Soil Collapse and What Does That Mean for Farmers?

Let me start off by saying, this is not all doom and gloom. Yes, the topic is scary. Yes there are a lot of things to be worried about. However, there are also solutions. I'm not coming at you with 'just the thing' - I am offering what's next.

We are on the verge of soil collapse. Years of compaction, creating hardpan, blowing topsoil, tiling, tillage, chemicals, pushing yield without attending to the microbial growth...

We are learning that food grown in such soil (if it can even be called that) does not have the nutrients needed to give health. The vast majority of food grown in this country is designed to keep us in a permanent state of unwellness, and that is assuming you have access to what passes as food. 1 in 7 households in this country experience food insecurity, this incredible number also leaves out more marginalized populations such as the unhoused... in a nation that has prided itself on 'feeding the world' - we are falling woefully short.

If we want our health back, we are going to have to make some drastic changes to our food system. These are not going to be easy, but they are going to be very very necessary. We are not just what we eat, but what we eat, eats too - Dan Barber. However, a closer truth is: We are what we eat, down to the microbial level.

So to give the bitter pill all at once, I think in my lifetime I will see a return to localized food systems. I hope gas and oil prices don't remain destabilized, but according to most political viewpoints, they will remain high and unstable for a few years. I think we need to see a return of food production to farmers that are regenerative. I see a need for smaller farms, scaled in such a way that the soil can be husbanded. There will be a bigger need for diversified, multi-generational farms, and using the concepts of permaculture will make a lot of sense for efficiency. If 'perma' is too far out there, think of it as vertically stacking your efforts, or maximizing your inputs:) I can see draft farming becoming not just a joke, nostalgia, or a marketing ploy, but as a useful contributor to keeping a population fed. I don't see commodity and row-cropping going away, but I think we will see it split off from food systems that are intended to feed a gut biome.

We know that healthy soils should look like a an African plain, multitudes of grazing herbivores, meandering species, some omnivores, beta predators on the fringe, and apex predators all suspended in soil strata to give a 3d safari ride. Soils today, even 'organically farmed' soils are woefully deficient in microbes (some reports say down 75% but I think that number is a bit soft). Jill Clapperton, John Kempf, David Olsen, Rick Haney, and many other hard working soil scientists have wonderful and fascinating stories to tell of hope, remediation, and future possibilities.

Now how about some of the good news? We KNOW that feeding our soil the right probiotics, will jump start the microbial activity. We are also finding out there are bacterial strains, when introduced correctly, can decrease persistent herbicides and pesticides by over 75%, and I think that number is soft, nor does it account for other remedial efforts that a committed farmer can take. We've found that grazing, specifically, ruminants across growing-ground addresses the richness of the soil. We know there is a way to properly shepherd water that will mitigate drought and provide water to our 'microscopic wildebeests.'

Good, healthy foods should be available and within reach of everyone. Somehow the farmer needs to recover costs and enough profit to satisfy their bottom line. And all this needs to be done in a way that builds health rather than continually cashing a check against an account with nothing in it. The bad part? It will be hard (surprise!) and it will take some hard looking and some soul work to move forward. The good part? We have the opportunity to rebuild a food system that nourishes.