In conventional farming practices soils are used over and over again, often without nutrient-dense replenishment. Every time a crop or vegetable – anything – is grown, it draws the nutrients out of the soil into itself. The plant uses the nutrients to grow. Then we get the benefits when we eat that food. But if the nutrients aren’t replaced, or crops rotated, the soils are stripped of their minerals.
Farmers then periodically saturate their crops with unnatural chemical fertilizers. I refer to them as unnatural for many reasons, one of which is that they don’t contain the range of nutrients essential for life. Fertilizers are primarily made up of three nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. This means that there are still 52 nutrients missing.
