
Long Live Microbiomes - dlumpkin
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/broccoli-is-dying-corn-is-toxic-long-live-microbiomes/
======
nategri
I just can't make it very far in articles like this anymore. I've heard too
many breathless food/nutrition takes vectored in too many different
directions, and now I'm utterly desensitized.

And part of me is screaming for citations while the other part knows that an
examination of the literature would reveal the same structures, just one level
deeper---one or more warring camps that aren't even talking to each other any
more.

~~~
organicdude
How do you use a small set of scientific studies to prove one is better?
Studies are reductionist, which is a very powerful and useful
perspective...but not as useful when you have to measure a dynamic living
system that can be optimized along maybe 100 dimensions or more? Worse, what
is the funding source of these studies, and what incentives are tied to it?

So you have many different types of soils, and that will produce variations.
You have different histories on those soils, you can measure for a dozen
minerals, but what about those tiny trace minerals? Top soil
optimization...nutrient run-off that creates fungal blooms in the ocean
killing life in the ocean, price per pound to produce produce, shelf life of
produce, how it looks, is the taste in fashion ----- so take those dimensions
that you can measure things on --- and then multiply that by the number of
different veggies and fruits and all their different types (eg. how many
different apples are there??)

It's too massive problem space to solve with a few studies...and the financial
incentives and ideological thinking further muddies the waters.

~~~
sarah180
You do this with a proper understanding of statistical power, and you report
"no conclusion" when you don't have studies of adequate power. This is not
actually a terribly difficult problem with a proper understanding of Bayesian
statistics, it just doesn't lead to good headlines, because a lot of the time
the answer is "the study couldn't really provide an answer."

~~~
sjeohp
I'm not saying you're wrong but doesn't that inherently favour the side
claiming "there is no problem because you can't prove there's a problem."
Until by the time someone can prove there's a problem we already have a
generation with lead poisoning or a collapsed ecosystem or whatever it may be.

------
hvs

        Louise Elizabeth Maher-Johnson is a retired English teacher and current regenerative farmer, who raises heritage chickens at Skyhill Farm

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sarah180
Scientific American should be embarrassed to have published this. This is
textbook pseudoscience: cherry-picking evidence to support a position that
you're already predisposed to believe.

This doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong, just that it is not even remotely a
scientific perspective on the situation. Its "USDA citation" is to what
amounts to a marketing-focused whitepaper.

~~~
LMYahooTFY
>Its "USDA citation" is to what amounts to a marketing-focused whitepaper.

Can you elaborate on this point?

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newsbinator
> An individual today would need to consume twice as much meat, three times as
> much fruit, and four to five times as many vegetables to obtain the same
> amount of minerals and trace elements available in those same foods in 1940.

Wait, really?

~~~
hanniabu
If so that's pretty upsetting and impossible unless you're a super athlete
taking in 5x calories a day.

~~~
Havoc
Trace minerals not calories

~~~
hanniabu
In order to take in those minerals you'd need to eat more, which equals more
calories

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meerita
If you want to read more about this topic, I recommend a good book, Nutrition
and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price DDS. ISBN-13: 978-0916764203.
ISBN-10: 0916764206 A good book to understand that the food we eat is related
to our diseases problems.

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peterwwillis
Does Scientific American usually put out badly overgeneralized, sparsely
detailed editorials like this?

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fny
Just a question for those in the know: is regenerative farming even scalable
to meet the needs of a booming population? Can grow enough food without
current industrial agriculture?

~~~
carapace
First, population is leveling off, not booming.

Second, yes, by definition _regenerative_ agriculture is scalable.

It might require as much as double the labor requirements (so 3% of the
population rather than 1.5%) but it's likely that automation will amortize
that.

See "How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20537409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20537409)
which describes some aspects of China's agriculture that are regenerative.

Also, I recommend Toby Hemenway's "Redesigning Civilization with Permaculture"
talk for background and future directions.
[http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/redesigning-civilization-
with...](http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/redesigning-civilization-with-
permaculture/)

Geoff Lawton's "Greening the Desert" project converted salty desert to
producing figs and other food in just two years.
[https://permaculturenews.org/2007/03/01/greening-the-
desert-...](https://permaculturenews.org/2007/03/01/greening-the-desert-now-
on-youtube/)

\- - - -

Just to mention one (gross) example: It's a little-known fact that _Eisenia
fetida_ worms will devour "night soil" (#2's) and produce clean-smelling
castings, while doubling in biomass in approximately 40-50 days. This could
easily be scaled to handle urban sewage densities, returning that matter
directly to the ecosystem without expensive treatment/chemicals etc.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenia_fetida](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenia_fetida)

~~~
wollstonecraft
Municipal wastewater treatment does not use expensive treatment or chemicals.
It is a huge bioreactor where the only input is aeration and stirring.

~~~
carapace
Okay but it's still gonna be cheaper to poop into a bucket of worms. _Grosser_
, but cheaper. ;-)

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asdkhadsj
Just read the beginning so far, but it sounds like home-grown is safe _(even
if not self-started plants)_? Ie, the article _(so far)_ makes it sound like
it's an issue of soil microbiome. If that's the case, and I no-dig grow my own
veggies, I'd be okay?

~~~
organicdude
They are saying corn is toxic because it has round-up chemicals in it - and
they can't be washed off.

So growing food in your backyard, assuming you don't spray it or have heavy
metals in your soil that are ingested by the crop, are likely fine.

How alive is your backyard's soil? A lab would have to analyze it. It may or
may not have the right minerals, depending on what you're trying to grow.

~~~
spelunker
You can also buy simple take home soil test kits that do the job just fine,
FWIW.

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vondur
Wow, so some food has had their nutrients decreased by 100%? Seems a bit far
fetched to me.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
'Minerals and trace elements'. Makes you wonder how they calculated the 'trace
elements' (whatever those are) in food from decades ago? Easy! Just say you
did.

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bcatanzaro
Scientific. American.

Unbelievable.

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adrr
Why would Scientific American have a blog post from an organic farmer devoid
of any reference to studies or actual science?

~~~
jschwartzi
Scientific American is another magazine like Quanta. A lot of exacting
discussion of very little substance.

