How Healthy Food Starts with Healthy Soil
As an ecosystem ecologist, I’ve spent the last 20 or so years working to keep nutrients like nitrogen out of places they don’t belong, like our water and air. But I’m excited to turn that perspective on its head and think about how to get more good nutrients into food and people where they do belong.
You’ve heard about organic: keeping synthetic chemicals out of your food. And then we have regenerative: producing food in a way that rebuilds depleted soils and ecosystem functions. Now we have nutrient-dense: building on organic and regenerative to show the human nutritional value of those foods. How do we grow more nutrient-dense food? With healthy soils and biodiversity, of course.
In late April, I attended a workshop called “Healthy Food & Healthy Planet” hosted by TomKat Ranch Educational Foundation in Pescadero, California. They brought together ranchers, farmers, conservation professionals, chefs, nurses, doctors, nutritionists from schools and hospitals, scientists, and story tellers. For me, it was the first time interacting with health professionals in a work setting, but it makes so much sense for us to work together now that nutrient density aligns our goals for healthy soils, foods, people, and planet. In the last few years biochemical analyses of whole foods has shown that foods grown where the soils, plants, and animals are well cared for can have greater nutrient density and even unique kinds of nutrients like different types of proteins, phytochemicals, and fatty acids as compared to conventionally produced foods (van Vliet et al 2021, Montgomery and Bikle 2021).
Some of the attention to nutrient-dense foods is due to our foods declining in nutritional quality since the industrialization of agriculture (Bhardwaj et al 2024). When we bred crops and livestock to maximize yields, most efficiently coupled with fertilizers, pesticides, antibiotics, and other synthetic compounds, we also diminished or diluted their nutritional quality. Ancient grains, such as Khorosan wheat, contain more protein and less starch and gluten, which has important health impacts for people with gluten intolerance, irritable bowel syndrome, and fibromyalgia (Brouns et al 2022, Baldi et al 2022).
I learned at the workshop that a carrot is not a carrot is not a carrot. Plants work closely with the bacteria and fungi in the rhizosphere (the soil closely associated with roots). Those microbiota can stimulate the plant to make certain phytochemicals. In a more sterile, chemical-based system, a plant has no need for immune defenses, so why bother making those phytochemicals? All this explains what your nose and mouth are already telling you — that kale from your favorite local regenerative farm smells and tastes better than conventionally grown kale from the grocery store. Some of the health benefits of nutrient density seem to be mediated by microbiota in the soil and our guts (Seal et al 2021, Rondinella et al 2025, Shang et al 2024, Carraro et al 2023) .
At AFT, we’re excited about this nutrient-density movement and how it connects to all the great work we’re already doing with farmers across the country to build soil health. We’re working to develop partnerships and new research projects to help test these hypotheses and build a framework for understanding which practices on which soil type for which crop or animal produces which micronutrient benefit. We’re also thinking about how to ensure that nutrient density is an opportunity for all farmers and all eaters to benefit, not just those who can afford it.
