"A declining soil fertility, due to a lack of organic material, major elements, and trace minerals, is responsible for poor crops, and in turn for pathological conditions in animals fed deficient foods from such soils, and mankind is no exception."

Dr. William A. Albrecht,
Chairman of the Department of Soils at the University of Missouri. [1]

Some US farms are 100% topsoil depleted and some are 60% topsoil depleted; the average is 85% depletion as compared to 100 years ago. This is worse than in any other country in the world because of the extended use of fertilizers and "maximum yield" mass farming methods.  According to Gary Price Todd, MD, the human body requires at least 60 minerals for optimal health and basically the same other essentials as animals. But, only 8 minerals are available in any kind of quantity in most of the food we eat today.  Dr. Linus Pauling, the two-time Nobel Prize winner, states that: "You can trace every sickness, every disease, and every ailment to a mineral deficiency."[1]

The industrialization of agriculture, particularly after WWII,  precipitated a free fall decline in farming populations …. the result: the total number of farms has declined from 6.5 million in 1935 to 2.05 million in 1997, and most of this took place among family-type farms.

Willard W. Cochrane,
“A Food and Agriculture Policy for the 21st Century”,
June 21, 1999, cited in [2]

Jacquetta Hawkes once described the rural New England of the 18th century as “creative, patient, and increasingly skilful love-making that persuaded the land to flourish” [3].

If you have no land, you have nothing; no food, no shelter, no warmth, no freedom, no life…land is a gift of immeasurable value.  If it is a gift, then it is a gift to all the living in all time.  To withhold it from some is finally to destroy it for all.  For a few powerful people to own or control it all, or decide it’s fate, is wrong. 

Wendell Berry, “The Agrarian Standard”, in [2], pg. 32

I would have hesitated to suggest that one’s relationship to the land, to consumption, and food is a religious matter.  But it’s true; the decision to attend to the health of one’s habitat and food chain is a spiritual choice. 

Barbara Kingsolver, foreword, [2]