Report identifies poor soil health as national security threat.

A report, Soil health: a national security profile, launched today by the Food & Global Security Network, calls on ministers to formally recognise healthy soil as a strategic asset, critical for maintaining food and societal security. 

It says that defence departments globally should work with departments for agriculture and the environment to jointly oversee delivery of increased food sovereignty within nations and the regeneration of soil function. In the UK, the Ministry of Defence should work with Defra.​

Ffinlo Costain, chief executive of Farmwel and founder of the Food & Global Security Network, said;

‘The right to affordable nutrition underpins peace and civil stability, but the impacts of climate disruption and biodiversity loss are already affecting food production. If we see a 2C rise in global temperatures, which now seems increasingly likely, we could experience extreme disruption in global food supplies. When food is scarce, prices rise, inequality increases and simmering resentments can turn rapidly into conflict and even war. Healthy soil and a balanced ecosystem are critical for food sovereignty and a peaceful society.’ 

Soil health: a national security profile was published by the Food & Global Security Network, a project of Farmwel, supported by FAI Farms.  

The report profiles the critical importance of soil health through the independent writings of 22 experts – military minds, NGO leaders, scientists and practical farmers. Writers include Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti (the UK’s former Climate and Energy Security Envoy), Patrick Holden, Øistein Thorsen, Sue Pritchard, Martin Lines, Walter Jehne, Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin and George Young.

Global security is maintained by taking steps to mitigate future threats. Now, in addition to traditional state-on-state or intra-state threats, we face non-traditional threats, the most important of which can be characterised as ‘ecological breakdown’.

The extreme weather events associated with global warming, coupled with the loss of biodiversity and soil structure, could have devastating impacts on harvests around the world. While food scarcity is a recognised accelerant of instability, it is soil biodiversity in particular that is critical in minimising and mitigating this risk. 

Ffinlo Costain said;

‘We urge governments and food businesses to take the security risks associated with soil degradation and ecological breakdown extremely seriously. We see agroecology as a low risk and low cost solution that can mitigate the security threats connected with poor soil health. With COP26 in sight, agroecology and regenerative farming can produce great food locally and at scale, while greatly accelerating carbon drawdown, regenerating biodiversity, and managing precipitation to provide greater drought resilience and better flood protection.’

Useful links

• Website Food and Security: foodandsecurity.net
• Watch the recording of the webinar here.

Should we be more cautious?

These days, everyone has likely heard someone talking about the health benefits of eating a plant-based diet. There are many science-backed claims to suggest that many people benefit – in the short term at least, from a plant-based diet. But as with all conclusions drawn from current science – we have only just begun to scratch the surface of where the science will eventually lead us.

Many of our Primal Meats customers have come to us because they have tried to follow a plant-based diet for a range of very good reasons; ethics, environmental concerns or in an attempt to be healthy. Sadly in many cases, the strict diet has led to deterioration not an improvement in their health. 

We are just beginning to understand that every person is unique in their capacity to digest and absorb nutrition from their food. This is not simply due to individual genetic variations and which genes are switched on or off, but in larger part by the make-up of an individual’s gut microbiome. The gut microbiome is a huge piece of the puzzle when it comes to what diet works best for an individual and the research in this area will show us in time how we can optimise our digestion and nutrient absorption. 

We cover some of the potential health issues that emerge from eliminating animal food in the video below but something that hasn’t received much attention is the issues that can be caused by the plant-based compound oxalic acid. 

Oxalic acid

Anyone that has suffered the awful pain and organ damage of kidney stones, is painfully familiar with the effects of this compound. Oxalic acid is the compound that leads to the formation of calcium oxalate crystals that form kidney stones and can cause recurrent urinary tract infections too.  

Whilst Doctors advise people who suffer from kidney stones to follow a low oxalate diet – being more aware of oxalic acid and oxalates may benefit all of us. 

Oxalic acid on its own is harmless – but when it binds to calcium it forms calcium oxalate nanocrystals. These crystals take a formation, known as raphides (1) or to be more scientific – prismatic monoclinic crystals – which are basically mini needles. By the time these crystal structures have grown large enough to form stones, they will have already been irritating the tissues in which they are present for some time. 

Some other conditions that may be associated with these oxalate crystals include:

• problems related to inflammation
• auto-immunity
• mitochondrial dysfunction
• mineral balance
• Issues with connective tissue
• urinary tract issues
• poor gut function

Oxalic acid can harm glandular, connective and neurological function and the function of the tissues of excretion, particularly the kidneys and bladder (2)

These crystals, if allowed to form in the body, cause a lot of destruction and the body’s best defence is to excrete them quickly via the kidneys into the urine. 

The body is very good at removing these calcium oxalates when they are produced in normal amounts and when a person’s physiology is working as it should, but the problem arises when too much oxalic acid is consumed, or when too many oxalate crystals are absorbed through the gut lining or form in the body.

Humans have evolved to eat a diverse seasonal diet – this has a powerful protective effect because seasonal food is only available for brief periods. This seasonality of food prevents us from consuming any particular plant in excess and prevents our bodies from getting overloaded. 

Our modern-day lifestyle however is out of sync with seasonality – especially plant-based diets. We can now import certain plant foods all year round, as well as grow many indoors. 

Whilst spinach would grow slowly, if at all through the winter in the UK, now people can eat copious amounts of spinach every day of the year and add it to their ‘healthy’ smoothies, along with loads of other superfood powders that can be very high in oxalic acid too. 

Spinach is just one example of foods that are high in oxalic acid – there are many more healthy plant foods, such as chard and even green and black tea that contain high levels. 

We certainly need to look further into the potential implications of a diet high in oxalic acid for otherwise healthy people. But regardless of what the science reveals about the potential pitfalls of high oxalic acid diets, the advice that I offer remains unchanged.

We should be eating a diverse, fresh, seasonal diet, grown the way nature intended, in or on healthy soil. It is seasonal diversity that allows us to moderate our diet and protects us from excessive consumption of compounds. 

For those that have followed a plant-based diet for a long time and that have suffered from kidney stones or other chronic health issues – it may be worthwhile researching the effects of a build-up of calcium oxalate crystals and seeking out professional nutritional support to help your body cleanse them from your system. 

References:

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3951349/
2. https://www.urologyofva.net/articles/category/healthy-living/3740469/11/13/2019/the-damaging-effects-of-oxalates-on-the-human-body

The ultimate ancestral health experience has got to be hunting your own wild game meat; for some, however, this is just a step too far!

Luckily there is another way. We have made it super easy for you and work with a team in Cumbria who supply all of our wild game meats from a range of Estates throughout the Region.

I think wild game is some of the most nutritious and delicious meat you can eat and it has some pretty impressive credentials too:

• Wild game meat is sustainable.
  Unlike many farmed types of meat that require human-managed resources including; cereals, medicines, bedding, care and transportation, the wild game lives in our natural spaces living from an existing ecosystem that requires no input. In the absence of natural predators, our ruminant populations have to be managed to avoid overgrazing, buying wild game can play an important role in helping Estates manage the land better.

• Wild game meat is usually high welfare.
  The animals have lived wild in their natural environment expressing natural behaviours? When it comes to the point of death, wild game is shot or killed in its wild habitat – no transportation; no pens; no crushes – a quick and skilled shot will dispatch the animal before it has had time to suffer or comprehend the process.

• Wild game meat is healthy.
  Wild game is exactly the same meat as our ancestors ate before we domesticated animals. It comes with all the benefits of living in a wild, healthy and diverse ecosystem; a superb omega 3 to omega 6 ratios of essential fatty acids, higher levels of fat-soluble vitamins that found in grain-fed meats, no antibiotic residues and far less chance of exposure to pesticides and agricultural toxins. As discussed in our blog  ‘Grass-fed meat more than just omega 3’ grazers who have access to wild herbs, plants and trees will benefit from ingesting high ‘doses’ of health-promoting phytochemicals that are passed to humans through the meat. You can think of wild herbivores as ‘upcycling’ nutrients from plants we humans cannot eat from the healthiest and most diverse habitats.   

Stalking experience

I am fanatical about animal welfare and wanted to see for myself how humane this deer stalking really is. Stephen and I had the privilege of accompanying a stalker on a large Scottish Highland estate to see what’s involved in shooting a red stag for our freezer.

I can’t emphasise enough the skill and understanding of the landscape and the animals a stalker must-have. They ‘live and breathe’ the estate, are familiar with every nook and cranny of the area, and will know the movements and individual animals in the herds that occupy their land. Don’t confuse them with jodhpur-clad rosy-cheeked folk who love to chase animals around!

The stalker should always be out of sight and downwind so that the deer won’t associate people with danger – this would make their job impossible. The stalker’s job is to maintain a healthy herd of animals; this happens through careful culling to avoid any animal suffering from starvation or injury. The real skill is to take animals nearing the end of their life,  not integral to the future of the herd, but still in good enough condition to provide great venison.

A stalker may also increase the income potential further by taking a client stalking and under supervision allowing them to take the kill. Clients are required to prove they are ‘up to the job’ by shooting practice targets before going into the hills.

In our experience, we crawled on our bellies for hours waiting for the right moment. We then got a closer look at a herd of stags we had been stalking in the distance. Through the binoculars, we could see a grazing stag who was apparently a ‘10 pointer’; an older stag who was healthy but ageing and may not survive another harsh winter.

Our stalker took aim with his high powered rifle and in an instant the stag dropped to the floor. There was no kicking or movement. The rest of the herd took flight – they had no idea what had happened, but the noise scared them into the distance.

On closer inspection, our stag was killed instantly with a lethal shot to the neck. I couldn’t believe how much more humane this was than transporting an animal in a trailer into an unfamiliar abattoir to be slaughtered. No stress, no fear – no knowledge of the event at all!

The deer is bled and gutted on the moorland – it just disappears into the ground, as essential minerals and food for wildlife.

If you want to see a stalker in the highlands in action and watch the full process then, this video shows it all. 

In terms of land management and ethics, there is much debate about the impact deer stalking estates have on the environment and wildlife. Just like farming, there are estates that are well managed where biodiversity and wildlife are valued, and those who falsely inflate populations with profit in mind and negatively impact the ecology. 

In addition to the year-round venison we can offer from Cumbrian estates we are hoping to soon offer shares of whole venison from one of our partner farms and estates who are transitioning to regenerative agriculture or Wilderculture so looking to reduce their deer population.

If you would like to put your name on our waiting list for this then please email [email protected].

As for cooking wild game, there’s a wealth of fantastic recipes and ideas for cooking every wild furry and feathery beast you can imagine online. It’s actually no more difficult than cooking with beef or lamb – it’s just a bit unfamiliar at first. 

Take a look at ‘game-to-eat’ for starters.

Venison is great throughout the year and can be enjoyed in versatile dishes such as the venison ragu above. As the first leaves start to fall from the trees however is the time I most love cooking and eating wild game, it is the essence of hunkering down for the cosy seasons. 

Venison is rich in flavour and delicious and once you have tried it I am sure you will find many ways of substituting other meats in your favourite recipes. 

Enjoy!

The symmetry between my work in regenerative agriculture and studying human health never ceases to amaze me. 

Our understanding of the function of the soil is accelerating at breakneck speed and yet leading soil ecologists admit we probably know less than 1% of what is really happening in the soil below our feet. 

Early farmers better understood the importance of soil health even though they may not have had the science to explain what was really going on. Pre-war, mixed farming understood the need for rotation, composting of manure, and building humus through grazed grass fallows so our soil could feed our plants and abate disease. 

The green revolution – led by the brightest and best reductionist scientists – focused on specialisation for production. The soil was considered a medium to hold up a plant rather than a living system; consequently, it was treated like dirt! 

In these decades billions of pounds of research were poured into better understanding how to manage plants and animals to achieve high outputs. Nearly all of the current agricultural practices and recommendations were shaped and influenced by the research into what is required to make a plant grow. 

Based on these findings we decided upon the most important nutrients to use for plant growth (N, P, K), we bred the species of plants that best responded to those nutrient applications, and we chose the breeds of  livestock that fattened quickest on these specialised grasses and grains.

Unfortunately, with our eye pressed firmly to the microscope lens, we completely missed a fundamental factor; that a plant is in fact a holobiont.

Unlike a human whose gut is enclosed within a physical body, a plant’s gut is made up of the living organisms in and around the root zone in healthy living soil. These organisms solubilise the minerals that plants can’t access and ‘feed’ the plants in exchange for sugars made in photosynthesis.   

When studying a plant in a lab, the soils used for the experiments are sterilised and homogenized so scientists can ensure a consistent experiment. There are ZERO living organisms in that soil! 

Without these organisms, a plant essentially has a stomach but no gut. The plant is only able to take up a tiny fraction of the nutrients floating in the soluble pool. It responds dramatically to additions of N, P, K because it STARVES otherwise!    

This is the equivalent of studying how humans digest food by thinking of our stomach as a furnace that simply delivers calories of energy and our colon as simply as helpful waste plumbing! 

Oh, wait! 

Pasteur vs. Béchamp

At a critical juncture in the development of science in human health, there were two friends who had developed two very different theories for the cause of disease in humans. 

Louis Pasteur with his germ theory and Antoine Béchamp with his terrain theory.

Germ theory proposed that microorganisms were the cause of many diseases; this paved the way for antibiotics and vaccines for which most of us are very grateful today. 

Béchamp claimed to have discovered that the “molecular granulations” in biological fluids were actually the elementary units of life. He named them microzymas—that is, “tiny enzymes”—and credited them with producing both enzymes and cells while “evolving” amid favourable conditions into multicellular organisms. 

Béchamp also denied that bacteria could invade a healthy animal and cause disease, claiming instead that unfavourable host and environmental conditions destabilise the host’s native microzymas and decompose host tissue by producing pathogenic bacteria.

Unlike the germ theory, the terrain theory explains why some people get sick while others, when exposed to the same pathogens, do not. 

As with most things, there is truth within both of these theories. Unfortunately in the West we have adopted germ theory to the expulsion of almost every other theory of health. Our medical research, theories, practices and protocols are almost entirely through the tinted lens of germ theory.  

What we have learned from studying ecology and applying it to our regenerative agriculture systems is that when an ecosystem is in an early stage of  succession – such as after a volcanic eruption or fire or damaged by modern agriculture practices – the limited diversity and complexity of the ecology facilitates the boom and bust in populations of organisms. The sort of organisms that thrive here we often call ‘weeds, docks, thistles, willow herb for example. 

However, in a natural system, an ecosystem will gradually increase in diversity and the connections between these organisms become highly interactive. Instead of a species of bird only having one species of insect to eat it has ten, in turn, those insects have thirty species of plant to thrive on instead of two and pollinators have hundreds of flowers to feed upon. The whole system thrives regardless of whether it’s a dry year or a wet year – there’s always some species doing well. 

Similarly, in the soil the complexity of organisms increases in step with the above-ground ecology.  Different plant species produce root exudates, each with a variety of different nutrients and chemical signals which then interact with  a wide range of soil organisms, each with a specialism such as nitrogen fixation, phosphorus uptake or trace element scavenging. 

In these complex systems, mycorrhizal fungi extend the reach of plants and connect plants together so they can share nutrients and protective plant chemicals. The whole system becomes more resilient and resistant to disease, drought and flood.  

When farmers use a herbicide to kill the ‘weeds’ it further reduces the complexity of the whole system leading to more weeds. As an alternative  we can advance the system complexity beyond the conditions that suit the dominant organism. This can be done by adding more species into the sward and in a cropping rotation introducing diverse herbal leys.

Meanwhile, since the 1990’s we have been discovering that us humans also have a system of microorganisms that is a lot like a functional soil food web. 

We, humans, are actually composed mostly of microbes. Estimates vary but probably in the region of 100 trillion of them. Microbes outnumber our human cells ten to one, weigh more than 2kg and the number of genes in one person’s microbiome is 200 times the number of genes in the human genome. 

Most of our soil food web lives in our gut, particularly the large intestine. The microbiome is the genetic material of all the microbes – bacteria, fungi, protozoa and viruses – that live on and inside the human body. 

Just like in the holobiont that makes up the plant and soil these organisms help and benefit us in far more ways than they cause us disease.

Many help us to digest food, support our immune system and produce important nutrients such as B vitamins B12, thiamine and riboflavin, and Vitamin K, which is needed for blood coagulation and so so much more. 

A healthy microbiome has been shown to influence our ability to maintain a healthy weight and maintain a positive state of mind. It can even drive our behaviours, happiness and addictions. 

Autoimmune diseases such as diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, and fibromyalgia are associated with dysfunction in the microbiome. Autoimmune diseases appear to be passed on in families not by DNA inheritance but by inheriting the family’s microbiome.

The field of epigenetics is exploding and I have no doubt that over time we will learn nearly every expression of a gene is influenced by our environmental conditions including the health of our internal ecosystem.

So equally when we disrupt our internal ecosystem then our gene expression and overall health suffers. 

Interestingly what damages our complex and resilient soil food web in the soil too is highly damaging to our human microbiome. 

Tillage, herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, irrigation with toxic water, antibiotic use and additions of highly digestible nutrients leads to damage and destruction of the complex, diverse and health-supporting microbiome and facilitates creation of a simplified low successional environment that is more prone to population explosions of pathogenic organisms. 

• https://www.britannica.com/science/human-microbiome

In human health, a diet of refined foods laced with these farm chemicals is surely going to reduce the complexity of your own internal defence system. In addition, most people are not only exposed to the antibiotics fed to livestock but are taking multiple courses of these microbiome disrupting interventions over their lifetime along with an increasing number and variety of other pharmaceuticals. 

The incredible advances in medicine have made it possible to kill the ‘weeds’ that cause us people so many issues but with every intervention, we are reducing our capacity for resilience. 

At what point will we start to look at the root cause – our drastically simplified inner ecology. In our modern world – especially the West, we now have a population whose internal ecosystem is in the lowest stages of ecological succession. We make perfect hosts for invading pathogens. 

Unless we want to stay on a treadmill of ‘weed killers’ with ever diminishing effectiveness and increasingly severe unintended consequences, we have to proactively rebuild our health and well being. It’s not in the interest of those selling the weed killers to encourage this – it’s up to us.

Just as in nature, we need to add diversity and build connections. We need to redesign the way we grow food towards life-enhancing systems and build a healthy, complex and robust microbiome. 

We will continue to explore the pro-active and pro-nature ways of building resilience through our primal living series.