Nick Barnard: Love Your Biomes MP3

So much in the press recently revealing how little we know about the flora and fauna of our gut — the micro, or human biome — and how the diversity and health of the gut dictates more than just our physical health and functionality, but also our mental health … well that’s great, but if such revelations show just how little we know about our gut, and the arrogance of medical science in ignoring it’s central role, then just think about how little we know about the soil biome, where 95% of all biomass resides.

Just as we have weakened/damaged our human biome through the use of antibiotics, chemical insults, industrial pollutants and an increasingly poor nutrient quality diet lacking in diversity, so we have unwittingly dealt the same hand to our relationship with the soil biome — worldwide. We have pursued a monoculture, industrial agricultural model, flooded with microbial and insect destructive chemicals, extracted the water and released the carbon.

In other words we have dumbed down the biology in both biomes, with the same outcome: impoverished soils alongside an ever-weakening population. It’s time to recognize that we need to love and nurture both biomes because they are inseparable.

Writer of more than 16 nonfiction titles, in 2016 Nick released his first cookbook, Eat Right, an inspirational and upbeat celebration of positive eating.

1 hour, 3 minutes (22.9 MB) 

Recorded at the 2018 Acres U.S.A. Conference, Louisville, Kentucky, Dec. 4-7, 2018.

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