Can Changing Agriculture Save Our Soil and Our Health?

Despite the effects of recent inflation, it is usually assumed that American farmers produce the most abundant and inexpensive food supply in the world. However, the true cost of our food is thought to be about three times what consumers actually spend, according to a 2021 report from The Rockefeller Foundation. The report also suggests that the current food system is unsustainable due to its negative impact on human health and the environment. According to a recent perspective from the National Academy of Medicine (Rushton et al. 2021), the current food system is driven by a narrow focus “to deliver cheap food at any cost” and needs a paradigm shift to a new framework focused on the health of people, animals, plants, and the environment.

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Is it time for a more holistic approach to nutrition the begins in the soil itself? Should science be studying the systemic impact of regenerative ag practices more assertively? IFT members can share their thoughts on this topic by visiting IFT Connect.

This situation has not occurred overnight. For many years our food system has incentivized improving crop yield regardless of the true cost of damage to the environment and health of the population. That, of course, reduced the cost of food to consumers, but farmers then needed to produce more with the same inputs to survive economically, and the cycle perpetuated itself. At the same time, much less emphasis was placed on the nutritional quality of crops, especially micronutrients important to human health. One of those micronutrients is the potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory amino acid L-Ergothioneine (ERGO) (Beelman 2022).

Recently, renowned biochemist Bruce Ames theorized that ERGO is so potentially important to human health that it should be designated as a “longevity vitamin” (Ames 2018). He predicted that a shortage of it in the diet will result in damage to our long-term health that is cumulative and leads to premature aging. Supporting this theory, our Center for Plant and Mushroom Foods for Health has demonstrated that countries with higher estimated ERGO consumption were associated with lower incidence of chronic neurological diseases of aging and positively associated with greater life expectancy (Beelman et al. 2020).

Unfortunately, Americans were shown to have the lowest estimated ERGO consumption and the highest incidence of chronic neurological diseases of aging and lowest life expectancy. 

ERGO is made in nature primarily by fungi and some other soil-borne microbes. Humans can’t make ERGO themselves and therefore must get it from their diet. Since mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungi, we have found that they contain the highest level of ERGO (Kalaras et al. 2017), but nearly all foods contains at least a small amount due to fungi in the soil passing it on to plants through their roots (Carrrara et al. 2022). Unfortunately, we have found that at least one conventional agricultural practice, aggressive tillage (plowing) of the soil, significantly reduced the amount of ERGO in several important grain crops (Beelman et al. 2021).

Interestingly, we also found that use of no-till practices also resulted in improved crop yields, implying that better nutrition and lower cost to the consumer can both be achieved.

We believe that getting more ERGO and other nutrients into the American food supply could have substantial long-term health benefits, but some changes in conventional farming practices will be needed to restore soil health (Beelman et al. 2022). There is a growing movement in America to embrace regenerative farming practices that will improve the health of farm soils by increasing organic matter and fungal populations. Little or no tillage of soil, use of multiple crop rotations, use of cover crops, and reduction in the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides are all restorative in contrast to conventional practices that can be destructive to the soil (Beelman 2023). Regenerative practices also have positive environmental impacts and reduce the degradation of farm soils that is currently occurring at an alarming rate in America’s farm belt (Thaler et al. 2021, Montgomery and Biklé 2022).

It appears that it may be possible for our farmers to produce a more affordable and nutritious food supply in a manner that is more sustainable for the environment. However, this will require recognition that there is a need for change and a focus on how this can be accomplished for the good of all concerned.ft

The opinions expressed in Dialogue are those of the author.