Aaron Hartman, MDFunctional Medicine Specialist | Clinical Researcher

Joel Salatin | How Nature Turns Sunbeams Into Soil (And Why We’ve Forgotten)

21 Oct 2024 · 1 min

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0:45

Joel Salatin explains that grass is a more efficient converter of sunlight into biomass than trees and shrubs, and emphasizes how that plant biomass feeds soil microbial life. He highlights the transformational idea that sunlight (an immaterial input) becomes physical matter that supports ecosystems, and claims that every handful of healthy soil contains about 9 billion microbial beings.

Chapters

Grass actually is a more efficient metabolizer of sunbeams into biomass than trees and shrubs. I still just am completely enamored of the fact that something is as mystical and esoteric as sunbeams can be captured by a plant and turned into something that's measurable, fungible, wearable, and physical. So, so? So the non physical turns into something physical. That physical then provides the energy for the soil microbial life. And in healthy soil. Every handful of healthy soil contains about 9 billion different that's B with a B. 9 billion different microbial beings.