As above, so below: From Healthy Soil to Healthy Body

Photo Credit: Graphic Courtesy of Elaine Ingham, Soil Food Web School

As above, so below: From healthy soil to healthy body

A conversation with Elaine Ingham

By Megan Bachman

I remember the first time I heard the saying, “You are what you eat.” I was young enough to be a little unsettled by the idea that I might become a “chicken” or “popsicle” but old enough to understand that what I put into my body affected my constitution.

As I grew up, my awareness of the organics movement, the local food movement, and the whole foods movement expanded that initial realization. I sought to avoid food grown with toxic chemicals, eschew overly processed food, and choose fresher foods closer to home.

But it wasn’t until I learned about the connection between healthy soils and human health did I fully appreciate the phrase, “You are what you eat.” That’s thanks to the pioneering work of Elaine Ingham of the Soil Food Web School, who’s been studying soil life (and its relationship to human life) for going on five decades.

To Ingham, it all comes down to the diversity of the microbiome — in both our soil and our digestive system. She defines “microbiome” as “the totality of microorganisms, bacteria, viruses, protozoa and  fungi and their collective genetic material present in the soil/gastrointestinal tract.”

These microorganisms essentially serve the same function in both places. They help the plant’s roots in the soil, and the gut microflora, optimally absorb nutrients from their environment, Ingham explained in a recent Zoom interview.

“The microorganisms need to be in your food so that you always have the correct amount of microorganisms in your body,” she said. “The cells lining your intestines, your colon allow the uptake of the nutrients into the bloodstream, and that is mediated by a whole bunch of microorganisms.”

Take two apples, Ingram says. One is grown naturally, the other sprayed with fungicides to kill apple scab. Though both technically apples, the sprayed one now lacks the healthy microorganisms your body needs to get the most out of the apple, since at least 50% of the beneficial organisms have been killed.

“Where are the good guys going to come back from if you spray that orchard?” she asks.

Instead, Ingham says, eat straight from the garden, gently wash produce — don’t scrub or use harsh soaps — and be sure to compost to continue the cycle.

The popularity of probiotics in recent years is one way to improve gut health, especially since 60 percent of the immune system is located there. But why not go to the literal root of the problem? After all, biologically diverse soil not only improves plant health and water retention, it also sequesters more carbon from the atmosphere, Ingham notes.

“You can try to fix the symptom forever, and you are never going to solve that problem,” Ingham said. “And that’s what fixing the biology in the soil will do.”

When Ingram started her work, nearly all soil research focused on the mineral content, not the biology, of the soil. But without microorganisms soil is more like “dirt,” she says. In 1978, she started her Ph.D. research by asking university professors in agriculture all across the country whether she should look at the role of fungi in soil.

“They all said, ‘You shouldn’t do that because these organisms do nothing in the soil,’” Ingham recalls. “That’s how bad our understanding of soil really was.”

Since then, advances in ways to image microorganisms, such as x‐ray shadow microscopy, have helped shed light on their role in the larger soil food web. The realization of just how biodiverse healthy ecosystems are, was a wake-up call.

“The Bible lists 5,000 species, and the people at Michigan State University showed that in a one-acre woodlot in Michigan [there were] over one million species,” Ingham said.

But change in the larger agriculture industry has been slow. In the meantime, we’re losing species of bacteria, fungi and protozoa that may never return, Ingham says.

“One suspects that we are getting close to the no-return point, where the last of the land is desertified,” she said.

And fundamentally, if we are killing the life in the soil, aren’t we also slowly killing ourselves? The epidemic of chronic diseases correlates well with the ecological devastation of our soils.

Take the use of the popular pesticide glyphosate. As Ingham explained at the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Conference in February 2021, when glyphosate accumulates in the soil, the soil can no longer hold mineral nutrients for plants. In high enough concentrations, plants will actually absorb glyphosate, which means, yes, we are eating glyphosate. What does that do to our body?

“It’s doing exactly the same thing in your microbiome as in the soil, which is to kill those beneficial organisms,” Ingham said, “And it’s withholding nutrients from your gut microflora — from your digestive system — so you can’t obtain the nutrients that you want.”

Healthy soil grows plants that are unstressed and resistant to disease. But when we eat fragile plants, our human health becomes fragile too.

“We’ve got to understand that these two things are related,” Ingham said. ““We need billions and billions of bacteria — on the outside when we have to grow plants and on the inside when we’re growing human beings.”

Now, I know that if I am what I eat, I actually am the soil in which my food is grown. And I sure don’t want to be dirt.

Megan Bachman is a board member of Agraria and editor of the Yellow Springs News.

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