Masters views healthy soil as “the gut microbiome of the planet” and shares many insights about soil management. Although most readers likely know that using synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is counterproductive, Masters makes that fact explicit. Just like us, plants need air! Soil compaction, one of the inadvertent results of synthetic nitrogen application, suffocates plants and destroys the infrastructure formed by the termites, dung beetles, ants and earth­worms that let plants breathe easily. Her favor­ite won’t-leave-home-without-it device is the lowly shovel. A shovel allows visualization of soil color and its aggregates. One can smell the aroma, count the earthworms and even discern whether legumes are fixing nitrogen. Another essential tool is the simple refractometer, which measures the Brix (solids or “sugars”) in a plant. She tests crops and weeds, because if the weeds score high, and the crops score low, an adjust­ment is needed. “Make sure you are not farming or ranching for weeds,” she advises. William Gibson once said that "the future is here - it is just not evenly distributed." "Nicole modestly claims that the information in the book is not new thinking, but her resynthesis of the lessons she has learned and refined in collaboration with regenerative land-managers is new, and it is powerful." Says Abe Collins, cofounder of LandStream and founder of Collins Grazing. "She lucidly shares lessons learned from the deep-topsoil futures she and her farming and ranching partners manage for and achieve."

No matter if you are at the beginning of your regenerative journey or further down the road, Nicole Masters’ ‘For the Love of Soil’ will open your eyes and heart to fascinating new world below your feet. The audiobook is read by Nicole herself and is like having a ridiculously knowledgeable friend walk you through the science and then engage you with fun anecdotes. I spent recovering by applying the foundations teachings and my life has dramatically turned around. I have never experienced such vitality and happiness in my entire life. I am so grateful for WAPF. I have become so passionate about physical and mental health as well as farmer rights. I’m so eager to become involved in sharing knowledge about these things.” That’s Eden from Leesburg, Virginia. Although Masters uses scientific methods to determine her proposed course of action, she convinces the reader that the best device to determine soil health is the lowly shovel; She does not leave home without it. A shovel lets you visualize the color and the soil aggregates, smell the aroma, count the earthworms, and even discern if legumes are fixing nitrogen. Add a refractometer and determine the brix of your plants...and your weeds. Why would you care about the weeds? "Make sure you are not farming/or ranching for weeds!" If the weeds score higher than your crop, think about how you will accommodate your crop rather than your weeds. Here I am, just one person. Let’s say, I know my farmer but I still want to do something on a bigger scale to turn things around because won’t our dollars and won’t our choices impact that business?

Customer reviews

The first chapter had me hooked. Nicole shared her own story about Paraquot poisoning in her teens and how it affected her health and her journey into ultimately becoming an Agro-ecologist, educator and systems thinker. She not only tells her story but weaves it beautifully into the topic of this book. She speaks of chemicals, genetics, epigenetics and more telling the story of human reliance and exposure to these things. She encourages each and every one of us to listen to our bodies, nature and our intuition to build a rich and insightful life. In so doing she builds the reason for having written the book and her love of nature and soil.

Do you ever give much thought to the Earth? We walk on it, raise animals on it, build our houses on it, and depend on it for sustenance but some of us might not give it a second thought. This is an episode where we talk about why we need to. The soil is in trouble and we need to look at how we can restore its health to regenerate it and cultivate it in a way that is good for the Earth itself and for each of us. This is Episode 256 and our guest is Nicole Masters. No, so I had a foggy brain. I had memory problems. I was tired all the time. I had been a competitive long-distance runner and I was good. I had a whole lot of medals and stuff. I went from being athletic to nothing. I did not want to partake in sports. I went off the rails in my own life. I was no longer interested in partaking. Everyone thought, “That’s normal teenage behavior,” but it wasn’t. What they found was all these methanotrophic organisms were gobbling away. They were like, “This is awesome.” That oil spill obviously had massive consequences at that time and impacts on everything but those organisms are going to come in. It’s food and carbon. Methane is a carbon source. It’s food for life so they’re not going to let it go to waste. Soil: Soil and water and cabin are intimately related. And as we start to break down those links, there are consequences above ground. Unintentionally, it is appealing to an urban audience to understand these are the chemicals that are being used in agriculture, this is what is in your food chain, and here’s what people are doing on the ground. To get inspired and go, “There’s a massive revolution happening now.” It’s incredibly exciting to travel the world and see the uptake of regenerative agriculture. Sharing secrets of the magical properties of mycorrhizal fungi, she laments that we are smiting them with herbicides and pesticides. Her pragmatic out-of-the-box solutions include using spurge and cheatgrass to enlist this won­drous substance to enhance soil health. One way to encourage conventional farmers to step lightly out of the herbicide rut is to reduce non-selective, non-residual herbicides by 30 percent, adding one part fulvic acid (or vermicast extract) to four parts herbicide. This could reduce costs, enhance the function of the herbicide and give the soil a boost. This book gets two enthusiastic thumbs up!

Our human microbiome probably has 50% of the diversity that it used to have and less specialized organisms that can help you deal with stress. As we start to lose that microbiome in the soil, we no longer have the enzyme-producing organisms, the hormone-producing organisms, or organisms that are creating those vitamins. Deep inside, with all that you were going through, you knew it was something else. Paraquat is an herbicide. I’m guessing it’s like a Roundup or something. Is that right? When you mentioned greenhouse gas emissions, I couldn’t help but start thinking about climate change and people thinking they need to eat less meat or go vegan to heal the planet. What do you think of all that, Nicole? Yes. I used a quote there from Stephen Jenkinson who talks about hope. Hope is mortgaging the future. Hope is something that you hold out as some comparison. Something that you’re going to cling to and pray for as opposed to what’s happening is happening now. We need to be focusing on the things that we can do now. Hope is the other side of hopelessness. We go from being feeling overwhelmed to maybe the Knight in shining armor is going to roll up. That leads me to one final question about the paraquat in your system. Do you think you’ve detoxed it completely? Is it out of your body?

What would you advocate instead then? If I literally came up to you and said, “Nicole, I’m going to stop eating meat. I’m going to buy all my stuff from Whole Foods.” You were like, “No,” and you explained to me that’s not very helpful. What would you suggest I do instead? She has been providing agricultural consulting and extension services in Regenerative Agriculture since 2003, and is the Director of Integrity Soils Limited. Unusually, she charts her work with these businesses over time: we don't just get the waving of the magic wand, we get to see what happened after. I thought that this longer-term view (both good and bad) was inspiring and added to the book. Some of the operations I work with, they’re measuring things like the bio-digestability of grains. They’re measuring no residue of chemicals. They are measuring increases in Omega-3, trace elements, or vitamins in the food that they’re producing. That’s what I want to see. We start to get down to, what is this food quality? Can we improve the quality that we’re buying? There are a few spectrometers in different types of meters that are being released in 2021 and 2022 that are going to be ones that consumers can hold and measure for themselves what is the quality of this produce, which is exciting.

For the Love of Soil

That whole argument and I get that people are feeling overwhelmed. They want to feel like they’re making a difference but the problem is the industrialization of food. Going vegan, if you continue to eat industrial food, you’re just as big as a problem because you’re then eating soy products. You’re eating processed products that come from on no-Bali or something instead of looking at how do I eat local. A lot of beef is raised on land that would never be suitable for crops anyway. A lot of the statistics that you see about meat are all based on what happens in a CAFO. I don’t eat CAFO meat. I’m not interested in eating an animal that’s basically been sitting in a yard its whole life. No, if you look and think a lot of the big agri companies are also your big pharmaceutical companies. Bayer, for instance. They are peddling the same stuff. We’re finally seeing soil health start to raise its head above the pulpit. People are starting to realize how valuable a resource it is. We have all seen dust blowing in the wind as working (tilling) the soil disrupts the soil infrastructure. Do the people tilling realize that the most valuable substance in their soil is what is darkening the sky? It is humus, the final breakdown of organic matter, with a structure even finer than clay. Humus is an amphitheater, if you will, in which soil microorganisms thrive.

Ok, so I'm struggling with how to rate this book. As a regenerative farmer myself, and an organic farming consultant with 25 years experience, I want to love this book because any helpful attempt to further the regenerative ag movement is worth 5 stars! Books like this are so badly needed, now more than ever! But, this book has it's share of problems. If I'm comparing it to other regenerative ag books that received a 5 star rating, this one would probably get a 3. But I want to be generous and give it a 4. Here are the problems.That is exciting. I’ve heard of the brix meter that measures the amount of minerals and such in the soil itself. Explain how these new meters are going to work that consumers may be able to use. My concern is they’re going to greenwash it as they did with organics but how do we keep integrity in that system? Part of that is looking at what is the output because regenerating landscapes are about the output. Are we increasing the quality of the water that’s coming off the landscape? Are we increasing water-holding capacity? Are we increasing microbial diversity and the food quality that’s coming off the property? Let’s pivot now and talk about the toxin loading of our soil. First of all, what’s going on and why should it matter to us? I am so glad that you said that just because it has that label doesn’t mean that it’s been produced on a small scale. Like in whole foods. I sometimes see these berries. I’m a big berry girl. I love berries. It says organic, so I think, “That’s great,” but I know their motto crops of berries. It’s done on this huge scale. Tell me, how does that damage the soil? What’s wrong with that if it’s organic? I got into commercial viniculture and got interested in the microbiology of what I was creating and how to create different types of blends of whim castings for an avocado producer compared to a strawberry producer compared to pasture. I didn’t even know I had a name like that agro-ecology was a thing. Maybe like ten years into my career and I was reading some research papers. I was like, “That’s me. I didn’t know I had a title.” It evolved into what I was passionate about. When I left school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. Certainly, I didn’t know it was going to involve soil but once I discovered soil, I never got a doubt. As you can see, you can relate that to the human aspect, animal health, or greenhouse gas emissions. It’s incredibly exciting.