Soil remineralization doesn’t just protect crops — it also safeguards human health
“All disease is a result of a mineral deficiency or loss of mineral energy — in plants, animals and humans.”
—Dr. Carey Reams
The words “vitamins,” “antioxidants,” “polyphenols,” “flavonoids,” and “certified organic” have dominated the health buzz this century. Yet the role of minerals in food quality has barely raised a peep.
The benefits of organic agriculture — reduction in man-made herbicides, insecticides and fungicides — are well known. But this is not enough to produce quality food. We must ask ourselves, “What’s missing? Is there a connection between soils, quality food, and health?”
Yes — there is a connection between soil minerals and food quality, and we now know how to improve upon that connection. Work by Dr. Bonnie J. Kaplan and others has demonstrated that minerals can improve mental health (see her journal article, “Hospitalization Cost of Conventional Psychiatric Care Compared to Broad-spectrum Micronutrient Treatment”).
This article will describe a study my team and I conducted to compare nutrient levels in beets grown in a properly mineralized soil in four different states and those grown both conventionally and under USDA certified organic standards. Our results show that just one year of remineralization work does produce food with higher mineral and nutrient content.
What Is “Ideal” Soil?
Michael Astera, author of the handbook, The Ideal Soil, says “If the minerals are not in the food it’s because they are not available in the soil. So why not add them to the soil and get them in your food? At the same time, feed and activate the soil life, bring the humus level up to optimum for your soil and climate, and provide the energy the plants and soil life need. The soil will be healthy, the plants too, and so will the people and animals who eat the nutrient-dense food grown in the Ideal Soil.”
Farmers and nutritionists, more than most, should be aware that most of our soils and fruits and vegetables are minerally depleted. However, many may not be aware of how simple it is to fix this problem. We can add back and balance most of the missing minerals in the soil and, in turn, have them show up in the food.
Buckwheat, oats and legumes can be used as cover crops to turn the soil into a reducing environment to transform oxidized (think rust) iron and manganese into their reduced forms. The photosynthetic pump can be further primed with foliar applications of chelated iron and manganese in reduced form. This is like pushing the accelerator to jump a car engine from 1,500 rpm to 4,000. The glucose flow from the plants to the soil microbes accelerates and we can make huge headway in one growing season.
However, it will likely take a couple of years to get the soil fully balanced and the biology functioning completely. You can’t and shouldn’t just dump on a lot of any old fertilizer. You have to follow the recipe; the right balance of minerals is key.
Why Fuss about Minerals?
Minerals are the basis for all food. They are key cofactors for thousands of enzymes and important plant functions. For instance, photosynthesis absolutely does not occur without magnesium. It also requires nitrogen, iron, manganese and phosphorus.
Without calcium, magnesium and silica as structural elements, plants, animals and humans would be unable to stand erect. These minerals also enable plants’ resistance against harmful insects and disease.
For us humans, boron is the second most abundant mineral in our brain fluid. Zinc is the fertility and intelligence element. Copper is a natural fungicide and immune-system booster. Iron is a major component of hemoglobin, which carries oxygen in the blood. Phosphorus helps form ATP, which is necessary to provide energy for our body’s cells. Sulfur combines with nitrogen to form amino acids and proteins.
These are just a few of the great things that these minerals do for us and for plants.
Unfortunately, though, since the 1940s, significant declines have been documented in minerals in our vegetables. See the journal articles “A Study on the Mineral Depletion of the Foods Available to Us as a Nation” by David Thomas and “Declining Fruit and Vegetable Nutrient Composition” by Donald Davis.
What Can We Do About It?
Use more compost? A little compost is good. However, sole dependence on compost will likely raise the potassium and/or phosphorus in the soil to excessive, unbalanced levels. Too much potassium limits uptake of calcium and magnesium. Too much phosphorus ties up zinc, iron and copper.
Use more biotech? Every inserted trait makes the plant use more energy to work around it. The fallout of inserting a new gene or taking out or silencing a particular gene also has unknown and often unintended negative consequences and ripple effects throughout the DNA chain (see the work of Dr. Don Huber on this point).
Dump on more NPK and lime? Using only NPK and lime will continue to throw soil mineral balance out of whack. Excess nitrogen leaches into groundwater and rivers. Soils oversaturated with phosphorus can also leach soluble reactive phosphorus, which encourages algal blooms in rivers, lakes and even the ocean. Soluble nitrogen and potassium encourage weeds.
Food crops need a full spectrum of balanced mineral nutrients. When the soil is only amended with NPK fertilizers, the crops will continue to take up the other needed minerals from the soil, leading to lower and lower levels of the minerals that are not being supplied, causing the soil to become more and more depleted.
Use diverse cover crops? Yes — emphasizing the word “diverse.” Four classes of plants are needed in the mix: warm- and cool-season grasses and warm- and cool-season legumes. This mix improves soil structure, stores more carbon, and increases water infiltration and water holding capacity. They also signal (i.e., talk to each other) and share resources. In this ecosystem, plants partner with soils to repress disease and support soil life. In the process, minerals like iron and manganese are more available to plants. Oats and buckwheat are just two examples of plants that do this.
Use more mycorrhizal fungi? Yes. Mycorrhizal fungi are associated with the roots of more than 95 percent of terrestrial plant species. They can increase the surface-absorbing area of roots as much as 50 times. That alone is worth its weight in gold. Interestingly, beets, broccoli, cabbage and spinach do not form beneficial relations with mycorrhizal fungi, but most other vegetable crops benefit from them.
Encourage more photosynthesis? Absolutely. Using foliar sprays to encourage plants to photosynthesize at 60 to 80 percent efficiency — instead of the current average of 15 to 30 percent — is a huge deal. Foliars send more sugar out the roots as food for the soil microbes. The microbes, in turn, work harder to supply minerals to the plant, and the soil builds carbon, organic matter and humus much faster.
Finally, should you balance soil minerals? Definitely. Balancing soil minerals is the base for everything that goes on in a field. Cover crops do better. Soil microbes and earthworms do better. Plants grow better and put more minerals into the vegetables, fruits and grains. Animals and humans who eat these plants become healthier. After years of research by William Albrecht, Carey Reams, Michael Astera and many others, we have a pretty good recipe for balancing soil minerals. It is folded together in a workbook entitled The Ideal Soil v2.0.
Measuring Nutrition Levels in Beets
The following charts and data on beets provide a peek into the fact that we can improve the mineral content of the food we eat by amending and balancing the soil minerals to “ideal levels.” Maybe more importantly, we can make huge improvements in one growing season, and it can be done using USDA organically approved fertilizer ingredients.
USDA averages for minerals in raw beets are used as reference points as the first bar in Figures 1 through 5. The next two bars come from beets purchased at a farmers market in Illinois in 2018 and organic beets grown in California in 2017, purchased at a store in Charleston, Illinois. The last four bars represent beets grown in soils amended according to The Ideal Soil handbook from farms and gardens in four different states and four different years: Minnesota in 2010, Hawaii in 2011, Georgia in 2017 and Texas in 2019.
This method works for other vegetables, too. We have also tested arugula, basil, bell peppers, Brussels sprouts, carrots, collards, cucumbers, green beans, green onions, kale, kohlrabi, lettuce, potatoes and sweet potatoes. Of the 276 individual mineral data points from these 28 vegetable samples grown in ideal soil, 188 data points (68.1 percent) were higher than USDA averages.
It is also interesting that in 24 out of the 28 ideal-soil vegetables sampled, sodium was much lower than USDA averages — by an average of 39.1 percent. That is probably a good thing, because most of us get more than enough sodium in our daily food intake anyway.
Steps to Developing a Minerally Balanced Soil
- Take a soil test and get it analyzed using the Mehlich 3 method. Although many labs can run Mehlich 3, their procedures are all slightly different. I use Logan Labs in Ohio. If your soil’s pH is less than 7.0, ask for the AEA Base Plus Test. If the soil pH is greater than 7.0, ask for the AA8.2 with Extras Test. Each of these tests is under $40.
- If you are interested in knowing whether you have heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium or nickel, ask for the Ag Dyn3 test. Arsenic can be a problem where high rates of chicken manure have been applied. Cadmium can be a problem in vegetables from California.
- Review the test results and use The Ideal Soil (or pay a soil consultant) to determine the amendments your soil needs. In essence, you are creating a balanced diet for your garden soil. Buy the minerals, spread them at the rates you calculated, and till them in. Do not be a “More-on” and overdo it — more is not better! Remember that the right mineral balance is what you are aiming for.
- Be sure to leave a control section and treat it as you have in the past. Plant the same types of seeds in both the control and treated sections. Keep the soil moist but not saturated.
- To make comparisons at harvest, select two vegetable types and pick one of both types from the control and one of both types from the treated sections. Also, buy a sample of one of the vegetables from one vendor at the farmers market and a sample of the other vegetable from a different vendor. Then go to the local grocery store and buy one sample of each vegetable that is labeled with the USDA organic seal.
- Send the samples to A&L Great Lakes Labs in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. Ask for the Feed Analysis F1 and FM3 tests. The cost is about $30 per sample, for a total of $240 — about the cost of a nice dinner and drinks for two at a fancy restaurant.
- Once the results come back, compare them to USDA averages using Figure 6. Convert the results from the “As Received Basis” column of A&L’s lab reports to mg/100g and then enter those numbers into Column B. Since many gardeners grow beets, tomatoes and kale, the table shows USDA averages for these as examples. If you grew something else, go to USDA’s “What’s in the Food You Eat” website (https://bit.ly/3tJGxZT) and find the numbers to put into Column A. Then subtract Column A from Column B and find the percent advantage or disadvantage of your crop versus the USDA average.
The Bottomline
Making huge improvements in mineral content of vegetables can happen in one growing season by using The Ideal Soil handbook’s recipe, and it can be done using USDA organically approved fertilizer ingredients. You will need to test soil every year and rebalance it (especially for sulfur and boron, which are anions and tend to leach), but you will notice over time that you need less of most minerals as your soils become more balanced. Disease and insect pressure will decrease as Brix levels in the plant and produce rise.
My mother used to tell me, “Eat all your vegetables.” The best thing to tell people today is, “Eat fresh, organic produce grown locally in ideal soil!”
Jim Porterfield grew up on a grain and livestock farm in Iowa and has worked in the areas of soil, water quality, energy and forestry for the last 50 years. He is a CCA and currently owns and runs a small research farm in Illinois.
Thanks to Michael Astera, author of The Ideal Soilv2.0 handbook (deceased 2020), Terri Jagger Blincoe (owner of Ladybug Farms, Clayton, Georgia), Dr. Jana Bogs (a nutritionist in Hawaii), John Myser (a gardener in Minnesota) and Leidy Fogle (a gardener in Austin, Texas) for all their work and for sharing their results.
