Organic produce from @fernverrow via @spring_to_go
REV Food and Garden Editor @robertmanngarden photographed by @myriad82
Environment
Celebrating World Soil Day with Spring & Fern Verrow
We’ve teamed up with our friends over at Spring To Go to bring you this editorial.
In celebration of this year’s World Soil day REV brings you an extraordinary interview with the Director Sanjay on REV air podcast and produce from one of the UK’s leading biodynamic farms Fern Verrow, who is leading the industry in clean soil, to show how you can make a simple difference through your weekly food. This wonderful produce is now being brought to our homes through the recently launched Spring To Go their mission is to bring you the most delicious nutritious produce from healthy happy soil means you are caring and protecting the environment through every meal you eat.
Choosing to eat food grown from farms who care for their soil is the simplest way for you to be in sync with our natural environment.
The Importance of Healthy Soil
World Soil day (December 5th) is designed and designated by the United Nations to highlight and champion soil’s importance to the health of our Earth and acts to raise awareness about the dangers of soil loss as one of the underlying causes to the destruction of biodiversity on our planet which also adversely impacts global warming (since sick soil doesn’t sequester carbon from the atmosphere in complete contrast to healthy soil).
Learning to really love the soil has been one of my most memorable takeaways from the year that changed the world. Clean and rich soil is literally the very foundation of nutritious, delicious vegetables and beautiful flowers. It’s the secret sauce to every garden and farm. In fact it is also the key to creating a carbon free world, as healthy soil is also one of the most effective sequesters of carbon from our atmosphere. Shockingly, healthy soil is hard to come by these days as sadly the soil in most farms around the world is extremely sick, microbe poor, dried out to dust and chemically infected.
Protecting our Soil
Protecting the soil’s biodiversity is one of greatest environmental challenges we face today and the biggest hurdle farmers, gardeners, environmentalists and the world at large need to overcome today. Soil is the basis for all living things and is the foundation for all natures’ ecosystems. Soil supports a whole world of plants and creatures through a never ending cycle of growth and decay vital both to humanity’s environment and more crucially to our food systems. This extraordinarily complex yet simple cycle of living organisms keeps the soil healthy and fertile and ultimately maintains our atmosphere balanced by sequestering carbon.
Sadly, our extensive destruction of soil through our intensive food industry, deforestation for animal fodder and mono-cropping and the super intensive mechanical tilling of land through ploughing as well as through our intensive and irresponsible use of artificial pesticides have completely destroyed the soil’s fertility and ability to function as a carbon lung for our planet, while turning it into mere dust.
5 Benefits of soil biodiversity:
Healthy soils
Water purification
Climate change mitigation & adaption
Plant growth
Human health
Source: Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN
A Biodynamic Farm to Support
But it’s not all doom and gloom. There is still a way for us to play our part in actively restoring and protecting our soil by simply making conscious consumption the mainstay of your weekly food shopping by supporting farms and growers that work in total sync with the natural environment for health of soil. One such producer (who we love!) is the Fern Verrow biodynamic farm – one of UK’s pioneering biodynamic farms who is leading the industry in growing and caring for clean soil (as well as it being the sole provider for Spring Restaurant in London). Their wonderful produce is now being sold in the recently launched food and grocery service Spring To Go and we can’t recommend it enough especially with Christmas just weeks away.
They’re offering some great options to make your festive feast this year wonderful, meaningful and impactful with rich, flavoursome and nutritious veggies, fruit and herbs. By ordering to your doorstep the most delicious and nutritious produce grown from their healthy, happy soil, you are not only buying healthy and flavoursome organic food for your pleasure, you are also supporting a truly sustainable form of farming – one which prioritises the health of the soil.
Gather Documentary
Lastly, we wanted to share with you our recent interview on the REV On Air podcast with Sanjay Rawal, the Director of Gather, one of 2020’s most extraordinary and important doc-films in celeration for regenerative agriculture and restoring traditional food knowledge. In this fascinating interview we explore the importance of humans and their relationship to land. The focus of the film is on the importance of re-establishing and supporting an ethical food system grounded from agriculture that is wholly regenerative using traditional knowledge to care for and learn from the land.
Through Sanjay’s exceptional gaze, Gather’s unique narrative through indigenous peoples’ rights in the United States, compellingly illustrates the simple truth that only through a reconnection with our natural habitats will humanity be able to realise the solutions needed to tackle our climate crisis.
Editorial references:
Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN
Original photography by Grace Hallam and Robert Mann for Rêve En Vert
