Farmers Are Lead Actors In Prevention

It All Starts In The Soil - Healthcare Simply Monetizes Sickness

As we tackle the $4 trillion healthcare cost of our chronic disease epidemic, we continue to be distracted with transforming an industry that is completely misaligned with human health. Other than to fix it when it’s malfunctioning. It is and always has been built upon monetizing acute healthcare needs. Meanwhile ask any healthcare executive about soil, agriculture, farming and so on and they will look like a deer in headlights and tell you those things have nothing to do with their industry. The irony is that those very things “that have nothing to do with healthcare”, at the end of the day lead to about 75-90% of their revenue pipeline.

No matter what industry you are in within the soil to cell continuum, if you aren’t just lip service and really want to reverse the chronic disease epidemic, this one is required reading.

It all goes back to the mighty mitochondria. I didn’t have “Jet Packed Mitochondria” trucker hats made for nothing.

In an effort to overcome mental exhaustion yesterday after his testimony in DC to an audience that included Secretary Kennedy himself,

Carter Williams

became a ring leader in an epic WhatsApp “Farm Tank” conversation thread that most in healthcare would consider a diversion. I on the other hand consider it required reading and call myself lucky to be privy to such brilliant minds and thought provoking banter.

It was pointed out that “even in science – for every person that says HHS should focus more on nutrition, 10 more are focused on cancer”. Let that sink in for a minute. We are focused on lifesaving treatments and “curing” cancer – yet we ignore what keeps cells from malfunctioning in the first place. Dicated by none other than the mitochondria.

It All Starts With Cells

We treat symptoms, we don’t address root cause in modern medicine. We could debate exceptions, but in general terms we take an allopathic approach.

Yet when we set goals for chronic disease prevention and reversal at a population level, we must address the root of human health. Mitochondrial function - it underpins all other cellular processes. The same cellular processes we treat, manage and modify - like when a machine is “operating on all cylinders”

Many argue the data we need to understand mitochondria and how the biome impacts it is non-existent when in fact we do have a great deal of legacy longitudinal data we are not exploring. In fact some of the answers can be found in the article “The Spatiotemporal distribution of human pathogens in ancient Eurasia”. It may not be a light read but it’s a MUST read. It modifies the long-held standard evolutinary forces. Includes Zoonotics and thinking in human genetics and epigenetics that are key elements to optimizing human health.

If we are serious about prevention and reversal of disease, we should be focusing equal energy on understanding how to optimize our mitochondria.

We should start with asking what keeps the mitochondria fed - fuel.

You know the answer without a HS Biology & Chemistry refresher… FOOD, in particular, macronutrients (carbohydrates, fat and protein). You know… “macros”, in fact “tracking them” is all the rage. I admit I’ve learned without doing that, my own mitochondrial function suffers.

Cue One of the Leading Actors of Prevention - Farmers

We talk about food as if it’s a substance engineered and manufactured to keep humans alive, when life on earth - the Biosphere can only exist if food exists.

Food is defined as “a source of chemical energy and nutrients required to fuel cellular processes and maintain homeostasis”, technically 75% of what we call food on grocery shelves would not meet the definition which is why we are witness the rapid decline of human health.

Food is a “source of chemical energy and nutrients required to fuel cellular processes and maintain homeostasis” and photosynthesis is the foundation of most food. From there the cycle of life is considered to consist of Producers (e.g. plants), Consumers (e.g. humans) and Decomposers.

Now for producers, let’s focus on plants. Most land plants require soil. And soil directly determines plant nutrition. It controls the availability, transport, and balance of essential nutrients and water—as well as supporting beneficial microbial relationships.

So if the cycle of life on the planet starts with producers, and their nutrition is driven in large part by soil (for terrestial plants), and humans rely on producers to exist, and our cellular health is defined by mitochondrial function how are farmers not leading the conversation at the table when solving for disease prevention and reversal?

In the case of restoring healthy mitochondrial function (reversing disease), and ensuring optimal mitochondrial “food” for optimal mitochondrial function (the science of preventing disease) it starts on the farm.

I want to be clear - I’m not saying farmers are THE leading actor just A leading actor in mitochondrial function. And I’m not saying nutrition alone solves the chronic disease epidemic, I’m focused on mitochondrial function which science is pointing towards as the culprit and the food that fuels mitochondria.

Soil as Health, not Dirt

When we consider the science in soil health and the implications on human health, we have historic data that might help us reduce the sample size for future research.

Human nutrition is rooted in soil nutrition. It’s why we need to shift the focus from yield to nutrient density. But what is nutreint density? The answer in the chat was “mineral balance + biodiversity equals nutrient density”.

Someone asked the question “What about the people who apply a product that is more of a "vitamin " 15 days before black layer on corn that can do the same thing”. The answer - “that’s mineral balance not biodiversity”.

Soil can have adequate nutritional balance, and still not be nutrient dense. There may be a a mineral balance, but a false biodiversity. So what is the equation? A key expert who was part of the rif shared":

“We currently think that mineral balance is 60-70% of the equation. Biodiversity is the rest. But the biodiversity is such an unknown. For example, biodiversity is different in different areas… that biodiversity could be way more.

But this is something we need to figure out. Perhaps through land grants. An example was given of one crop focused only on diversity and is out-producing a competitor growing in a conventional manner. In essense “mineral balance” was bypassed. But again, we use the term producing in our current construct.

I will save our readers from the middle part of the rif that included Free Energy Principle (FEP), viruses, genetic evolution, forced evolution, neural networks, epigenetics, mitochondrial adaption and biome adaption and homeostasis, with references sprinkled in to the science fiction found in Star Trek and Avatar with Godzilla thrown in for good measure.

Just like the infinite variabilities of humans, soil is also infinitely variable. Optimize soil for nutrient density vs. yield and you optimize mitochondrial function instead of just providing cheap fuel that leads to mitochondrial dysfunction.

Building a better system doesn’t work and won’t work. What we need is a different system based on a different objective.

Optimizing Soil

Redesigning farming for nutrient density is akin to focusing on prevention and disease reversal withinin healthcare. And just like innovation in healthcare around those pillars, innovation in agriculture is well underway but the success has been mediocre in large part because of the economic misalignment. Again just like in healthcare.

And just like the success stories of metabolic syndrome reversals from Lifestyle Medicince doctors, one leading regenerative farmer (focused on regenerating the soil) weighed in with a massive success story in the rif:

“Our wheat crop is going to average 60 bushes per acre over 9,000 acers while our conventional farmer neighbors (90% of our area) are begging crop insurance for under 5 bushels per acre. That’s what regenerative does!

But we don’t understand how quickly we can build resilance. We know regenerative farming works as a strategy just like we know nutrition and lifestyle change works as a strategy for the reversal of Type II Diabetes. In neither example do we yet know a standard practice of “X” will yield improvements of “Y” over a period of “Z” years or months.

A major barrier is money to farmers who are regenerating soil or want to (letting go of myths). We need to drive money directly to the source – farmer/rancher who is building soil health. Many farmers have said they will shift practices if there is demand. The human health connection that now holds a desire to prevent and reverse chronic disease could reveal the mechanism to shift demand away from commodity and to nutrient density.

Human Health – The Common Ground

Let’s go back to why the rif started in the first place. Carter shared his refined “Healthy Soil, Healthy, Food, Healthy People: A Policy Framework for Soil Health in American Agriculture” framework.

There are many opportunities to strengthen the framework:

• We seem focused on reduction of chemical solutions instead of favoring of biological solutions

• This goes beyond human health - by restoring soil health, farms will experience resilience after weather events and that data is critical – on crop loss and insurance risk along with the increased risk due to degraded soils

• Health arguments could be bolstered to better demonstrate the relationship between population health and better soils - the argument for soil is stronger when we are clear on what we know to be true and clear on the hypothesis that needs to be studied

• Instead of skeptic views we should call them areas for further research

• There is a real oppoortunty to create larning and change beyond social influencers

• Add life cycle assessment (LCA) to determine a more refined understanding of the true health and environmental impacts and/or benefits of new practices

• We need to invest in modeling systems change - highly complex interrelationship of multiple highly complex systems: food, healthcare, health, agriculture, biology, economy, climate

• We should be moving to develop the next generation of herbicide not simply banning chemicals like Roundup

• We need to get closer to food and evolution, we need to focus on building a new system

• Although we believe the relationship between soil, food and health is very clear due to evolution, we need to make it more unequivocal through data and messaging. Where is the most powerful documented impact of increasing soil quality?

• Nutrient density could be a powerful indicator of farm and ecosystem health including human health without the pressure to transform healthcare

• We need to continue to push a reframe on insurance and economic realignment.

  When soil health is restored, the need for insurance is reduced across sectors - crop level, community economic level (natural disasters such as flooding). Better soil also reduces food security risks. Improved human health reduces life and health insurance risk. Insurance investment still travels to industries doing us harm (health insurance). At least move to models/companies that support life.

Just another day in the life of the Food Is Health revolution.