Together with her team of soil coaches, they work alongside producers in the U.S., Canada and across Australasia. Supporting producers who work with millions of acres to take their operations to the next level in nutrient density, profitability and environmental outcomes. For human health, the one thing that we can do immediately is to start taking care of our gut because obviously, our gut is affecting our thinking, our hormones, and everything else. I take fulvic acid every day. We use fulvic acid in agriculture. What it does is it feeds the soil gut microbiome. It’s a key lighter of heavy metals and toxins. When you take it for yourself, it relaxes the gut villa. It helps to restore the tight junctions in the gut. These food producers are taking actions to imitate natural systems more closely,” says Masters. “[T]hey are rewarded with more efficient nutrient, carbon, and water cycles, improved plant and animal health, nutrient density, reduced stress, and ultimately, profitability.” Do you ever give much thought to the Earth? We walk on it, raise animals on it, build our houses on it, and depend on it for sustenance but some of us might not give it a second thought. This is an episode where we talk about why we need to. The soil is in trouble and we need to look at how we can restore its health to regenerate it and cultivate it in a way that is good for the Earth itself and for each of us. This is Episode 256 and our guest is Nicole Masters.

If all the consumers turned around tomorrow and said, “That’s it. I’m only buying regenerative foods.” Those big companies scrambled to make sure that was happening. We’re seeing that happen on a pretty big scale now. You see General Mills, Danone, Ben & Jerry’s, and all these kinds of Patagonia. These kinds of companies that provide food and fiber and now, engage with the regenerative story. Let’s pivot now and talk about the toxin loading of our soil. First of all, what’s going on and why should it matter to us? I think this is one of the things that we saw come out of that Monsanto case was that they’re making up data. They know the impacts that this is having on either humans, soil, microbiology, or nutrients. They know full well what’s going on and more of these documents that are coming out. I’m not a big conspiracy theorist. I hate that stuff. Unfortunately, it’s big business at play. Why would you stop the gravy train? Unfortunately, it’s people not being connected to the integrity or wanting people in landscapes to flourish. It’s just a business model. William Gibson once said that "the future is here - it is just not evenly distributed." "Nicole modestly claims that the information in the book is not new thinking, but her resynthesis of the lessons she has learned and refined in collaboration with regenerative land-managers is new, and it is powerful." Says Abe Collins, cofounder of LandStream and founder of Collins Grazing. "She lucidly shares lessons learned from the deep-topsoil futures she and her farming and ranching partners manage for and achieve."Mycorrhizal fungi; how many people know about its magical properties? How long will it remain a secret? How long will we smite it with herbicides and pesticides? Who would have thought that it can be promoted by the so called "scourge" of spurge and cheat grass? As Andy Rooney would have said, "Did you ever wonder why...' Well, I have wondered why calcium is not even registered in the top three minerals for assessing soil health. "Everybody knows" it is only important to add NP&K! Well, according to Masters, we've been hoodwinked. Calcium is essential.

The author is inspirational, humble, very fair minded and leads us in a sensible discussion of the critical issues at hand (really... soil and food growing spells humanities survival!) Unlike some books discussing the issues with big agriculture and the food production systems, it wasn’t just a whinge and takedown of the “bad guys”. Rather, a well referenced yet entertaining guide of what we CAN do, with encouraging stories of people who are already doing this to great effect. Loved it. As for critiques, there are times where the author repeats herself. I personally found this helpful, as it allowed some of the pertinent ideas to sink in. That said, I can imagine it would be irritating for some. Getting off that industrial food treadmill and know your farmer. Buying local food markets is becoming interested and where do we get regenerative growing food from. Just because something has got an organic label on it doesn’t mean that it’s not industrially produced. It’s starting to shorten that distance between you and what’s happening out on the land and meet your farmer.The first chapter had me hooked. Nicole shared her own story about Paraquot poisoning in her teens and how it affected her health and her journey into ultimately becoming an Agro-ecologist, educator and systems thinker. She not only tells her story but weaves it beautifully into the topic of this book. She speaks of chemicals, genetics, epigenetics and more telling the story of human reliance and exposure to these things. She encourages each and every one of us to listen to our bodies, nature and our intuition to build a rich and insightful life. In so doing she builds the reason for having written the book and her love of nature and soil. What that did is it then introduced the paraquat, which is a residual herbicide into my spinal fluid. It sat there for fifteen years. I was told that I had fused vertebras C1 and C2. I went and saw every single bodyworker you can imagine. I’ve got a depth of experience in like Bowen, craniosacral, ortho-bionomy, and acupuncture. You name it. I’ve been to see them. When I was 30 years old, so fifteen years later, I met a chemical detox specialist. He used radionics and ran through a series of questions about, is this environmental? Is this a virus? Until finally, he came down to, “It’s paraquat because I had no idea.” That is a good word of encouragement because sometimes when we have these conversations we’re like, “Everything is falling apart. We’re killing ourselves.” I liked that you ended your book on a hopeful note and I’d like to end this show on a hopeful note. I want you to answer the question. If the audience could do one thing to improve their health or maybe even the soil health, what would you recommend that they do, Nicole? We’re finally seeing soil health start to raise its head above the pulpit. People are starting to realize how valuable a resource it is. No, if you look and think a lot of the big agri companies are also your big pharmaceutical companies. Bayer, for instance. They are peddling the same stuff.

For years many of us involved in regenerative agriculture have been touting the soil health – plant health – animal health – human health connection but no one has tied them all together like Nicole does in “For the love of Soil”! Gabe Brown, Browns Ranch, USA Brix measure the dissolved solids in the setup of a leafy plant. We’re using that as a tool to look at how much sugar and dissolve solids? How well is that plant photosynthesizing? It’s an indicator in the field. Whereas, these new meters are new infrared, spectroscopy, so they need to be correlated with those specific crops. At the moment, you can test maybe twenty different crops, apples, pears, and those obvious ones. There’s a lot of calibration that’s still required to test it but some of these new meters will tell you where in the world was this grown, which is cool. People can correlate that this has come from this property. It’s taken all of these things for a while but now it’s a hand meter. If you have a functioning gut, then everything becomes possible. There’s so much more that we’re able to do because you’re not tired all the time and you’re not full of toxins. It’s part of my daily regimen if I’m thinking about human health. I don’t sell products. I’m not trying to push product but it’s something that we can use in our garden to do the same thing, so it will grab and hold toxins, heavy metals, and it will feed your beneficial microbes. Soil: It’s a whole systems issues that we’re dealing with.For the Love of Soil' is a land manager’s roadmap to healthy soil, revitalized food systems in challenging times. This book equips producers with knowledge, skills and insights to regenerate ecosystem health and grow farm profits. I got into commercial viniculture and got interested in the microbiology of what I was creating and how to create different types of blends of whim castings for an avocado producer compared to a strawberry producer compared to pasture. I didn’t even know I had a name like that agro-ecology was a thing. Maybe like ten years into my career and I was reading some research papers. I was like, “That’s me. I didn’t know I had a title.” It evolved into what I was passionate about. When I left school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. Certainly, I didn’t know it was going to involve soil but once I discovered soil, I never got a doubt. As you can see, you can relate that to the human aspect, animal health, or greenhouse gas emissions. It’s incredibly exciting. No matter if you are at the beginning of your regenerative journey or further down the road, Nicole Masters’ ‘For the Love of Soil’ will open your eyes and heart to fascinating new world below your feet. There are things that you can do for your own health but the major driver is, as consumers using our consumer dollars to choose better. Weston Price is looking at not eating processed foods but not eating industrially grown foods. This whole argument around meat is not around cows per se. It’s not the cow, it’s the how. It’s how are those animals being grown, produced, and raised?