For the Love of Soil: Strategies to Regenerate Our Food Production Systems

"To understand the power and possibility of regenerative agriculture you have to get excited by soil. And boy is Nicole Masters excited by soil! She describes life underground as ‘like something out of Alien ’ with hideous creatures eating other from the inside—and it is, kind of. A single handful of soil can contain more life than the human population of Planet Earth. This complex ecosystem can easily be knocked off balance by artificial chemicals, but equally, with the right care, it can regenerate easily. Masters has dedicated her life to helping farmers understand their own soil. She travels the world explaining to farmers how to ditch the plough and instead pick up the spade to understand the soil beneath their feet. She has been described to me by one—very sensible—farmer as a ‘soil goddess’. In this book she not only tells the story of how farms can regenerate the soil but how she herself recovered from ‘chemical toxification’ and how we can recover human health more widely through growing food in healthy soils."