05/26/2026
We stopped tilling the garden a couple years ago and will never go back!
In the book “What Your Food Ate” by David R. Montgomery and Anne Bikle, an interesting anecdote is told that says a lot about our gardening and eating practices:
A farmer in Northern Oregon decided to see if natural practices to control weeds would work in his fields. He planted one field as he usually did, tilling the bare soil, planting his winter wheat, and then using glyphosate several times before harvest. In another field, he used crop rotation, starting with spring wheat, then barley, then the same variety of winter wheat used in his conventional field, and finally, a mix of cover crops. After two years, both fields had produced 75 bushels an acre…and the cover crops in the non-sprayed field suppressed the weeds beautifully. But what surprised him most was that the mineral content of the winter wheats were different.
After sending out samples of his crops for lab testing, he discovered that the winter wheat in his no-spray, no-till field had 35-56% more boron, manganese, and zinc and 18-29% more copper, iron, and magnesium. But you can’t change the mineral content of the soil that quickly, so what was going on?
Since the 1930s, scientists have studied soil microbes and found that they play a large role in making nutrients available to crops. Anything that kills or reduces soil microbes (like tilling and glyphosate) leads to food that’s less nutrient-dense. This effect is clearly seen in livestock; for example, studies show that cows eating plants grown conventionally produce less milk than cows fed the same plants grown with regenerative practices.
I am unaware of any studies that compare conventional and regenerative food in humans, but it’s pretty difficult to believe there is no effect on human health. In fact, I wonder if conventionally grown food leads to overeating because our bodies are craving nutrients they aren’t receiving enough of. (Some studies show that livestock fed conventional food eat more than livestock fed regenerative food.)
Just something to bear in mind while we try to grow the most healthy, nutritious food we can on our homesteads 😊
Photo by Scott Bauer, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Services.
