We need transformational healing not only for ourselves but for the Earth itself, for we are a part of the earth. — Sajah Popham, Evolutionary Herbalism
Healthy food begins long before we put the first bite of a meal into our mouth. The food we eat, the spices we use to season it, the herbs we grow for our medicine, all come from the Earth. The meat we consume, comes from animals that feed on the plants of the earth as well… Our food, and therefore, our body is made of the earth.
Alternative health practitioners often talk of eating organic foods, to avoid the chemicals of conventional farming practices, but we are becoming more aware with every passing year of the depletion within the soil that our food is grown in, organic or not. Our solution is often to treat our bodies similar to how conventional farmers treat the soil: If it is lacking nutrients, just add the nutrients. In the case of farmers this is adding chemical fertilizers, or manure. In the case of our body and alternative health, it is adding extracted or synthetic vitamins and minerals.
The depletion of the soil is a real problem. If the soil is devoid of nutrition, then the plants we harvest—for food or medicine—is also devoid of nutrition, empty calories to satiate our appetite with little to no actual nourishment or medicinal value. Supplementation is one way to try to solve the problem, but can the Earth show us a better way?
Healthy Soil is an Ecosystem
The dirt that plants grow in can be composed of different things: clay, sand, volcanic ash… but all of the minerals that the plant needs to create a healthy body—resistant to disease and environmental stresses are locked up in the dirt, and not accessible to the plant. And so the plant, with the earth creates an ecosystem—turning dirt into soil. The plant absorbs the sunlight, and breathes in carbon dioxide, exhaling oxygen (thank you!) and using the carbon as part of it’s building blocks… but the plant only uses so much carbon for itself, and then flushes carbon chains into the soil. Why?
The carbon chains entering the soil from the plant roots are a food supply for bacteria and fungi. As they colonize the area around the plant roots, to feed on the carbon chains, as well as the minerals the dirt contains, they in turn, attract predators: nematodes, which eat the bacteria and fungi, and excrete the extras as waste… waste that is full of bio-available nutrients and minerals that the plant needs.
The fungi has a second role besides attracting nematodes… mycelium spreads for hundreds of miles in healthy soil, connecting the roots of plants and extending the reach of those roots. This interconnected web of plant and tree roots with mycelium allows communication and symbiosis to occur between trees, as well as between plants and the creatures of the soil. For more on this fascinating topic, I highly recommend watching the documentary Fantastic Fungi. As of February, 2024, it is still streaming on Netflix.
This is the healthy ecosystem that is soil in our forests and natural areas: plant roots, bacteria, fungi, nematodes, all interacting beneficially. What about the farmland we grow our food on?
Death and Destruction
Since the invention of the plow we have been killing our soils… turning them into dust and dirt to be blown or washed away by wind and water. Civilizations for thousands of years have used the land until it could give no more, and then the civilizations crumbled and the people moved on to newer, greener pastures, leaving ruins and desert behind. The once fertile river valleys and plains—over centuries—turn to dry, arid lands. This doesn’t happen to every civilization, there are those that have sustainably farmed the same land for thousands of years, those who know how to work with the earth, instead of just using the earth.
In modern times we have delayed this inevitable desertification by the invention of vast sprinkler systems, and petroleum based fertilizers and pesticides. Fertilizers to force life into the plants who are unable to get the nutrients they need from the dead dirt they were planted in, and then pesticides to kill the diseases and insects the plants cannot withstand while growing in mono-culture rows without the natural web of life to support their health, that a living soil ecosystem creates.
Our tendency to destroy fertile soil through our conventional farming practices leads to more land being needed for farming, more forests being burned to make space, and more living soil being destroyed and in their turn becoming dry wastelands kept alive—barely—with synthetic chemicals.
Does this mean that a nihilistic attitude is right? That humans are nothing but a cancer on the face of the planet? Would be better for all life, for the planet if humans didn’t exist?
Life and Rejuvenation
If people were the problem, they could also be the solution.—Re-Greening the Desert with Dr John Liu
People have been plowing or over grazing the land for centuries, and when we give up and migrate to a new area, leaving empty arid land behind, the erosive effects of wind and rain can take over. However, if we don’t give up and leave, but change our focus to replenishing the land it is possible to reverse the process of the desert taking over.
Dr John D Liu, Chinese film maker and ecologist, and Geoff Lawton, Australian permaculturist, are two people who have rediscovered, and shared their methods of nurturing and rejuvenating the earth. Their work in Africa and Jordan is inspiring, and people around the world are joining them in transforming their own local terrain into vibrant ecosystems. Ten years ago, when I first started learning about permaculture, Geoff Lawton’s Regreening the Desert was one of a few videos on YouTube. Dr Liu’s Regreening the Desert is another amazing film from 2012. Now the search results for regenerating the land explode with many high quality videos about the far-reaching results of land and water regeneration.
These videos are inspiring and amazing to watch, but we are not all out there, trying to change large tracts of land from arid desert to a beautiful oasis. We don’t all have the budget to hire permaculture designers, excavators, and workers, or to purchase hundreds of beautiful plants to turn bare land into a productive forest, so what can we do, how can we start, and why does it matter?
It all starts with transforming our own attitudes about the earth we live on. Do the trees, the water, the plants, the soil exist for us to extract and use for our own benefit? Or are they part of an inter-connected web of life that we are also a part of? We have the ability to create life and rejuvenation in our homes and on our land just like we have the ability to create death and destruction. We can be extractors and consumers, or we can be stewards and producers.
Why should we care? A destroyed soil ecosystem means our food is lacking the nutrients our bodies need and our herbs are lacking their medicinal potency. If we don’t take the time and make the effort to change how we look at our homes and our gardens—whether the garden is pots on a patio or acres of land— than our long term health and well-being, and that of generations following, will suffer.
Our health is inextricably linked to the health of the earth. If we can internalize this important concept, and teach it to the generations after us, we can change the trajectory of the planet.
We may not all be a Dr John Liu or a Geoff Lawton, spreading the word and doing restoration work globally, but we can all play a part, even if it’s in our own backyard and with our own children. And that is where it matters most.