.

Fortunately, my family and I don’t have millions of acres.  We can accumulate minerals from various sources onto our farm, changing the reality on a manageable scale.

There are several methods to realize such a worthy objective.

One technique is to mineralize the livestock on the land.  A friend invested heavily in a mineral program for his cattle, utilizing a careful grazing plan to ensure their rich manure was spread evenly over his property.  After several years the animals’ mineral consumption dropped dramatically; tests revealed that the soil was so well mineralized that the herd was receiving nearly everything it needed naturally. 

I’ve learned that different plants seek and accumulate different minerals.  The more variety of plants and roots in a field, the greater the variety of minerals I have standing above the ground in the form of vegetation.   The next trick is to incorporate plant minerals back into the soil.

Plant death and decay return accumulated nutrients to the topsoil.  It’s helpful to think of the Earth’s surface as its stomach – everything is digested here by way of soil organisms, bacteria, and fungi.  To replicate the observations of Voisin and Bromfield I need to emphasize growing my herd of worms, beetles, and fungi instead of my herd of cattle.  There’s some radical thinking.

Wood chips and manure mixed and allowed to rot create perfect living quarters for soil life.  The mix, when shoveled for in-depth observation, is loaded with life that makes me laugh out loud.  Bugs of all shapes and sizes, earthworms, and, most notably, a vast network of fungi become obvious with every scoop.  Consider this: Fungi possess the ability to extract minerals from rock, offering the minerals to plants in exchange for sugar.  Very, very cool.

My objective is to spread the piles of earthy rot over our farmland, introducing at once everything required to break soil minerals out of hiding and keep them cycling through years of food production.  Those minerals enrich the vegetation on our farm, which enriches the grazing cattle, which enriches the grassfed Skirt Steak I’m eating for lunch today.

I don’t claim to know everything there is about agriculture.  I will claim to be endlessly curious and willing to experiment.  It is my greatest hope that our following of customers will catch the intrigue and come along for the ride as we put grit, minerals, and humus at the center of the local food discussion.  Knowing your farmer is one thing, but knowing your dirt is a whole new frontier for eating.