Introduction

The Groundwork podcast explores the interconnections between mind, body, and soil. Kate Kavanagh talks with authors David Montgomery and Ann Bicklay about this topic. This week we look at our own nature through the lens of nature.

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Episode notes

Anne Biklé and Dave Montgomery are a husband and wife team and authors of the newly released What Your Food Ate and the trilogy: Dirt: the Erosion of Civilizations, the Hidden Half of Nature, and Growing a Revolution. Together, with Anne’s lens of biology, and David’s lens of geology, they explore the topics of soil, land, and human health. In this episode, we explore all things soil. Starting with an exploration of how many dynamics between organisms above ground feel combative, but life beneath the soil is truly collaborative. Anne and Dave explore nutrient cycles and how nutrition in the form of minerals is liberated from rocks by microbial and fungal life and recycled through time. We also explore how plants and animals (including humans) get their nutrition. Anne and Dave touch on the state of our soils and what it means to have lost around half of our soil organic matter in a short amount of time and what we can do about it. Touched on are ideas around taking a long view, and how we can do that with our own health and land health and how the history of the treatment of soil might teach us a little bit more about looking into the future. We look at not just regenerative agriculture, but also the impacts of chemical and mechanized agriculture. Ultimately, Anne and Dave guide us towards the future and just how much hope and resiliency nature is capable of.

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