TOOLKIT SERIES: What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health

The Sustainable Herbs Program Podcast

Are you really what you eat? David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé take us far beyond this well-worn adage to deliver a new truth: the roots of good health start on farms. What Your Food Ate marshals evidence from recent and forgotten science to illustrate how the health of the soil ripples through to crops, livestock, and ultimately all of us.

David Montgomery and Anne Biklé speak about their research into the relationships among soil health, crop health, and human health that form the basis of their book, What Your Food Ate. This book is the third in a series of books they have written about soil health, microbiomes, and agriculture, including Dirt, The Hidden Half of Nature, Growing a Revolution, and most recently, What Your Food Ate.

For What Your Food Ate, Montgomery and Biklé selected 10 paired farms across the US, a conventional farm compared with a regenerative farm in the same region growing the same crop in the same year. They measured soil health and conducted microbial tests in the soil and then compared the ratios of minerals, vitamins, and phytochemicals. We will talk about the research and what they found, and about the implications for agriculture in general and for growing botanicals in particular.