How Modern Agricultural Practices Are Jeopardizing Our Health
By Dr. Richard Drucker
When you hear the phrase health and wellness, what images come to mind? Exercise, nutrition, fruits and
vegetables, supplements? What about dirt? Does that come to mind?
That's right, dirt. Soil is the primary factor in nutrition because much of our food comes from the earth. The
human body is composed literally of earth, if you think about it. The minerals that are essential to how the
body functions are connected directly to the state of our soil. If an element is missing from our soil, it will
be missing from the foods we eat; hence, from our bodies. Unfortunately, that is the reality these days.
Much of the Earth's soil is depleted, and depleted soil doesn't produce healthy, nutrient- and mineral-rich
plants. Moreover, crops produced in depleted soil are more prone to invasion by insects, viruses, fungi, etc.
Insects and infectious organisms get rid of unhealthy vegetation and don't typically attack truly healthy
plants.
The Perils of Modern, Inorganic Farming
Much of the modern world is now aware that our industrialized methods of
farming have not only depleted the soil, but also have created a cycle that
requires pesticides to protect the unhealthy crops grown on depleted soil.
The commercial applications of agriculture have depleted the soil of
precious, organically complexed trace minerals and hindered the ability of
plants to utilize those elements. That means our food is nutritionally
deficient right from the source. Our food is then refined and processed,
which further degrades its nutritional value!
Who suffers? We all do. More than 30 organically complexed trace minerals
are necessary to produce healthy, nutrient-rich crops, yet most current
farming methods routinely put back only three to five of them. And that's only a part of the problem.
Inorganic (synthetic/dead/toxic), ammonium-based fertilizers, along with herbicides and pesticides, kill
precious microorganisms in the soil that are essential to the creation of organic mineral complexes. We
have used up the available trace minerals in our soil and destroyed the means of replenishing these soilbased
microorganisms.
Is there a consensus among health care professionals that depleted soil is a nutritional concern? While
some diehards believe you can avoid supplements if you eat a "balanced diet," it's a verified fact that most
of our livestock feeds contain nutritional supplements. Without supplemental nutrients being added to the
feed, far too many animals were getting ill. What does that tell you? Grain doesn't possess enough
nutrients to keep the livestock healthy. If our livestock can't stay healthy eating our modern crops, how can
we?
Prior to the 1930s, farmers fertilized their crops with organic substances. Unfortunately, modern, economicbased
agriculture has virtually replaced all the critical organic complexes with inorganic (synthetic/toxic)
fertilizers, which cause toxicity in water runoff and further imbalance the delicate nature of our soil. In the
1930s, when farmers began to add inorganic fertilizers to the soil, it was presumed that biological
organisms could assimilate minerals in any form. Unfortunately, this is not the case. We are now
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discovering inorganic minerals can't be assimilated easily by plants; they must first be combined with
organically complex matter before they can be used. No wonder our food is less and less nutritious. No
wonder it lacks taste, and no wonder modern farmers have to apply more and more toxic pesticides,
herbicides and chemicals every year just to get their crops to market.
Organic vs. Inorganic Trace Minerals
Let's look at a similar dilemma. The human body is intended to derive minerals from organic complexes
supplied in the foods we eat. Unfortunately, these critical, disease-preventing, organic nutrients aren't
present when our food is grown in depleted soil. And, just like the farmer who has attempted to alter the
soil with inorganic toxic chemicals and fertilizers, we have tried to add inorganic trace minerals to our diet
in the form of colloidal supplements, with even worse potential consequences. It's important to reiterate
that most trace minerals are not recognized, absorbed or utilized by living tissue unless they're carried in
organic complexes.
Even the best inorganic trace minerals (e.g., coral,
colloidal and/or ionic) are extremely large and
insoluble, with high atomic weights and large sizes
ranging from 1-100 nm. These molecules are giant
compared to organically complexed minerals, and might
be rejected at the cellular level due to their synthetic
composition, size or weight. Moreover, they eventually
might accumulate in the body, as they are stored in
extracellular spaces, outside the cell's interstitial fluid
and fatty tissue. Over the course of time, this can lead
to severe toxicity and disease.
How different are organically complexed minerals compared to colloidal minerals? Organically complexed
trace minerals are definitively different in that they are naturally chelated - ultra tiny - and they have ultralow
molecular weight. They are approximately 50 to 100 times smaller and much lighter in weight. They are
physically small enough that they easily can be carried into the cells of our bodies. They are bound by
carbon (living matter) and have innumerous health benefits, aiding in both intracellular and extracellular
detoxification. Thus, when trace minerals are combined with organic matter, they become an enriching
meal of living minerals rather than a toxic plate of inert, dead rocks.
The function of organic trace minerals is to be systemic catalysts. They are activators - intracellular "spark
plugs." They either "kick off" or "speed up" much of the chemistry that goes on in our bodies. Without trace
minerals, there is no life. They specifically are responsible for carrying much of our nutrition, glycogens,
glucose, etc., to our cells.
Most scientists would agree we need three basic ingredients to sustain life: water, oxygen and organically
complexed (carbon-based/living) trace minerals. Not even vitamins or enzymes can perform without trace
minerals. When trace minerals are insufficient, numerous processes either slow down or come to a halt until
the mineral banks can be replenished. Knowing this, it's easy to see why both plants and humans are
becoming increasingly susceptible to disease. It's also easy to understand what Linus Pauling, (twice
awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine) meant when he categorically explained to the 74th Congress of the
United States, "Every ailment, every sickness and every disease can be traced back to an organic tracemineral
deficiency." It has become alarmingly evident that we are severely deficient in one of the most
basic components necessary to sustain health - organically complexed trace minerals.
In a way, the problem with depleted soil is similar to the problems of using
antibiotics. Antibiotics kill the harmful bacteria that are making us sick, but they kill the friendly flora in the
intestinal tract at the same time. Antibiotics appear to cure the infection, but in reality, long-term use might
weaken the immune system, making us more likely to suffer from future illnesses. Similarly, as the "good"
microorganisms in the soil are wiped out, the vegetation loses its ability to gain the proper balance of
minerals from the soil. The end result: Our bodies take on these deficient foods and become impaired and
imbalanced.
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Potential Solutions
If our soil and crops lack essential minerals, we need to supplement our
diets to achieve true wellness. All biological organisms (including humans)
require organically complexed trace minerals in order to maintain health
and prevent disease. Decades ago, if we had only protected and nourished
our soil from hazardous and toxic chemicals, these critical organic
complexes would naturally be in the foods we eat today. Unfortunately,
they are not.
But will any old multivitamin off the shelves of our grocery or drug store do
the trick? The short answer is no. Much like our soil, most supplements available on the market today are
full of synthetic chemical nutrients instead of the organic nutrients our bodies need.
How do we get these complexes back into the soil, and what can we do in the meantime to replenish the
organic trace minerals in our bodies? A piece of the answer to both questions lies in a substance called
fulvic acid. Fulvic acid (not to be confused with folic acid) is the end result of repetitive plant decomposition,
and is the first biological step in changing inorganic trace minerals into organically complexed, soluble trace
minerals that can be used by both plants and animals.
Fulvic acid is produced as plant matter decays over long periods of time and utilized in trace amounts by
microorganisms in the soil. The process takes hundreds of years and can't be duplicated in the laboratory.
Fulvic acid has an extremely small (ultra-chelated), low molecular weight that might beneficially modify
many essential biochemical, electrochemical and metabolic processes, and yet, the greater scientific
community still is largely unaware of its role.
Further research might show that fulvic acid can be used to resuscitate some of our soil and possibly our
food sources and bodies. Until this can be accomplished, high-quality supplements remain our best defense
against food devoid of life-sustaining, organically complexed minerals and nutrients.
Richard Drucker, ND, is a licensed naturopath performing concentrated research and work in the natural
health and nutraceutical fields for more than 20 years.
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