Soil: The Symbiotic ‘How’ of Food, Nutrition and Water Quality

"Our planet's survival depends on the precious link between soil and water. Over 95 percent of our food originates from these two fundamental resources.?Water in soils, vital for nutrient absorption by plants, binds our ecosystems together. This symbiotic relationship is the foundation of our agricultural systems. (World Soil Day | United Nations)

As we mark World Soil Health Day today - December 5 - this statement on soil from the UN gives us much to unpack, pointing to the important questions of how we produce our food, how the nutritional density of our food is, how producing food can impact the availability and quality of the water we drink, and how important topics are interconnected.

At the center of these questions is our soil.

At Biolevel we’re passionate about providing solutions to re-invigorate soil biology, to produce with more efficiency and less environmental impact, and to grow more nutritionally-dense, healthier crops. And we’re committed to supporting farmers who want to protect their soils for subsequent generations.

But how did we get to this point? Why is our action needed? To understand an important root cause of today’s struggle with soil health and agricultural productivity we have to understand the natural succession in soil development.

The University of Chicago nicely describes this in this article (What is ecological succession? | University of Chicago News). As eco-systems develop (from lichens and pioneer species to more mature plant communities), so the soil develops. Agriculture has benefited from growing initially in mature soils, but soil depletion due to over-cultivation and monoculture is now a pressing issue, preventing soil regeneration, and maturation (plant decomposition and microbe formation).

When we look at farmland which is put into conservation we can see ecological succession happening: We see grasses as pioneer species, but we also see a wider variety of weeds, the first shrubs and we also have proximity to more mature climax communities like forests where beneficial microbes and fungi can migrate into the formerly disturbed soil. This is not present in rowcrop farming.?

At Biolevel we work with beneficial soil microbes which are naturally soil occurring, to support pioneer stage environments like cultivated, monocropped agricultural soils to achieve ecological succession. Our products enable important natural nutrient cycling, support the reinvigoration of soil and improve growers’ profitability.?

Helping farmers to complement their work on soil structure and soil chemistry by addressing soil biology is our mission at Biolevel and we offer a practical range of products with growers' ease of use in mind.

Learn more about our biological soil solutions here on our website or contact us by calling Josh Seeman +1 904 657 0316 or email him at [email protected] to start your Biolevel biologicals journey. Interested in becoming a Biolevel distributor? Josh would love to talk to you too!?

#Biolevel #biologicals #soilhealth #soilsolutions #worldsoilday #soilday #agriculture #farming #growers #farmers #biologicalsoilsolutions #ecology #microbiome #microbes #soilmicrobes #soilchemestry #soilbiology | Bill Cordingley | Lutz Glandorf | Laurence Berman | Nathalie Gibson | Josh Seemann