1KHO 552: Why Sick Soil Means Sick People (And How to Fix Both) | David Montgomery and Anne Bikle, What Your Food Ate

Summary

Podcast Summary:

The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast, Ep. 1KHO 552
Title: Why Sick Soil Means Sick People (And How to Fix Both) | David Montgomery & Anne Biklé, What Your Food Ate
Date: August 19, 2025
Host: Ginny Yurich
Guests: David Montgomery & Anne Biklé

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Overview

This episode explores the deeply interconnected relationship between soil health, farming practices, and human well-being, drawing on insights from David Montgomery and Anne Biklé’s book What Your Food Ate. Through practical discussion, memorable science, and stories from their research and personal lives, Ginny and her guests illuminate why the way we farm directly impacts both the nutritional content of our food and the rates of chronic disease. They explain the pitfalls of chemical-dependent agriculture, the importance of the soil microbiome, and the promise of regenerative farming, all while offering empowering, hopeful advice for families and eaters.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Origins of Their Work Together

• How a biologist and a geologist became passionate authors about soil, farming, and health
  • Anne’s background in biology/natural history complements David’s background in geology ("the dead stuff: rocks") [01:59]
  • Their journey started unintentionally when observing changes in their own garden’s soil [02:30]
  • “If you can change the soil health, then you relate that to being able to change your own health.” — Ginny [03:25]

“You Are What Your Food Ate”

• The phrase encapsulates their main thesis: The health of our food is rooted in the health of the soil
  • “It matters how we farm. ... The way that we farm has a big influence on what’s in the soil, in and around the roots of plants, our crops.” — David [04:00]
  • Soil is the bridge that brings needed minerals and nutrients to plants, which in turn pass them on to humans [04:00 – 06:07]

Sick Soil, Sick People: Parallels and Modern Farming

• "Most of the world's farmland is sick" and so are many people; chronic disease parallels [06:08]
• Heavy reliance on fertilizers/pesticides in farming mirrors pharmaceuticals in health, propping up unsustainable systems [06:30]

Hydroponics and Organic Food Debate

• Hydroponic crops (grown without soil) can still be labeled "organic," which Anne and David find deeply problematic [07:09]
  • Hydroponics may lack crucial nutrients, phytochemicals, and microbial metabolites derived from soil [07:15]
  • “It’s not required. ... you will not know if it’s grown hydroponically or in soil.” — Anne [11:59]

The “Fab Four” Key to Human and Soil Health

• Micronutrients (e.g., zinc, iron, copper)

• Phytochemicals (compounds like beta carotene, anthocyanins)

• Microbial metabolites (e.g., ergothioneine)

• Fat balance (especially omega-3 vs. omega-6 in animal foods)
  [10:20 – 12:36]

• These “Fab Four” are maximized through healthy, living soil and minimized or absent in hydroponically grown or highly fertilized crops

Earthworms, Tillage, and Soil Life

• Earthworms dramatically boost crop yields, but modern farming has decimated them [13:12]
  • “Plowing is a natural disaster for worms.” — Ginny [13:12]
  • Glyphosate use and continuous tillage destroy soil life, leading to long-term fertility loss [14:17]

What Can Ordinary People Do?

• Start by paying attention to labels (though most are currently misleading)
• Support farmers using regenerative and organic practices, especially those with reliable third-party certification (such as “regenerative organic” labels) [15:10]
• "Becoming aware is essentially the first step." — David [14:17]
• Meet local farmers, ask questions about their practices [39:25]

Regenerative Organic: Defining ‘Regenerative’

• Regenerative agriculture: “Farming practices that build the health of the soil as a consequence of intensive farming.” — David [20:13]
• Soil health defined by robust, healthy microbiomes around the roots (the plant’s functional immune system) [22:46]
• Supporting and emulating the symbiosis between plant/animal hosts and their microbiomes is key [24:00]
• “When we talk about regenerative and soil health, what we’re talking about is practices instead of hammering and chiseling away and killing off these very, very important parts ... we want to work with it.”— Anne [24:42]

The Pesticide Misconception

• Counterintuitive truth: Heavy pesticide use leads to more pest problems by wiping out both pests and their natural predators [27:58]
  • “Pests rebound faster ... because you’re also killing off the predators as well.” — Ginny [27:58]
  • “Where do you think you find more pests? The places we use more pesticides.” — David [30:54]
• Conventional farming creates an endless loop of chemical dependence [31:54]

Health Harms of Agrochemicals

• Chemical cocktails in modern agriculture linked to birth defects, falling fertility, Parkinson’s, cancer, and ecological devastation [31:54 – 36:40]
  • “What we’re not thinking about is, but what else are they doing?” — Anne [31:54]
  • Overload of new, untested chemicals – regulators can’t keep up [31:54]

Giving Nature (and Ourselves) a Chance

• “If we just give nature half a chance to function as it always has, I think we could get a long ways with addressing and solving a lot of problems, not just in agriculture, but in other realms as well.” — Ann [40:40]
• Recounted their experiment restoring poor soil with wood chips and compost — simple, nature-aligned methods work [39:25]
• Relevance for families: Let kids be outside, eat whole foods, connect with farmers, empower body wisdom [42:34]

Body Wisdom, Ultra-Processed Foods, and Taste

• Animals and people have innate intuition (“zoo pharmacognosy”) to seek the foods they need, guided by taste and body cues [43:55]
  • Industrial food processing hijacks these instincts by faking cues with cheap flavors (salt, sugar, fat), disconnecting real nutrient presence from taste [44:27, 48:01]
  • "The basic problem with ultra processed foods is they've kind of hijacked our senses and we have lost the connection between nutrient density and how flavor and taste steer us naturally toward nutrient dense foods." — Anne [44:27]
• Families can retrain body wisdom by eating a variety of whole, seasonally fresh foods from trusted sources and tuning into taste

The Problem with Food Labels

• Many sustainable farms can’t afford organic certification due to cumbersome paperwork and costs, so labels can be deceiving ("Singing Frog Farm") [50:40]
• Not all “organic” products are created equal; direct connection with growers is preferable

Closing Thoughts & Childhood Memory

• The episode closes with Anne’s sensory childhood memory of smelling irises, highlighting human a deep, innate connection to nature and ecology [52:18]
• The book’s hopeful message: Everyone can take small steps (meeting farmers, improving garden soil, eating seasonally) to foster healthier land and bodies — and pass on a better world to their children [53:25, 54:08]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On soil as the foundation for health

  • "The way that we farm has a big influence on what’s in the soil, in and around the roots of plants, our crops." — David Montgomery [04:00]

• On the “Fab Four” nutrients for human health

  • "...Micronutrients, phytochemicals, microbial metabolites. The fourth of the Fab four is fat balance in our animal foods." — Anne Biklé [10:20]

• On hydroponics and the meaning of “organic”

  • "It’s not required. ... you will not know if it’s grown hydroponically or in soil." — Anne Biklé [11:59]

• On farming philosophy

  • "If we could make a regenerative philosophy ... the foundation for the conventional agriculture of the future ... that would really get us to where we need to be." — David Montgomery [20:13]

• On pesticides and pest cycles

  • "Where do you think you find more pests? The places we use more pesticides, not many people know this." — David Montgomery [30:54]

• On chemical overload and health

  • "There are simply too many chemicals out there to be conducting all of the safety and hazard tests that it would be prudent to conduct to truly understand what the effects are." — Anne Biklé [31:54]

• On reconnecting with nature and hopefulness

  • "If we just give nature half a chance to function as it always has, I think we could get a long ways with addressing and solving a lot of problems..." — Ann Biklé [40:40]

• On body wisdom and eating whole foods

  • "Our bodies evolved to match up how the taste and flavor of foods with our nutrient needs ... body wisdom serves humans remarkably well." — Anne Biklé [44:27]

• On misleading food labels

  • “The labeling thing is really tricky. It’s almost like it’s used to be deceptive in some instances, and it’s used to keep some people out that could be, you know, doing good things, but they don’t have the manpower or the resources to deal with all the paperwork.” — Ginny Yurich [51:34]

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Timestamps for Major Themes

• [01:59] — Montgomery & Biklé’s origin story as soil authors
• [04:00] — “You Are What Your Food Ate”: Soil’s link to human health
• [07:09] — Hydroponics, organic certification, and the “Fab Four”
• [13:12] — Earthworms, tillage, and soil destruction
• [14:17] — How consumers can help shift agriculture
• [20:13] — Defining regenerative organic farming and soil health
• [24:00] — The critical role of the microbiome in plant and human health
• [27:58] — The pesticide paradox and long-term ecosystem health
• [31:54] — Health dangers of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides
• [39:25] — Restoring dead soil: practical lessons from their garden
• [40:40] — Empowering nature and children; the power of real action
• [43:55] — Animal and human body wisdom; ultra-processed food confusion
• [50:40] — Food labels, paperwork and barriers to entry for sustainable farmers
• [52:18] — Anne’s favorite childhood outdoor memory

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Final Takeaways

• Soil health is the root of personal and planetary health; healing soil heals people.
• Modern farming’s chemical dependence degrades both the land and our bodies, but regenerative methods and simple practices can restore both.
• Marketing and labeling often cloud the real story — seek direct relationships with growers and rely on body wisdom.
• Practical change is possible and empowering, whether in your own yard or local foodshed, and even small steps ripple outward.
• The episode leaves listeners inspired to reconnect with nature, trust their senses, and advocate for food grown in healthy soil — for the sake of children, future generations, and the Earth.

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For more: read David Montgomery and Anne Biklé’s What Your Food Ate, The Hidden Half of Nature, Dirt, and Growing a Revolution. Visit local farms, experiment in your garden, and let nature (and taste) be your guide.

Transcript

[America's Navy Announcer]

Support for this podcast and the following message comes from America's Navy. The Navy offers new graduates hands on training and experience in careers like computer science, aviation and medicine. Plus education and sign on bonuses. Parents help your grads start their career [e-mail] welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast.

[Ginny Urich]

My name is Ginny Urich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside and I have really, really, really been looking forward to this interview. I am a huge fan of David Montgomery and and Ann Bicklay. They have written some phenomenal books. They are married and written these books together, which I wonder if that's. Is that really hard to do?

[Ann Biklé]

Yes and no.

[Ginny Urich]

What would be a top challenge.

[Ann Biklé]

Top spelling? It would be just like any. Anything, Ginny, you don't have to be married to somebody to go, that idea sucks. Or that idea is the best thing I have ever heard. I wish I had come up with it.

[David Montgomery]

Yeah. The secret really is, I think like with a lot of things in marriage where if one of you thinks something is wrong, it needs to change and get better.

[Ginny Urich]

But what a thing, what a thing that you have done this. And I would imagine it's pretty bonding to have these really cool books out in the world. So we've talked about the Hidden half of Nature, which is a phenomenal book, the way it's written and the relating between the soil, but also our microbiome. You learn so much. It's one of my favorite books I've ever read. They Hidden half of Nature, the microbial roots of life and health we're going to be talking about today is your newest book as of now, but you have a new book coming out next year about regenerative agriculture. This is called what your food ate. How to heal our land and reclaim our health. Just another home run. Is this phenomenal writing? Could you give people just a little bit of a background so they would know, like, how did this married couple end up writing these books about farming and dirt and soil?

[David Montgomery]

Boy, Ann, do you want to feel that or do you want me to start?

[Ann Biklé]

I'll start and I'll try to be brief so that you can fill in the gaps. Okay, Jenny, first of all, we did not plan this out. And that is the absolute honest truth. We did not plan to be writing books together. It is true that my background in biology and natural history and environmental and ecological kind of fields matches very well with Dave's background, which is, I call it the dead stuff. Okay. And by that I mean rocks. Okay. Our planet. Like you strip, you strip Away life. And what you have are the, you know, the bones of our planet, the rocks, and how they got where they got and why they are the way they are. So the hidden half. Of course, as you know, this started with, you know, innocently enough. I'm just a complete fan of plants and I desperately, desperately wanted a garden. And you'd think that the biologist of the team would have looked into the soil. She didn't because she was so seduced by the plants and how beautiful they were going to be and what they'd look like and so on and so forth. And then one day Dave said to me, have you looked at the soil? It's changing. And I said, you're right. How did it get there? And that was kind of the beginning of our partnership and deep dive into the world of soil, soil health, and why we all need to know more about it.

[Ginny Urich]

It's so empowering because if you can change the soil health, then you relate that to being able to change your own health. People say you are what you eat, but really it is, you are what your food ate. You are what your food ate. Ate. I don't know. I don't know how that would go together, but what your food ate. How to heal our land and reclaim our health. Can you talk about. I mean, you say this, it's a pretty simple sentence, but we're pretty disconnected with our food, and so a lot of people wouldn't know this. You say, it matters how we farm. It matters how we farm. Can you talk about why? Why does it matter how we farm?

[David Montgomery]

You know, it turns out that the way that we farm has a big influence on what's in the soil, in and around the roots of plants, our crops. And, you know, we, we on this planet. The ultimate source of biologic energy is the sun, filtered through photosynthesis, through how plants eat. But plants don't only eat light, they also eat pieces of rocks. They need to basically get all the components and building blocks of their bodies together. And that action all happens in the soil. And so where do we get the things that we need to build our bodies from? Well, from what we eat. Because we can't photosynthesize, at least not yet, until they figure out how to genetically engineer green people, how that process works in the soil to get things like zinc and iron and copper elements that our bodies need to do things like, you know, make our blood and keep our immune system working. We need those elements to get into us, and they come via plants. And turns out that how we treat the land, when we farm, influences the relationships that plants have with things in the soil that they've long partnered. It's like geological partnerships to actually get the mineral elements they need into their bodies so they can be healthy. And it turns out that those same many of those same things are what we need to maintain our health. So in what's yous Food Ate, what Ann and I did is we sort of traced how those processes work, connecting the dots. Like, if you think about trying to connect soil health to human health, there's a lot of stuff in between. Right. And there's a lot of stuff that affects our individual health. You know, our genetics, our lifestyle, where we live, all that kind of stuff. But we broke it down into those steps of how farming influences what gets into plants, how that then influences what gets into our livestock and people, and then how that may ultimately influence our health. And there's some fairly solid connections that you can draw by putting the science together, like beads on a string to get from one end, the soil to us. And it turns out the connective tissue is how we treat the land in the way that we farm.

[Podcast Guest or Parent Speaker]

Wow.

So much to learn.

[Ginny Urich]

And you always have these amazing parallels. So one of the things in this book, what your food Ate, is you say increasingly, you say most of the world's farmland is sick. Okay. So it's like, well, most of the people. A lot of the people are sick, too. So all of these parallels, and you don't always come right out and say it. I love how you write it allows the reader to kind of draw some of their own conclusions too, where you're like, wait a minute, this sounds like me. So you say, increasingly, farmers are trying to prop up their harvests with fertilizers and pesticides, and people are trying to prop up their health as well, using pharmaceuticals to combat these uniquely modern chronic diseases. So one of the things that you talk about, and we have never talked about this on the show, I honestly didn't even really know about it. I spoke at this event at Kellogg's. They're trying to get the food dye out of the cereals. And one of the speakers talked about hydroponics. And I didn't even really know that this was happening and didn't know that I guess some of those even could be labeled organic.

[Ann Biklé]

Yeah, it's a huge issue in the organic farming community because all of the regulations in the program that kind of first set up organic food certification. So that's. We all go to the grocery store and we see various labels that Green and white one, which labels stuff organic, comes out of a program that had and still does a big emphasis on soil and why soil is important to organic farming. And so this hydroponic thing, and hydroponic, in case listeners aren't totally catching on, this is when crops, anything from herbs to tomatoes, are grown sometimes indoors, sometimes outdoors, solely through they're not grown in soil. They are fed nutrients in water. And plants are very. Their biology is very sort of elastic. And so they'll take up nutrients however they can get them. And so organic farmers are like, wait a minute, that stuff isn't even grown in the soil. And we know, as Dave just described, how important the soil is to what ends up in our crops and for that matter, our animal foods. And so with organic hydroponic, because the things that are in the water that these hydroponic crops are being raised on are allowed under the organic program. So that's a big issue. Now, one of the other things that we talk a lot about in the book is Dave had alluded to zinc and iron and copper. These are a whole category of things that we call micronutrients. And a real easy way to think about that is we need these things in tiny amounts, but they do big, big things in our bodies. They're absolutely essential. And there's three other things that we uncovered and wrote about in what your food ate. And it remains open as to whether or not these things are in hydroponically grown food. And these three other things are phytochemicals. So all plants, just by virtue of being a plant, they're producing all of these compounds and chemicals. And many of your listeners already know some of them, though they may not know that name. It's things like beta carotenes in our squashes and pumpkins. That's what the yellow and orange color is from. Or anthocyanins. Like, it's berry season right now. And so all those blues and purples and things, that's just another kind of phytochemical. And there are tens of thousands of phytochemicals among plants in the world. And plants rely heavily, heavily on their phytochemicals for both defense and communication with their other plants. And turns out when we bring these phytochemicals into our bodies, they function as anti inflammatories, as antioxidants. It's complex, but there's definitely a hand in glove thing going on with phytochemicals in the human diet and human health. So you've got phytochemicals micronutrients. The other thing, and this is very new, Ginny and I would be very surprised if there's much of anything in the way of microbial metabolites in hydroponically grown food. And these microbial metabolites, what are those things? So in the hidden half, we talked a lot about microbial communities that are supposed to be in our gut and supposed to be in the soil. And all of these microbes, bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other things, they need energy, they need to stay alive. So as they eat, they're producing metabolites. And we don't have we. When I say we, I mean the royal we. The world of science does not have a thorough handle on all of these metabolites that get produced in the soil. Many are taken up by plants. We write about one in what your food ate. It's called ergothioneine, and there's been some work done on that. And it's put it this way. You want to. You. You want it in your body and you want it in your food. Is ergothioneine in hydroponically grown crops? I don't know. I don't think anyone's probably looking at that. So the other thing, and this doesn't have so much to do with plants, but it's. It's kind of the fourth. We call these things the Fab four. Micronutrients, phytochemicals, microbial metabolites. The fourth of the Fab four is fat balance in our animal foods. And this has to do with the amount of omega 6 fats relative to the amount of omega 3 fats. So that's kind of not applicable as much to the plant world. But that's why hydroponic, that's why many, many people are so concerned about hydroponics coming into the organic certification. Because the other thing is, it's not required. You can go buy a tomato in the store and you will not know if it's grown hydroponically or in soil. Because the National Organic Program, despite much urging to do so, said, well, we can't be labeling hydroponic in addition to organic. It's just all organic. And of course, those who grow food in soil say, actually it's not all the same. So that's been going on for a while. And it's not helpful to not distinguish those two things.

[David Montgomery]

And those four things, the Fab four that Ann just mentioned are the things that. In what your food ate. In reviewing the scientific literature, we're able to basically synthesize that Those things are most definitely affected by how we farm.

[Ann Biklé]

Wow.

[Ginny Urich]

I mean, and you learn about. I really learned so much from these books. And in a way that, I mean, it's been a while since we talked first in a way that really helps you remember. So I remember reading in the Hidden Half of Nature, it's like, well, these phytochemicals are trying to communicate. It's like the giraffe wants to come and eat all of the leaves. And so the leaves will put off this chemical.

[Ann Biklé]

And.

[Ginny Urich]

And that's what, you know, you, you said something like, they can't run. You know, these plants, they can't run, so they have to have these defense systems. Well, if they're grown hydroponically, they may not need any of that. Or you talk about when we're dumping on the fertilizers, then the roots don't grow as deep and they're not pulling it. There was an amazing picture in the Hidden Half of Nature that shows it. And. And so you just can clearly see the deficits, the deficits of not being in the soil. So let's talk a little bit about soil, because how fun. What a fun thing to talk about. One of the big things you talk about in soil, so most of the world's farmland is sick, is you talk so much about earthworms and that earthworms boost crop yields, the importance of earthworms. But you write modern farming methods have killed off the majority of worms that previously lived on farms. Plowing is a natural disaster for worms. Tillage directly kills the. The soil life and the glyphosate. So you talk about the glyphosate affects earthworms. What can your sort of modern person do to help with what's going on here?

[David Montgomery]

Well, I mean, one of the things that we've started to do as a result of doing a lot of the research and writing on these books is to pay more attention to really where our food's coming from, how the farmers we're buying from are actually growing their food. And that's something that it can be a little difficult to do depending on where you live and what kind of places you have access to acquire food from. But one of the really big sort of levers for trying to shift agricultural. The agricultural enterprise globally is consumer interest and consumer pressure. And so there's. Becoming aware is essentially the first step towards following through and being able to try and see what kind of actions one might want to take. And being aware that the simple labels that we see in the grocery store that so far don't necessarily reveal the nature of the farming practices that are behind them. Now, there's a few labels that have started out. There's a regenerative organic label now that the Rodale Institute in Patagonia have pioneered and put forward. And the practices that they certify are pretty good. So if you see that the regenerative organic label, all the stuff that Ann and I have been writing about, those practices are kind of optimized towards trying to convey those benefits to the eater. That said, there's not really a rigorous definition of regenerative out there in the literature so far or certification. The regenerative organics is the one that has some standards behind. But I think we're going to start to see more and more development along those lines of additional labels that consumers may be able to glean information from that they can use to help shape their diet in ways that they may find beneficial.

[Ginny Urich]

Yeah, because the labels are a mess and they're misleading and it's a big problem. I just read about it in a book by Dr. I think it's pronounced Cinema Cola. And, and she was talking about with the labels, you know, it says free Range and it's like, well, you know, they. They can turn around or they can open one wing. You know, I mean, and you're like, the labels are not communicating what people. They're very misleading. And so the. Even this organic and, you know, and to know if it's in the hydroponics, I mean, it really matters. People might want to say, I want my blueberries and I want there to have been soil involved and earthworms involved in that type of thing.

[Podcast Guest or Parent Speaker]

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[Ginny Urich]

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[Podcast Guest or Parent Speaker]

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[Ginny Urich]

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[Podcast Guest or Parent Speaker]

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[Ginny Urich]

Quince.com outside what would a good definition for regenerative organic be?

[David Montgomery]

I think a good definition for regenerative in general are farming practices that build the health of the soil as a consequence of intensive farming. Now we need intensive farming because there's a lot of people on the planet, we need to grow a lot of food, and we need farmers to be economically viable and profitable to do so. So the challenge is figuring out how to get both those things working. And I think that the key really lies in prioritizing building healthy soils as the foundation for modern agriculture. We've basically tried to make high yields the foundation for modern agriculture for the last hundred years, and that's been successful at feeding the world so far. But it had it came with some side effects in terms of reduced nutrient density in our foods and degraded soil quality and soil health. And what Ann and I have been writing about, and what I'll synthesize in the book forthcoming next spring, is really why regenerative agriculture defined as practices that build soil health. Then we could also get into, well, okay, how do you define soil health? But it's a concept that is analogous to human health in many ways. But it's in thinking about a guiding philosophy behind how we farm, if we prioritize soil health, it would go a long way towards trying to address the problems that have come in modern agriculture and the definitions of organic or regenerative. Other things, if we could make a regenerative philosophy, one of building soil health as a consequence of farming, the foundation for the conventional agriculture of the future, in the sense that that's what most farmers are doing, that would really get us to where we need to be. I think in the Meantime, there's going to be a lot of arguing over sort of terms and terminology and what practices actually are or are not regenerative. And that's one of the challenges, because there's no two farms are the same. You know, how you would actually build healthy soils as a consequence of growing particular crops may vary region to region or farm to farm. And there will be some testing and experience that needs to go into trying to figure out how to best do it in different regions. There's not an easy button like there is for using glyphosate for weed control. You know, it kills everything except the things you've engineered not to be killed by it. It just happens to then create. Create other problems as well. And the regenerative approach takes more, I think, experimentation and thought. There's not really an easy button, but there is a unifying philosophy behind it that can guide the kind of practices and tinkering that it would take to figure out how best to move that forward.

[Ann Biklé]

Yeah, I think that's a really good question, Ginny, about how do you define regenerative? And even for that matter, how do you define soil health? And I think one of the most common sense, straightforward ways that I think about these two inextricably linked things is this. And it's no surprise, I mean, my bias, I'll say it right now, it is biology and microbiomes and what we want. All of this new science that, whether you're talking about a person, a plant, a cow, a dog, a giraffe, whatever it is, new science has come out in the last decade plus that the microbiome of its host, its host organism. So, you know, you, me, a crop is really part of the host body. And we want the microbiome to be functioning normally. We don't want abnormal, we want normal. And the same goes for the crop microbiome, most of which is around the roots. It's not above ground on the leaves, the flowers, or the fruit. It's around the root system. When you're talking about regenerative and soil health, we want practices that are supporting and protecting and enabling the symbiotic relationship between a crop host and their microbiome. Because when that happens, when that's functioning at a high level, the plant's immune system is very robust. It can deal with most pests and pathogens and not. It might suffer some loss, but it's not going to be a fatal interaction with pests and pathogens. The microbiome is able to. We talked about the Fab four All of those, even the fat one, that has to do with gut microbiome in ruminants, but all of those fab four is modulated and facilitated due to microbiomes. So when we talk about regenerative and soil health, what we're talking about is practices that instead of hammering and chiseling away and killing off these very, very important parts of each and every host, we want to work with it. In other words, there's a symbiosis between microbiomes and their hosts. And we want to emulate that symbiosis with our farming practices. Because, honestly, when you have a fully functioning microbiome, you can start to get away from the agrichemicals, away from the hydroponics, away from all of these things that we have decided somehow as a species are better than 400 plus million years of evolution between plants and their microbiome or animals in their microbiome. If readers are really interested in this and learning more about microbiomes, there is, of course, a hidden half in nature. But more recently, I did a white paper for a group called the center for Food Safety. It's called Microbiomes Matter, and it goes into human and agricultural microbiomes and their parallels. And the big takeaway is we have got to be working with microbiomes, protecting and supporting them, because it's not only good for the host, the benefits ripple out into our soil, out into our society. It's just sort of a. It's multiple, multiple benefits when we have microbiomes that function in the soil, the crop and the person.

[Ginny Urich]

Yeah, the books are fantastic because they also give you practical things to do and help you to understand things that you might have been confused about. So, for example, on the surface, it seems like it would make sense to spray everything with pesticides. So anybody who's had a garden, like, we were awful gardeners, but we have one, I'm growing flowers. Anyway, there's all sorts of Japanese beetles out there. You know, they're hanging out on my zinnias and, you know, so you would think, well, gosh, if I could just spray this whole area with something that dealt with Japanese beetles, why wouldn't I do that? But you say, and this is so interesting, you talk about how we actually want there to be some insects there because you talk about this predator prey relationship. And no one really thinks, well, if I spray that for the Japanese beetles, I'm also killing off all the predators. Like, I'm really inserting myself in almost like a godlike way. I feel like in the whole food cycle. You know, I don't know, I remember reading about that as a kid.

[Podcast Guest or Parent Speaker]

Right.

[Ginny Urich]

You learn about that in school. It's like, well, you know, if this, if this is gone, then that's gone. And what about what eats that and what, and it goes all the way up, you know, to us into, you know, bigger animals. So you say this, this is so interesting because it's, it is very counterintuitive. You say pests rebound faster. They're going to rebound faster if you're using the pesticides because you're also killing off the predators as well. So can you talk about the misconceptions there in terms of, you know, people who would be really quick to use some sort of a pesticide or what? There's all different things, right? Herbicide, insecticide, fungicide.

[David Montgomery]

Yeah, there's sort of two ways to think about managing pests, whether you're dealing with insects or fungi. And, and one is to basically kill them. Kill them all. Right. That's sort of the knee jerk reaction. And the problem of course, is that if you're dealing with broad classes of pesticides, things that kill all insects, things that kill all fungi, for example, broad spectrum pesticides, you're not just going to kill off the target organism, you'll probably also be killing off the things that eat those organisms, the predators. And so the other way to manage a pest problem is to have a lot of predators around and let them control the pests. And those two have different sort of long term challenges and benefits, you know, relying on the predators. The long term challenge is that you never totally get rid of the pests. Right. You just, you can keep them at a minor, minor, a nuisance level rather than a real problem level. Whereas with the, if you're using a broad spectrum pesticide and you kill off all the predators, you're basically running that experiment that, you know, anyone who's had a ecology 100 like level class will know that, you know, when the deer make it to an island and their population explodes and then the wolves get there, if the wolves eat all the deer off, the wolves then crash. So you need, you need the prey to support the predators. Yeah. So if you basically kill off everything, what's going to come back first? It's not going to be the predators because they can only come back once the prey come back because they have to have something to eat. Right. So the fundamental flaw with the pesticide rich sort of management philosophy is that if you use that, you're basically substituting your chemical Intervention for a natural process that could actually help keep the pests in check. And that then makes you dependent for future pest control on that same chemical. And so that's a great recipe for selling chemicals. It's not a great recipe for keeping pests out of your garden. And so one of the very little known but very well documented effects that you can find out there in the scientific literature is that when you look at sort of pest problems on organic farms that don't use broad spectrum pesticides and conventional farms that do use a lot of broad spectrum pesticides, where do you think you find more pests? The places we use more pesticides, not many people know this. I don't think we knew this before we started researching these books. But there's solid studies out there that document it. There's sound ecological theory behind how it works. But it's not good news if you're selling pesticides. And who is it that are advising farmers on how to farm? For the most part, people who are trying to sell them products for use on their farm. You can teach somebody the methods that you could use in regenerative farming to minimize the use of those chemicals, but you can't keep selling somebody the same lesson over and over again. You can keep selling them the same pesticide over and over again.

[Ann Biklé]

Wow.

[Ginny Urich]

And then they just feel like they probably need more and more and more.

[David Montgomery]

And they do.

[Ginny Urich]

They're creating. You write this conventional farming creates opportunities for pests. So now you've got more pests because whatever was going to eat them, no longer is there. Pests rebound faster than what eats them. We want a few insects to bother our crops. We just want the predators to be there as well. They'll come and eat and greed and eat them. Eat most of them. It's so interesting and so counterintuitive. And then the problem is then if we're adding on more and more pesticides. Right, because this isn't working. So now you have more pests. Now you don't have the predators to eat the pests where more and more chemicals. This is really affecting human health. So you're talking about birth defects, you're talking about falling human fertility linked to pesticides. You talk about the glyphosate. Can you talk about how these pesticides which are being used so much, how they're affecting the human population.

[Ann Biklé]

That's such a troubling aspect of modern agriculture, is that many of these agrochemicals might kill that pest or they might fertilize that plant. But what we're not thinking about is. But what else are they doing? There was just a study I heard about the other day. I think it was a study maybe out of. It was somewhere in Scandinavia, maybe Denmark. And what these folks concluded was that there are simply too many chemicals out there to be conducting all of the safety and hazard tests that it would be prudent to conduct to truly understand what the effects are. I think there was some stat. Don't quote me on this, but it was a large enough number that I went something like 4,000 plus new chemicals. And this is not just in agriculture. This is just across consumer society coming out every six months or something like that. And there's no way any regulatory body can deal with that kind of influx of new products and new chemicals, much less. You can't run clinical trials on this stuff because you can't poison people to find out how soon till they die. This is really the problem. There's been lawsuits around glyphosate, and I think it's Hodgkin's lymphoma, which has been linked to use of that chemical. Parkinson's is another disease that has been linked to agricultural chemicals. I believe initially it was paraquat. And so, anyway, there's that linkage there. There's reasons that some of these chemicals get banned altogether, like ddt, because after they were created and used, then we found massive problems in human health. This is not even mentioning the health of the environment or the health of, you know, fish or amphibians or other animals. Atrazine is another. It's an agrochemical. It's an herbicide. And that has been shown through studies on amphib. You know, and I try to blot some of this stuff out because it's also disturbing, Jenny. It's like, oh, my God, this is like a horror show. I think. I believe with the amphibians, it was like turning males into females or vice versa. Anyway, it's messing with their genitalia. So this is a problem. And then you take a look at, say, fertilizers and especially nitrogen fertilizer. That's not. It's not a pesticide. Right, Right.

[Ginny Urich]

Yeah. You're like, oh, you're adding stuff to the soil.

[Ann Biklé]

You're adding stuff like, this is good. We've been told over and over, N. NPK that's nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, the big three plants need for growth. Well, you talk to people in Iowa, around Des Moines, and there's a huge problem with excessive nitrates in their water supply. People are getting Bladder cancer. There's something called the Heartland Health Research Project and that is looking actually at maternal health. This is looking at moms who are living somewhere with excessive levels of nitrate in the water supply. This is not good for moms and it's not good for their babies. It's too much nitrogen. Too much nitrogen. That's why we've got to modify modern agriculture. Agriculture has been around for a long time, and we need to be modifying how it is we're growing our food not only for the sake of the very crops and animals that are a part of the human diet, for some of the reasons we discussed before. It has to do with are we getting the right nutrients in the right mix and the right levels in our plant and animal foods. That's why it matters how we farm. And moreover, we don't want any of these agrochemicals ending up in our food supply or our water because they make it into our bodies. I don't think there's a study out there that's shown actrazine glyphosate fertilizers at higher levels in humans are somehow beneficial. There's just, you will often see, well, they don't know. Well, put it this way. We don't have a complete understanding. That's true, because we don't have an entire world army looking at all these things. But we can say this. We lack a full understanding. And in many cases, the evidence overall is pointing to negative effects. Effects of these chemicals and compounds that, you know, were never in our plant and animal foods, say, you know, five hundred to a thousand years ago.

[Ginny Urich]

Yeah, I always think, who wins? Who wins? When we throw up our hands and we're like, well, we don't really know who knows? You know, we can't really test that. It's too many layers and too many chemicals. So, I mean, it might. I mean, nobody knows. It's like, well, who's winning? It's the ones that are, you know, profiting off of sick farmland and a sick population. And there are a lot of people who are profiting off of that.

[Podcast Guest or Parent Speaker]

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[Ginny Urich]

Sea what I love about your books is that you, it's, it's an overwhelming problem but you also give practical solutions and they're written in such a way that kind of like it sparks you. You know, you're like, okay, I really want to make sure I know where you know, these blueberries come from. I really want to make sure I want to meet some of the farmers that are, you know, within an hour of me. I would love to meet them, that type of thing. And in the hidden half of nature. You go through how you had crummy soil, you know, your soil wasn't great. You move into this house, the whole story around that, where you're like. And you're like, I'm so excited for my garden. And then you're like, oh, wait, nothing's going to grow here. So then you start getting truckloads of wood chips and, you know, you're throwing on things that you know, would compost down. It doesn't seem that hard. You know, it's like the solutions there aren't. It's not like you have to do some song and dance in a thousand different things. You're like, no, we just, you know, like, can the people start bringing us wood chips and we're going to start putting these things on there. And then you talk about how within a few years you're in the home and garden show where people are coming through your thing, you know, and it worked. It worked. And it didn't really take all that long. A situation that maybe seemed impossible to fix.

[Ann Biklé]

Right, right. And I always say this, Ginny, nature as a whole, microbes in particular. And so I often say and think about, wow, what would it be like if we gave nature half a chance to be nature and to function like nature? Wow, that would be cool. That would be something that would be inserting ourselves, humans, into nature in a way that would be highly productive, not just for our bodies, but, you know, your. Your thousand hours outside, you know, it's also good for our minds, it's good for our communities, it's good for our planet as a whole. So all of that is a solution. And, you know, I like modern life. Like, I love this cup of coffee I just had, you know, ground the beans, blah, blah, blah. That's good. But I also think we somehow need to figure out, how do we take the best of the modern and how do we take history and what we know through not just human history, but natural history and geologic history and bring those things together, you know, as we go forward on this planet, you know, into the future. That all things to me just seem to always point to that. Let's take the best of what we learned and what we know how to do from the past. And let's combine that with, you know, the plethora of scientific discoveries that every, you know, daily are telling us how the planet works, how our bodies work, what direction to go. So I'm kind of, you know, that's what I mean when I say if we get. If we just give Nature half a chance to function as it always has. I think we could get a long ways with addressing and solving a lot of problems, not just in agriculture, but in other realms as well.

[Ginny Urich]

It's a really deep statement. Can we give nature half a chance to be nature? I feel like the same way about childhood. Oh, yeah, can we give them half a chance? Can we just give them a chance to be kids and to have a childhood that's not inundated with screens and ultra processed foods and sitting, sitting, sitting, sitting, and so much stress from schoolwork? So, yeah, what an, what a thing. And you just show so well, like, it works. It works like it's fine to have some pests in some predators, you know, like, this is how it's meant to be. So to support it, support it, support kids, support childhood, how it's meant to be. One of the things you talk about that's super interesting is that these animals, they have their own sense of what to eat. So you talk about, it's called like zoo, zoo pharmacology, or animals in the wild that become ill routinely choose foods and medicinal effects to make themselves feel better. You talk about the bears. You know, the bears wake up, they've got an upset stomach. You know, they have to dig up roots and it gets their gut moving. Oh, that's what it is. They're coming out of hibernation, you know, they gotta get stuff moving. So they have this intuition right to go and they dig up these roots. And so one of the things you talk about with the soil and the fact that everything is a mess is it mess. Messes with the taste. And I read this book by a man named Mark Schatzker called the Dorito Effect. And I didn't know about really hardly any of this, but you know, it would make sense. You're like, okay, ultra processed foods, they engineer them so it, you know, it tastes really good and you eat more. But one of the things that he was talking about was, well, that's one part of it. But the other part is that in when you bring up the zoo pharmacology thing, it's like if our bodies have an intuition about what to eat, and you eat these ultra processed foods that have all of these taste additives in them, basically your body is confused and doesn't really know what's going on. And that could lead to overeating.

[Ann Biklé]

Oh, yeah, this whole thing. This whole thing, right Again, I'll just say this. 500,000 years ago, we weren't walking in a grocery store and Buying bags of Doritos, right? We were foraging, we were growing our food. And biology is just amazing because, you know, whether you're talking, you know, a bear, a horse, a human, we have to eat. And we have to eat a diet that's appropriate for our biology. And by that I mean the mix and levels of all of these nutrients and compounds. And when I say that, I mean that's writ large. That's not just like carbohydrates, proteins and fats, it's all of it, ergothioneine, phytochemicals, other microbial metabolites. And our bodies evolved to match up how the taste and flavor of foods with our nutrient needs. That I think for both David and I, in writing and doing the research for this, that was like, oh, you mean in the springtime when I eat, in early summer, if I'm finding strawberries that my body is sensing, tasting the strawberries and going, yeah, vitamin C is in those. Eat more. All of the phytochemicals in strawberries. Yeah, eat more. The basic problem with ultra processed foods is they've kind of hijacked our senses and we have lost the connection between nutrient density and how flavor and taste steer us naturally toward nutrient dense foods. And it's in animals. You know, we talk also in the book about how, whether you're talking, you know, ruminants like cows or you're talking chickens or you're talking pigs, they each have a body wisdom. Humans have a body wisdom too. And we can select a diet and a mix of foods in our diet that matches with our biology. The reason this is really important is that from infants to young kids, moving through adolescence into adulthood into old age, our biology changes and we have the body wisdom to be matching what our body needs with a diet. So it's just, it's super important. And, you know, we go in the book, you know, through a little exercise, you know, how do you get back in touch with your taste, with your taste buds and the way that flavor interacts with your brain? And, you know, like, I've got these peaches on the counter. I'm just waiting for them to get a little bit riper because I'm, I'm, I really want to bite into that and see what kind of zingers is this going to send to my brain? And I'm hoping it's not a mealy beach mealy peach Jenny, because I'm going to cry. I'm going to scream if it is. That's just going to be a. That'll be a big roadblock on my body wisdom other than to say, oh, don't get any more peaches from that farmer. No more. That's the other thing that's really important about body wisdom is if you find a farmer or a particular store where the foods that you're selecting and bringing home are a winner from a taste, flavor and nutrient standpoint, always go back. Always go back and get more. Anything that fails, 86 it. Get that, get that out of the diet. Yeah.

[David Montgomery]

That body wisdom idea works really well for whole natural foods. Right. The kinds that we would have evolved eating and what the processed food industry has done is basically taking certain elements that were very attractive taste wise in our ancestral diets because they were rare things like salts, fats and sugar and put those, you know, up front and divorced the flavors that we're eating and processed foods from what's actually delivered. So our body in terms of flavor is thinking, oh, we're getting great stuff. But your body, in terms of the, you know, receiving that material for use in your body is going, where's the good stuff? You haven't given it to me yet. So go eat more.

[Ann Biklé]

Right, right.

[David Montgomery]

And your taste buds go, oh yeah, more salt, sugar and fat.

[Ginny Urich]

Yeah. Our bodies are confused.

[David Montgomery]

We're all prone to that.

[Ginny Urich]

Right?

[Ann Biklé]

Bodies are confused. Yeah. And I, I was taking a walk yesterday and so we live in a neighborhood, you know, we're not out in the country. We're not, we don't have a farm or anything. And there was a dad and his young kid and this is in urban Seattle. And this kid was, I don't know, maybe two really could not. Was just kind of starting to learn how to talk. And I thought, oh my God, what is that kid doing? They're reaching through that fence slat and they're pulling a raspberry off of that neighbor's plant. And I thought, wait a minute, I passed that plant the other day. I didn't think they were ripe. What's going on here? So this little kid was able to be walking, can't hardly talk. And it is going, this kid, and it is picking a few raspberries and kind of hanging onto it. And I thought, oh, that's going to drop. Are they going to take one bite and spit it out? No. There was about three raspberries that went in and a big smile happened right after that. No one's told this kid, go get those raspberries. No one said, you need to smile after you eat that raspberry. The body knows the body Knows flavors.

[Ginny Urich]

Are supposed to inform our body wisdom. Body wisdom serves humans remarkably well. And then you talk about how all of these flavorists are making it so that we're confused. The tastier foods are no longer a sure guide to healthier ones. So the premise here is that you say, look, there's no short of opinions, shortage of opinions about what we should eat. And people are arguing, less meat, more meat, no meat, Meat that isn't meat, you know, and you're like, that's not the point. The point is not necessarily that. It's about how are the things grown, you know, and. And that's a big part of it. It's a big missing piece about our diets that no one's really talking about. And then you go through. You talk about different farmers. You just really learn so much. And always in a way that makes it feel like it's accessible to make some changes. You feel motivated to make some changes. It makes it make sense, like the pesticides and the pests and the predators, and you learn all of these different things. And I just am so honored. I'm so honored that I've gotten a chance to talk to you. And this is the second time. I really like that you go through different farms in this book. You talk about Singing Frog Farm and you talk about how they don't use any chemicals, but they are not organic. Why? Because there's mountain of paperwork. So the labeling thing is an issue too. The labeling thing is really tricky. It's almost like it's used to be deceptive in some instances, and it's used to keep some people out that could be, you know, doing good things, but they don't have the manpower or the resources to deal with all the paperwork. You talk about Blue Dasher Farm.

[Podcast Guest or Parent Speaker]

Every year he loses all his bees.

[Ginny Urich]

The same health problems taking out bees are increasingly affecting us. Autoimmune diseases, learning disabilities, and food intolerances. What an incredible book. I can't wait for the new one, too. This is what your food ate. The hidden half of nature. You also have dirt and growing a revolution. Just phenomenal. Books for families to read and to sit down and to learn with your kids so that they know what's going on and we can bring the life back to the soil. I mean, it's a really hopeful message. So what an honor. Thank you for carving out time. I know you both have so much going on. David and Ann. David did this before, so, Ann, it's going to be your turn. We always end our show with the same Question. What's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside?

[Ann Biklé]

Ah. So I was a little girl, and I'm walking around our backyard, which to me seemed as big as a national park. It wasn't, but. And I grew up in Colorado, so this is a cold, wintry place, Right. And then in early June, there I am, and there's this plant, and I have to tilt my head back to see it because it's just taller than my head. And I'm catching this whiff, this beautiful whiff of something. And it is jewel tone deep purple. And it was my first kind of really grokking of an iris. And that remains with me to this day. I love irises. And I will stick my nose into an iris. And always I think of what did that. Is this like that iris I smelled when I was, you know, three or four years old, trying to. Trying to get my nose up to the top of it, but I couldn't quite get there. So that's my favorite memory.

[Ginny Urich]

And that's even in the book. We have about 400 different olfactory receptors capable of detecting a trillion distinct aromas. So how interesting that yours related to smell. And, you know, and just noticing that, wow. Well, what an honor. I cannot wait until your next book comes out. I just. They're really well written, you know, I feel like a book, you know, talking about soil. I mean, it could be boring, but they're just, they're. They're really well written and they capture your attention. And like I said, they don't. It doesn't feel like the doldrums. It feels like hopeful, like, oh, I could be a part of this. I could make a difference. I could, you know, talk to the farmers. I could try and grow differently. I could help educate other people. And so I so appreciate what you're doing and thank you for your time today.

[David Montgomery]

Yeah.

[Ann Biklé]

Well, Jenny, I really love this. This was so much fun. I really like your approach and your whole take on this and the fact that you are firmly ensconced in the parenting and the raising of the young, our young. This is how we change things. So we need more of you spread out in more places because you've, you know, you've got the cred there, and.

[Ginny Urich]

It'S just an educational component.

[Podcast Guest or Parent Speaker]

Right?

[Ginny Urich]

There's an educational component to it. And people are confused, and rightfully so. There's a lot of marketing to confuse you. And so when you read something that's counterintuitive, like conventional farms have more pests, you're like, wait, wait a minute. I need to know more about that. And so it's phenomenal, the work that you're putting out into the world. I think it's really helping a lot of families. So thank you to the both of you. Enjoy the rest of the summer, and I'll be in touch.

[Ann Biklé]

Oh, yeah, you bet. Ginny.

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[Ginny Urich]

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