Why Is Soil Health Important

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BUILDING VITALITY: IT STARTS WITH THE SOIL

In the twenty-first-century news feed, toxic chemicals apparently make for “sexy” head­lines. These days, one sees countless stories about so-called “forever chemicals,” food dyes and other chemical industry handiwork, not to mention the spate of human-interest stories that surface whenever there is a toxic disaster. The train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio that prompted officials to intentionally set vinyl chlo­ride on fire,¹ the Lahaina fires that left Maui with “5 football fields 5 stories deep” of toxic debris² and the anomalous flooding that sent toxic mud oozing all over Western North Carolina and East Tennessee³ are but three recent examples.

There is certainly cause for concern, especially given that the vast majority of the eighty-six thousand chemicals listed on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Inven­tory⁴—at least 47 percent of which are actively in commerce⁵—have never been tested for safety or toxicity.^6,7 (Under the circumstances, and considering EPA’s well-documented capture by industry,⁸ the agency’s name should probably be read as somewhat ironic.) This situation will not change any time soon; current approaches for characterizing a chemical’s toxicity cost mil­lions, involve extensive testing on animals and take two to three years per chemical.⁹

How did we get here? In an interesting 2018 article, a medical historian posits that since the early nineteenth century, the Western world has gone through four phases of “human-toxic interactions”—whether in the industrial, agri­cultural or medical arenas—characterized by “complex trade-offs between public anxieties, economic interests, and scientific knowledge.”¹⁰ First came a period (“normalization”) in which “planners, industrialists, and experts” normal­ized toxic exposure to polluting industries and compounds containing arsenic, lead and mercu­ry. During the second phase (“fixing toxicity”) that started around the late nineteenth century, constituencies that included “politicians, con­sumers, unionists, and progressive industri­alists” as well as the omnipresent “experts” began differentiating between “acceptable” and “unacceptable” exposure levels, claiming it was possible to establish “safe boundaries” for toxic practices. This was the period in which the top causes of mortality began shifting to cancer and chronic illness.

The post-WWII period launched the third phase (“toxic environments”), which saw the public become increasingly and belatedly aware of the “toxic interconnectedness of humans with their environment” as well as skeptical and frus­trated about official safety claims. The fourth and current phase (“fragmentation”), according to the author’s pessimistic assessment, is one of regulatory failure and public resignation to “permanent toxic exposure.”

The standard response to messes like the ones in East Palestine, Lahaina and Western North Carolina is “environmental remediation,” that is, carting toxin-laced soils off to landfills. That approach is not only expensive but also counterproductive, contributing to “landfill leachate” that is likely to contaminate ground­water and drinking water.^11,12 Recognizing the fact that the continuous landfilling of toxic wastes is “incommodious” for human health and the environment as well as economically inefficient, biologists and others are calling for renewed attention to a superior form of remedia­tion—bioremediation.¹³

Bioremediation, grounded in the recogni­tion that nature and biology tend toward homeo­stasis, puts microorganisms to work to “degrade, remove, alter, immobilize, and detoxify waste products and pollutants from soil or water” on-site.¹⁴ Provided that one uses the right mi­croorganisms—naturally occurring microbes rather than those jury-rigged by mad scientists in a biotech lab—applies them in the right way and allows them to work as a team, bioremedia­tion holds out immense hope to everyone from backyard gardeners to small-scale farmers to larger landowners and more, offering a solution to halt public resignation—as well as “forever chemicals”—in their tracks.

THE IMPORTANCE OF HEALTHY SOIL

Before discussing bioremediation further, let’s remind ourselves of the importance of healthy, vital soil—the critical determinant of which is the quality of the microscopic life in the soil and, in particular, the topsoil (the uppermost two to eight inches). Microscopic life constitutes a universe of nearly unimaginable diversity, in­cluding fungi and bacteria that carry out a wide variety of useful functions and live in symbiosis with plant roots.¹⁵ Other soil microorganisms include protozoa, nematodes and gram-positive bacteria called actinomycetes.¹⁶ As experts like to point out, “There are more microbes in a teaspoon of soil than there are people on the earth.”¹⁶ There is also an “immense diversity of soil microbial habitats.”¹⁷

Animals and humans consume just 5 per­cent of plant life—the remaining 95 percent is food for microbes.¹⁸ Thus, it should have come as no surprise when, in 2023, scientists came out with the announcement that soil is the most species-rich habitat on Earth. Soil houses 59 percent of life on our planet,¹⁹ including 90 per­cent of fungi and over 50 percent of bacteria,²⁰ and because “belowground organisms” remain vastly understudied compared to “aboveground organisms,”¹⁷ those numbers could be even higher. In 2016, scientists speculated that of the total microbe species on our planet—estimated at a trillion—we have yet to discover 99.999 percent of them.²¹

Healthy soil and plants (as well as human beings) are noteworthy for their vitality. As proponents of biodynamic farming have long recognized, everything has a resonance or fre­quency. When soil is healthy—and, therefore, the plants growing in that soil are healthy—the plants will have a high “frequency” that natu­rally deters pests and disease. When soil and plants are unhealthy, the opposite will be true. In fact, one way of viewing insect damage and blight is to see them as nature’s method of “re­cycling” plants that already lack vitality.

Alarmingly, the world has lost over half of its topsoil over the past century and a half,²² and the man-made chemical compounds introduced into the environment over the same period have further devastated soil life and microbial diversity. Since 1990, pesticide use globally has increased by 50 percent.²³ Moreover, as a result of the continual application of pesticides, some of the organisms that nature ordinarily keeps in check have become hardier and more aggressive. This has contributed to a “pesticide treadmill” phenomenon in which farmers and gardeners “spray more with increasingly potent chemicals and still lose ground.”²⁴

One important function of soil microbes is to make minerals bioavailable to plants, metabo­lizing “recalcitrant forms of soil-borne nutrients to liberate these elements for plant nutrition.”²⁵ When man-made chemicals wipe out the soil’s microbial life, those minerals remain locked up. In an effort to survive, plants may instead take up toxins such as heavy metals and industrial waste.

In addition to causing a build-up of toxic chemicals in the soil, the vicious cycle created by chemical agriculture—with one pesticide invariably leading to another—has significant implications for food quality and, therefore, for human health. Consider what biophysicist Fritz-Albert Popp (whose work uncovered the relationship between life and light particles called biophotons²⁶) saw when he measured the biophotonic emissions of various foods; the healthiest foods “had the most coherent intensity of light emissions,” whereas junk food was “al­most totally devoid” of light energy.²⁷ Devital­ized food²⁸ and the epidemics of chronic illness²⁹ that are destroying quality of life and lowering life expectancy³⁰ are predictable outcomes of the chemical assault on soil. Sadly and ironically, many sick Americans then find themselves on a pharmaceutical treadmill that is little different from the pesticide treadmill. Given the inter­twined history of chemical weapons research and medical research,^31,32 the parallels between agricultural and pharmaceutical chemical de­pendency are no coincidence.

VERSATILE EXTREMOPHILES

The bioremediation solution that nature so generously offers us comes in the form of microorganisms called extremophiles.³³ The American Society for Microbiology credits extremophiles with having changed the way scientists look at life because the microbes are abundant in places “where nobody expected life to survive, let alone thrive.”³⁴ Extremophiles, as their name indicates, are “famous for their love of living in extreme environments. If it’s super hot (more than 100° Celsius), freezing, acidic, alkaline, salty, deep in the ocean, even bombarded by gamma or UV radiation, there’s probably life there.”³⁵

Some have pointed out that the term “ex­tremophile” is anthropocentric, based as it is on man’s assessment of habitats too extreme for human existence.³⁶ However, the very fact that extremophiles “thrive in habitats which for other terrestrial life-forms are intolerably hostile or even lethal” means that they can be quite happy eating their way through toxic and radioactive waste, pesticides, industrial chemicals, solvents and heavy metals.³⁷ In the process, they can breathe life back into polluted or contaminated soil or water. Moreover, they appear to play no parasitic or pathogenic roles,³⁸ instead serving purposes that are beneficial to other life forms.

Describing the applications of extremo­philes in the bioremediation of environments contaminated with heavy metals, in particular, researchers observe that the microorganisms’ “toughness, adaptability, and strong resistance to extreme conditions” make them very versa­tile.³⁹ Extremophiles have multiple mechanisms at their disposal to accomplish bioremediation tasks, including binding, sequestering, con­verting or breaking down through enzymatic detoxification and more.^40,41

BIOREMEDIATION PIONEERS

Some of the modern roots of bioremedia­tion come from the biodynamic teachings of Rudolf Steiner and his biodynamic successors.⁴² Biodynamic preparations are used to improve soil life,⁴³ root development, seed germination, nutrient absorption, plant immunity and seed and fruit quality, among other uses.⁴⁴

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, inven­tor James Martin pioneered a bioremediation product he called “Living Water,” which was capable of eating “chemicals, petroleum prod­ucts, salt water, sewage and toxins from water and soil.”⁴⁵ Together with a man named Paul Carr, Martin started a company to make prod­ucts derived from “Living Water” for animals and soil. Carr’s daughter describes some of the noteworthy results:

“[A Texas feedlot] was so strong with odor, heavy flies, and mosquitoes that you barely [could] get out of the car. A few days later we went back and there was no odor, flies, or mosquitoes. What an amazing change and so quickly! They fed it to animals, especially cattle. . . as it produced healthier and larger animals. The same results were achieved in the agricultural industry where the crop yields were healthier and larger. Everyone was impressed with the loose and oxygenated soil with no chemical or salt build up. There was also a heavy presence of earthworms that weren’t there before.”⁴⁵

Marine biologist Carl Oppenheimer, Jr. (nephew of the Manhattan Project’s J. Robert Oppenheimer) also carried out foundational work on bioremediation. Whereas his famous uncle and Robert’s scientific peers were in­terested in weaponizing microbes,⁴⁶ Carl O p­penheimer became fascinated with “microbio­logical pollution control” and its applications for oil spills,⁴⁷ as well as how to use microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR)⁴⁸ to restore production in marginal oil wells. For oil spill cleanup, he found that “one microorganism alone” couldn’t do the job—it required “a team of microorganisms.”⁴⁹ In an early home test that others have since replicated, he observed that he could take used motor oil, add microbes and turn it into healthy food for fish within a mat­ter of minutes! From the 1970s until his death in 2007, Oppenheimer published hundreds of articles and reports on these and related topics and conducted or participated in bioremediation studies on virtually every continent.

THE WRONG VS. THE RIGHT DIRECTION

Unfortunately, the beneficial activities of extremophiles have attracted attention from many working in the biotechnology space, particularly since “the rise of the CRISPR-Cas era,” with researchers salivating over genetically engineered extremophiles as a “nifty tool” for industrial and environmental applications.⁵⁰ Other researchers note the tantalizing commer­cial possibilities of harnessing extremophiles as worker bees in “biofactories” created to extract and recover valuable metals from indus­trial wastes.13 In addition, the pharmaceutical industry has its eye on compounds produced by extremophiles and their eventual medical uses.³³ Meanwhile, Big Ag is attempting to propagandize the regenerative agriculture com­munity, arguing that bioengineered microbes are compatible with regenerative practices and bragging about their “holistic” work to advance soil health.⁵¹

According to extremophile enthusiasts Wil Spencer and Pat Miletich, GMO versions, far from being a positive contribution to envi­ronmental woes, are yet another move in the wrong direction, hindering rather than enhancing these amazing micro­organisms’ ability to detoxify. Spencer’s and Miletich’s company, Soil Saviors,⁵² promotes the opposite approach—“advanced” and effective bioremediation that works with, rather than against, nature through the use of native microbes that have not been tampered with. Used appropri­ately, the microbes will eat toxins and impurities like petrochemicals and glyphosate—and they are equally capable of gobbling up their synthetic biotech counterparts, which lack an immune system to defend themselves. As native extremophiles eat their way through these man-made horrors, they excrete essential fatty acids that miraculously become healthy re­sources for the soil and soil-based organisms.^49,53

Spencer and Miletich were both ill throughout childhood and healed themselves in their early twenties after they connected their chronic con­ditions to agricultural chemicals. Spencer grew up on a Minnesota farm where his exposure to industrial agriculture led to six dozen allergies and a childhood on pharmaceutical drugs. After becoming a master herbal­ist and healing himself, he studied numerous other holistic therapies, including photonic (light) therapy, the mind-body connection and the biofield.⁵⁴ Miletich grew up in Iowa farm country and, after overcoming his chronic respiratory challenges, became an Ultimate Fighting Cham­pionship (UFC) champion and Hall-of-Famer, an all-American wrestler, a kickboxing champion and a coach and mixed-martial-arts trainer for elite athletes and military and law enforcement units at Miletich Fighting Systems.⁵⁵ Both men came to view the technological, chemical, biological and spiritual assaults that characterize our current historical moment as prongs of one and the same war, and for both, their interest in optimizing human health led them to recognize soil health as a crucial precursor to radiant health.

THE DATA DON’T LIE, BUT REGULATORS DO

Soil Saviors has collected data from gardeners and farmers who are using their company’s extremophile mixture to improve soil health. These studies have generated dramatic results, including better plant health and root size, more oxygenated soil, increased bioavailability of nutrients, less need for water, less disease and fewer pests and weeds. Miletich describes tomato plants that are ten to twelve feet tall and seven-foot-tall pepper plants. Trials with plants such as tomatoes and grapes show a minimum 40 percent increased yield, 800 percent higher Brix readings and greater uniformity in ripening—all while healing the soil.

The bioremediation results are equally or more impressive. Soil Sav­iors conducted an experiment through an EPA-approved lab that tested extremophiles’ ability to reduce toxic PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances)—a class of chemicals reputed to be “nearly indestructible.”⁵⁶ The experiment was supposed to run for four months, but they cut it short after just two months. The reason? The microbes reduced most of the so-called “forever chemicals” to zero.

The PFAS results are particularly significant because regulators in states such as Michigan and Maine have started using PFAS as an excuse to shut down small and mid-size farms.⁵⁷ The presence of PFAS in farm soil can be traced back to none other than the EPA, which since the 1980s has urged farmers to spread biosolids (“sludge” made from wastewater and sewage) on their land as fertilizer, stating that the “beneficial applica­tion of biosolids to provide crop nutrients or to condition the soil is not only safe but good public policy.”⁵⁸ Now, EPA is on the brink of issuing guidance that is likely to subject small farms to further PFAS scrutiny and regulatory strong-arming.

There are many reasons to view the PFAS-related stings on farms, though cloaked in benign rhetoric about “safety,” in the wider context of an escalating land grab. Former President Biden launched the “30×30 plan” in the U.S.—part of the global “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Develop­ment”—via Executive Order six days after he took office, and it increases federal agencies’ regulatory powers to drive landowners off their land, using the environment and the “climate crisis” as cover stories.⁵⁹ Small farms, in particular, are being decommissioned right and left, even as agribusiness ramps up its control of land, water and other resources.⁶⁰ Over the past fifteen years, as a report on the global land grab notes,

“[G]lobal land prices have doubled, and land inequality has surged in all world regions—with 1% of farms now controlling 70% of global farmland. Smallholder livelihoods have been continually and critically weakened, and an increasingly powerful agri-food sector has tightened its grip on food systems and farmland.”⁶⁰

Suspiciously, none of the regulators who profess concern about PFAS or other soil tox­ins—and who claim that they “want the soil to come out the other side usable and healthy”— ever mention bioremediation as a solution.⁵⁸ Instead, they suggest, “there may be alternative options.” Some of the Maine farmers who were shut down following PFAS raids admit that they are considering switching from farming to solar arrays.⁵⁸ This fits right in with “green grabs”—a land grab tactic whereby farmland is repurposed for so-called “clean energy”⁶⁰—even though both solar arrays and wind turbines contribute to even worse soil and environmental degrada­tion.^61,62 Most of the farmers who succumb to the promise of easy money for solar or wind—li­censing land that “their great-great-grandfathers poured sweat, blood and prayers into”—have no idea that in a matter of years they will be left with shredded fiberglass blades, “scorched piles of junk” and worse (in the case of wind turbines)⁶³ or toxic remnants like cadmium compounds, hexafluoroethane and lead from spent solar panels.⁶¹

HUMANS NEED BIOREMEDIATION, TOO

In the early 1980s, Spencer got introduced to methods of measuring the vitality of humans, animals, plants and soil, and since that time, he has done readings on over twenty-five thousand people. (He notes that there are a variety of synonyms for “vitality,” including “life force,” “zeta potential,” “scalar fields,” “morphogenic fields” and the “biofield.”) Using the “Power versus Force” scale conceptualized by David Hawkins,⁶⁴ a zero-to-one-thousand scale going from lower-level to higher-level frequencies, Spencer has found that four hundred is the number that constitutes the critical threshold above which people (and other forms of life) stop getting sick and become resilient. Because of the multiple forms of poisoning to which we all have been subjected, Spencer finds that most people’s starting point is around one hundred.

To raise those numbers and one’s vitality, eating food grown in truly healthy soil is a good step in the right direction, and fulvic humic acid supplements—from compounds that occur natu­rally in soil, peat and bodies of water—can also support detoxification.⁶⁵ The two Soil Saviors note that there are “naysayers” who claim that bioremediation is not possible without a boost from biotech, but their response is, “If chemists can take organic substances and turn them into synthetic substances, why can’t God and nature convert them back?”

Spencer points to a quote by Calvin Coolidge that can help people avoid the siren song of biotech’s black magicians, instead point­ing back to the solutions available in nature: “There is new life in the soil for every man. There is healing in the trees for tired minds and for our overburdened spirits, there is strength in the hills, if only we will lift up our eyes. Remember that nature is your great restorer.”

With user-friendly and effective bioreme­diation products available, there is no reason not to join the “soil saviors army” and make a difference for the land and our health.

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SIDEBAR

FROM THE SKY TO THE SOIL

In 2015 and 2016, renowned geophysicist J. Marvin Herndon published articles in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health⁶⁶ and Frontiers in Public Health,⁶⁷ respectively, that called attention to the dangerous human and environmental consequences of aerosol particulate spraying for the purposes of geoengineering, weather modification and/or climate alteration. Analyzing samples collected from rainwater, air filter dust and fibrous mesh following snow melt, Herndon proposed that the aerosolized particulate was likely coal fly ash. Describing the ability of coal fly ash to “release aluminum in a chemically mobile form upon exposure to water or body moisture,” as well as releasing heavy metals and radioactive elements such as barium and strontium, Herndon warned of “potentially grave human health implications including cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, respiratory diseases, reduced male fertility, and stroke.”⁶⁷ Both articles were promptly retracted, leading Herndon to state, “Those concerted efforts to cause said retractions prove that the high officials who ordered the spraying know very well that they are poisoning humanity and want to hide that fact.”⁶⁸

A decade earlier, English farmer Mark Purdey (known to long-time readers of Wise Traditions for his investigations into so-called “mad cow disease”⁶⁹) published an article in Medical Hypotheses describing elevated barium (Ba) and strontium (Sr) as well as silver (Ag) in deer antlers as well as soils and pastures in areas of North America categorized as “cluster zones” for chronic wasting disease.70 Purdey wrote that although some of the bioconcentration of those elements might be due to natural geochemical factors, more prominent culprits probably included the “common practise of aerial spraying with ‘cloud seeding’ Ag or Ba crystal nuclei for rain making,” the “atmospheric spraying with Ba based aerosols for enhancing/refracting radar and radio signal communications” and also the “spreading of waste Ba drilling mud from the local oil/gas well industry across pastureland.”⁷⁰

As of 2025, the efforts to frame geoengineering as a “conspiracy theory” have failed, and the “cat” is now “out of the bag.” Farmers, gardeners and people who simply like to spend time in nature feel understandably pessimistic about the ongoing poisoning from overhead. Once again, nature offers extremophile-led bioremediation as a promising solution. Interestingly, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory published a report in 1999 that focused on the bioremediation of heavy metals and radionuclides, of which radium-226 and strontium-90 are two prime examples.⁷¹ The report’s sponsor was the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Natural and Accelerated Bioremediation Research (NABIR) program, described on a government website as “the only federal program that funds fundamental bioremediation research on metal and radionuclide contaminants in the environment.”⁷² As the authors happily reported, bioremediation accomplishments as of 1999 had already “led scientists and engineers to be optimistic about applying this technology to the mixtures of metals and radionuclides. . . found at some of the most contaminated DOE sites.” In light of Herndon’s observation that the spraying of aerosolized particulates likely got going in earnest in the late 1990s, the 1999 date of the DOE/NABIR report is noteworthy.

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This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Spring 2025

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