An engaging and compelling argument for implementing regenerative farming practices.
An examination of the link between soil health and human health.
In this follow-up to The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health, Montgomery and Biklé explain that we are suffering from micronutrient malnutrition. “Far too many of us remain poorly nourished despite eating more than enough food,” they write, noting the primary causes involve conventional farming practices. The authors explain the ways that these methods, including tillage and use of commercial fertilizers, disrupt the necessary, healthy symbiosis between plants and the soil. “We traded away quality in pursuit of quantity as modernized farming chased higher yields,” they write, “overlooking a farmer’s natural allies in the soil.” Alternatively, they contend, regenerative farming practices build organic matter and help maintain the fertility of the soil over a longer period of time. As in their previous book, Montgomery and Biklé offer highly readable prose, extensive research, and convincing evidence, including pertinent information on farms that have successfully implemented regenerative practices. They also share test results from gathered soil and crop samples indicating healthier soil and higher nutrient density. “Farming systems that create and maintain high levels of soil organic matter work like a savings account,” they write, “storing nutrients from one growing season to the next for the use of subsequent crops.” Another difference the authors witnessed between conventional and regenerative farming techniques is the no-till method’s greater capacity for holding water and preventing soil erosion. They take readers on a fascinating tour of a wheat mill in Washington state that bred wheat for flavor while utilizing organic techniques and point to a study that shows how wheat loses almost three-quarters of its vitamins and minerals when milled into white flour. Further, the authors explore the health benefits of consuming a diet rich in nutrients, particularly phytochemicals, from fruit, vegetables, and whole grains, which include reduced risks of dental problems, birth defects, and infectious and chronic diseases.
An engaging and compelling argument for implementing regenerative farming practices.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-324-00453-0
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An ambitious and evenhanded meditation on the science of genetics, its potential, and its ethical implications. Arguing that we must know where we came from to understand where we are going, British science journalist Tudge (Future Food, 1980) summarizes the history of genetics, starting with a somewhat dry and dutiful primer on evolution and molecular biology. While he clearly connects the dots between Darwin, Mendel, and Watson and Crick, the material will be rough going for a lay reader. More satisfying are later sections on cloning, the Human Genome Project, and genetic engineering. Tudge provides a thorough overview of the field but is more interested in science than technology, giving less space to recombinant crops and livestock improvement than to issues of genetic diversity and species conservation. Indeed, he is at his best describing animals, and well-drawn examples—from the mating practices of the funnel-web spider to the selective nursing habits of red deer—provide the book's liveliest moments. Also intriguing are meditations on polygamy versus monogamy in the natural world, the inefficiency of sexual reproduction, why we will never evolve into superhumans, and why the notion of a Jurassic Park is remotely plausible but ultimately flawed. These accessible musings locate genetics issues in a more familiar context, to which the author adds his own humanistic and theological perspectives. Tudge believes science and scientific literacy can make a better world. But, as the book forcefully demonstrates, there are aspects of evolution, both human and technological, that cannot be controlled; hence, Tudge argues for restraints on a technology that he feels society is not ready for. A challenging work that's worth reading, but requires patience.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8090-4259-2
Page Count: 345
Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
An illuminating whirl—or possibly a whorl—through the world of natural forms and human engineering. Willis (The Hominid Gang, 1989), a have-notebook-will-travel kind of science writer, looks at how architects and engineers of various stripes are looking to nature for design inspiration. The sand dollar, for instance, is an example of efficiency at the water's edge—an economy of shape that allows burrowing in the sand and capturing edibles (while avoiding being captured). Countless examples abound, and some have been copied: from the Wright brothers looking to the turkey vulture for lessons in reducing turbulence to an architect's mimicking the tensile strength of spider webs and soap bubbles in lightweight lattice domes and roof structures. The grand master in the look-to-nature school was the English aristocrat D'Arcy Thompson, whose 1917 volume On Growth and Form remains a classic. Willis duly pays homage and speaks as well of the contributions of Leonardo, Antonio Gaud°, and Buckminster Fuller before turning to today's practitioners of fractal geometry and chaos theory. Germany and England are particularly fertile in the study of natural structures, which Willis illustrates in interviews with leaders like Dolf Seilacher at Stuttgart, who talks of constructive morphology, and Peter Allen at the Eco-Technology Center at Cranfield, England, whose focus is on dynamic instability and self-organization. America is on board, too, what with the followers of Fuller and a new generation of eco-tech planners and evolutionary thinkers. At times Willis's thoughts fly off in different directions with allusions, quotations, and asides that introduce a huge cast and canvas. The result is not your usual linear prose, but perhaps one that is faithful to the imaginative links between technology and nature that are the forte of her subjects. A good introduction to a new science in the making.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-201-63275-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
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