What would you advocate instead then? If I literally came up to you and said, “Nicole, I’m going to stop eating meat. I’m going to buy all my stuff from Whole Foods.” You were like, “No,” and you explained to me that’s not very helpful. What would you suggest I do instead? Using quotes from well known authors and creative thinkers to set the stage for each chapter she cleverly builds the imagery so it can be seen with the minds eye as clear as if you were looking at it in person. Some concepts required stopping to think or research further but overall, so well written was this book it left me wanting more knowledge and more of Nicole’s writing style. That is exciting. I’ve heard of the brix meter that measures the amount of minerals and such in the soil itself. Explain how these new meters are going to work that consumers may be able to use. I got into commercial viniculture and got interested in the microbiology of what I was creating and how to create different types of blends of whim castings for an avocado producer compared to a strawberry producer compared to pasture. I didn’t even know I had a name like that agro-ecology was a thing. Maybe like ten years into my career and I was reading some research papers. I was like, “That’s me. I didn’t know I had a title.” It evolved into what I was passionate about. When I left school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. Certainly, I didn’t know it was going to involve soil but once I discovered soil, I never got a doubt. As you can see, you can relate that to the human aspect, animal health, or greenhouse gas emissions. It’s incredibly exciting.

No. That was the interesting thing. My life has been dedicated to how we get chemicals out of the environment and out of the food chain. I had this poisoning that was in my body and I had no idea. It ties into my thinking around the value of intuition and how the subconscious knows a lot more than what our main conscious brain does. My body knew that I had been poisoned. I just didn’t know. Without dumbing down the soil science (and it’s full of references for people who want more..) Nicole explains in clearly understandable ways how soil works and what we can do to stop harmful practices and grow better. She is one of a growing number of people who are facilitating a rapidly expanding world of quality food production and biological economies. The audiobook is read by Nicole herself and is like having a ridiculously knowledgeable friend walk you through the science and then engage you with fun anecdotes. I am so glad that you said that just because it has that label doesn’t mean that it’s been produced on a small scale. Like in whole foods. I sometimes see these berries. I’m a big berry girl. I love berries. It says organic, so I think, “That’s great,” but I know their motto crops of berries. It’s done on this huge scale. Tell me, how does that damage the soil? What’s wrong with that if it’s organic?Ok, so I'm struggling with how to rate this book. As a regenerative farmer myself, and an organic farming consultant with 25 years experience, I want to love this book because any helpful attempt to further the regenerative ag movement is worth 5 stars! Books like this are so badly needed, now more than ever! But, this book has it's share of problems. If I'm comparing it to other regenerative ag books that received a 5 star rating, this one would probably get a 3. But I want to be generous and give it a 4. Here are the problems.

Let’s pivot now and talk about the toxin loading of our soil. First of all, what’s going on and why should it matter to us? What that did is it then introduced the paraquat, which is a residual herbicide into my spinal fluid. It sat there for fifteen years. I was told that I had fused vertebras C1 and C2. I went and saw every single bodyworker you can imagine. I’ve got a depth of experience in like Bowen, craniosacral, ortho-bionomy, and acupuncture. You name it. I’ve been to see them. When I was 30 years old, so fifteen years later, I met a chemical detox specialist. He used radionics and ran through a series of questions about, is this environmental? Is this a virus? Until finally, he came down to, “It’s paraquat because I had no idea.” Thank you for joining us, Nicole. You’ve had some valuable insights and I’m grateful for your time. Nicole is an independent agro-ecologist, educator, and author of For the Love of Soil. She is recognized as a knowledgeable and dynamic speaker on the topic of soil health. Let me set something straight right here at the outset. This is not a conversation for farmers. It is for each of us, regardless of where we live and what our livelihood is. Nicole helps us understand the part we each play in the health of the soil. She tells her own story and how her passion for soil health came about. She discusses the toxic load that the world is bearing and how that also plays out in our health as well. Finally, she discusses steps for turning things around for the Earth’s sake and our own.

Brix measure the dissolved solids in the setup of a leafy plant. We’re using that as a tool to look at how much sugar and dissolve solids? How well is that plant photosynthesizing? It’s an indicator in the field. Whereas, these new meters are new infrared, spectroscopy, so they need to be correlated with those specific crops. At the moment, you can test maybe twenty different crops, apples, pears, and those obvious ones. There’s a lot of calibration that’s still required to test it but some of these new meters will tell you where in the world was this grown, which is cool. People can correlate that this has come from this property. It’s taken all of these things for a while but now it’s a hand meter. What we’re seeing is landscapes are becoming water repellent. They are emitting much more greater amounts of greenhouse gases and have been since we began farming or ranching many of these landscapes. That’s altering the climate. Australia is a horrific example of what happens when that whole water cycle breaks down. Soil, water, and carbon are intimately related. As we start to break down those links, there are consequences above ground. We’re seeing that in regions all across the world. It comes down to how do we start to nurture and develop that gut microbiome in our landscapes to get that atmospheric response. Some of the operations I work with, they’re measuring things like the bio-digestability of grains. They’re measuring no residue of chemicals. They are measuring increases in Omega-3, trace elements, or vitamins in the food that they’re producing. That’s what I want to see. We start to get down to, what is this food quality? Can we improve the quality that we’re buying? There are a few spectrometers in different types of meters that are being released in 2021 and 2022 that are going to be ones that consumers can hold and measure for themselves what is the quality of this produce, which is exciting. Our human microbiome probably has 50% of the diversity that it used to have and less specialized organisms that can help you deal with stress. As we start to lose that microbiome in the soil, we no longer have the enzyme-producing organisms, the hormone-producing organisms, or organisms that are creating those vitamins.

Then, "Everybody knows" that synthetic nitrogen is not good for the soil (OK, maybe not EVERYbody), but she explains it well. I spent recovering by applying the foundations teachings and my life has dramatically turned around. I have never experienced such vitality and happiness in my entire life. I am so grateful for WAPF. I have become so passionate about physical and mental health as well as farmer rights. I’m so eager to become involved in sharing knowledge about these things.” That’s Eden from Leesburg, Virginia. When you mentioned greenhouse gas emissions, I couldn’t help but start thinking about climate change and people thinking they need to eat less meat or go vegan to heal the planet. What do you think of all that, Nicole? Together with her team of soil coaches, they work alongside producers in the U.S., Canada and across Australasia. Supporting producers who work with millions of acres to take their operations to the next level in nutrient density, profitability and environmental outcomes. It’s so complex. This is a good thing coming from an ecology standpoint. It’s a whole system issue that we’re dealing with. When they go and do research, they go and look at, “Let’s look at a cow. How much methane is it emitting? Bad cow.” Instead of, “How does that work in nature? What is that system in nature?” After the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, they went in a year later to find out what was the fate of that oil.We have all seen dust blowing in the wind as working (tilling) the soil disrupts the soil infrastructure. Do the people tilling realize that the most valuable substance in their soil is what is darkening the sky? It is humus, the final breakdown of organic matter, with a structure even finer than clay. Humus is an amphitheater, if you will, in which soil microorganisms thrive.

She has been providing agricultural consulting and extension services in Regenerative Agriculture since 2003, and is the Director of Integrity Soils Limited.

Customer reviews

We’re going to start on a heavy note but this is an important thing for our audience to know. Talk to us about your encounter with paraquat and what its consequences were. We’ve been in a chemical experiment for many years and that experiments, unintended consequences and now coming to the forefront. People are starting to realize, “We can’t keep food production like this. This is not how your father’s always done it. It’s not working.” The Green Revolution is finally starting to realize the consequences. Here I am, just one person. Let’s say, I know my farmer but I still want to do something on a bigger scale to turn things around because won’t our dollars and won’t our choices impact that business? William Gibson once said that "the future is here - it is just not evenly distributed." "Nicole modestly claims that the information in the book is not new thinking, but her resynthesis of the lessons she has learned and refined in collaboration with regenerative land-managers is new, and it is powerful." Says Abe Collins, cofounder of LandStream and founder of Collins Grazing. "She lucidly shares lessons learned from the deep-topsoil futures she and her farming and ranching partners manage for and achieve."