INSIGHT
You are what your food eats If we pay more attention to what we feed our food, from the fertility in our soil to the nutrients in our plants, can we transform the quality of what ends up on our plates? By: James Wong, ethnobotanist and presenter of Follow the Food on BBC Future
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e all know the adage, ‘you are what you eat’ - how healthy eating and nutritious food result in us being healthy, wellnourished humans. But, maintaining the nutrient quality of our food, throughout a complex food supply-chain, is far from a straightforward task. In the second episode of BBC World News and BBC.com series, Follow the Food, we see how many farmers and scientists have begun to look at the start of the chain to see if we can improve what and how we feed our food, and whether we can make healthier, nutrient rich ingredients that give us the nourishment we need. Soil Health Improving the quality of crops is something that all farmers strive for but trying to do that, at the
same time as being a responsible custodian for the wider environment, often involves a tradeoff. In Ohio, USA, corn and soy farmer Corey Atley, is trying to do both thanks to some clever innovation. Good, healthy soil contains billions of microorganisms, including things like bacteria and fungi, which can play a vital role in the nourishment of plants. However, some forms of intensive farming can degrade soil quality and kill these helpful organisms. By using a new innovation in farming known as biological inoculant, Corey Atley has found a way of using about 25% less synthetic fertiliser than is commonly used in modern farming. Biological inoculant is a mixture of microscopic, live bacteria and fungi that is added to a plant’s growth cycle
to help it access better nutrients from the soil as it grows. Explaining how it works, Atley said: “When you’re dealing with phosphorus, potassium, calcium and magnesium, the metal bond is so strong, the soil doesn’t want to release the nutrients to the root of that plant. When you put live organisms into soil, it’s actually going to break that bond and poop it back out, making it readily available to the plant. Effectively, what we are trying to do is break apart more of what is already in our soil, instead of constantly adding more to it.” Livestock Kenya is the largest cattle milk producer in Africa, producing over 3.5 billion litres of milk a year. However, whilst demand is growing,
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