Home – Cornerstones of Healthy Food Systems

The Cornerstones of Healthy Food Systems

Clean environments, regenerative agriculture, nutritional health, and enough freedom to adapt to your surrounding environment form the cornerstones that support healthy food systems and healthy economies.

Here we explore ideas, information, discussions, and opinions about food systems ranging:

from the soil to the gut.
from the farm to the table
from the ecosystem to the economy.

Legacy Posts

Regenerative Agriculture

Please don’t get hung up on semantics and legalistic definitions here. We are looking at approaches to food, fiber, and biofuel production that promote restoration, rather than degradation.

Z_On Becoming a Change Agent

I must have always thought in multiple dimensions. I remember the anxiety I felt in high school when I recognized that all my friends had definite goals in life, but I wanted to pursue a different goal each day. Within days, I would bounce from wanting to be a ...
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Images of endophytic fungi in plant cells

What Endophytes Reveal about GMOs

As mainstream media in the US continue to downplay concerns about the safety of genetically modified foods, bloggers, independent news providers and social media groups continue to voice concerns in and beyond the United States. Debate centers around the dietary and ecological safety of genetically modified organisms (hence "G-M-O's") in ...
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Guest Post: Papers, Possessions, and Precision Agriculture in a Cloudy Environment

Clifff Love, of Profitable Growth Services as today's guest writer. Cliff's background in private agricultural services in the Northeastern US contrasts with my own perspectives, gleaned from public agricultural and environmental research in the Southwest. Yet our contrasting experiences have led us to a shared awareness that our sustainability ...
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Growing Organic Blackberries in the Desert Requires an Emphasis on Soil Microbiology

Who says you can't grow blackberries in the desert? South of the Organ Mountains, near Vado, New Mexico, soils are characterized by heavy calcium carbonate (aka caliche) deposits on or near the surface. This caliche becomes sticky when wet, binding together to form an impervious, concrete-like layer that water cannot ...
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Will Lawsuits Force Tighter Food Safety Regulations?

Mirazie vs. Monsanto The recent filing of a class action lawsuit against Monsanto by Elvis, Edison And Romi Mirazie in the state of California represents the beginning of the windfall microbiologists have anticipated for decades as more individuals recognize the vital role microbes play in human health. At issue is ...
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On Solar Powered Nitrogen Factories

Recently, I was invited into a discussion on the potential for "solar powered nitrogen factories". The dialog dealt with using legumes and grasses as cover crops to increase soil fertility. This is of course, a great strategy which farmers are adopting at large scales. As the cover crops grow, they ...
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What Exactly is a Biological Soil Crust?

Soil Crusts are Tiny Communities that Can Help You Build Healthy Soil Did you ever walk out in the desert following a rainstorm? If so, you may have noticed a thin black or green layer on the surface of the soil. Of course. you may have noticed a sprinkling of dry, black ...
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Local Food Requires Local Farmers

Today's post features text of a speech delivered by Sabrina Lucero at the 2017 New Mexico State FFA Convention, where Sabrina took second place in prepared public speaking. Her witty explanation of the need for local farmers highlights why recent food and health care trends are creating unprecedented windows of ...
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Fungal Rich Compost Supports Vigorous Plant Growth

Fungal superhighways operate underground to decompose minerals and nutrients from soil and deliver them to plants. For this reason, fungi are powerful, yet too often overlooked additions to plant production. Many industrial agricultural techniques damage these fungal communities, resulting in less than optimal crop yields, reduced crop nutrition, and increased need ...
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Humic Acids and Lignins are like Prebiotics for Soil

Humic Acids and Lignins: Prebiotics for Soil

Every grower knows beneficial microbes like rhizobia and mycorrhizal fungi can help plants produce strong, resistant, and resilient crops. Many growers know that having the right microbes in the soil can reduce or eliminate the need for chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Far too many growers have fallen for the "bug-in-a-jug," ...
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Clean Environment

Our environment supplies the air, water, soil, and other natural resources that drive regeneration

Understanding Food Webs

What exactly is a food web? Nearly a century ago, the ecologist Charles Elton introduced us to the concept of food chains –linear series of links that shows how food, which provides the environmental currency of nutrients and energy, moves through an ecosystem. No doubt you’ve seen illustrations of food ...
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Biostimulants Boost Plant Growth in Brackish Water

Brackish Water is Toxic To Crop Plants About 97% of the fresh water on the earth is considered too brackish (too salty) for most agricultural use. Desalination, or purification, is of course possible. Mechanical desalination processes are widely known. But making desalination cost effective and environmentally friendly can be challenging ...
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Whitewashing Pesticide Hazards

Investigative Journalist Carey Gillam Explains Why Toxic Pesticides Permeate Food Systems Food safety regulations and labeling are promoted as a way to reassure the public that the food we purchase is safe. But it it? In her new book, Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption ...
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Microbial Analysis As a Tool for Second Responders

2017 Will Be Remembered as a Year of Disaster The year of 2017 will no doubt be remembered for its stream of natural disasters. From the fires in Montana to the hurricanes that struck Houston and Puerto Rico...from the earthquakes in Mexico City to the floods in Peru...we are most ...
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Remembering the Past With Yerba de Alonso Garcia

Did Native Americans Name Good Plants after Good People? My friend Andrea once told me that early Americans, like the Navajo and the Apache, named plants with beneficial properties after people they liked. It was sort of a way to compliment the good people in their lives. She added that ...
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Popular Herbicide is Rounding Up a Multidimensional Disaster

No Chemical Does More to Promote Disease than Glyphosate In the video above, Dr Alex Vasquez explains why no chemical does more on an international basis to promote disease than glyphosate, the active ingredient in the popular herbicide, Round Up. Efforts of many like Vasquez, who highlights events in Columbia, ...
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Will Lawsuits Force Tighter Food Safety Regulations?

Chemical Dependency Starts in the Soil

Chemical dependence begins in the soil where our food is grown. Chemical Dependency Is About So Much More Than Recreational Drugs Growing up on the edge of Generation X, I learned early on about the most universally recognized forms of chemical dependency. In our community, we were exposed to a number ...
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What Endophytes Reveal about GMOs

Repurposing Victory Gardens

During World Wars I and II, families on the home fronts in many countries were encouraged to plant victory gardens. Home food production was recognized as fundamental to national security, and victory gardens became a source of national pride and patriotism. Food grown at home provided critical relief from the ...
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Natural Health and Nutrition

As living systems ourselves, we cannot renew and regenerate our economy or our ecosystem without taking care or ourselves. Eating good food grown in healthy soil, and minimizing risks that damage your health will build your personal productivity and reduce your health care costs.

Connect Soil Health to Your Health With the Agri-Health Culture Conference

This conference was held in early 2020, just before COVID-19 became a household word. The speaker insights are as relevant today as they were then. You can view playbacks on our sister site, at endofite.com. Watch the Playbacks Playbacks Learn more at AgriHealthCulture.com Good Nutrition Begins On Farms and In ...
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Local Farms are Key to Health and Wellness

The dangers of glyphosate and other pesticides prevalent in modern food systems have been discussed in previous posts, including our 2016 report on glyphosate in food webs, and our 2018 interview with investigative journalist, Carey Gillam. Like Alex Vasquez' 2014 YouTube video that pronounced glyphosate as the toxic chemical of ...
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Healthy Living Is the Ultimate Declaration of Independence

Tomorrow, American's everywhere will be celebrating independence with back yard barbecues and fireworks displays. We will express gratitude for the freedoms we enjoy, and proclaim ourselves an independent country. Are we? ...
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From International Business to Local Regenerative Farming

Health Concerns Led International Businessman Glen Schultz to Abandon Fortune 500 Sales and Start a Farm As Glen Schultz researched the cause of his son's ailments, he became concerned about the way milk and other foods were being produced. At first, he shopped from natural grocery stores. But that wasn't ...
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Global Warming and Nutrition?

Scientists correlate global warming with nutrition Few ideas may seem less intuitive to bring together than global warming and nutrition. Yet, when you remember that health begins in living soil, and all life is stressed by too much heat, the logic starts to fall into place. Scientists correlate climate change ...
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The Amazing Power of Peppermint Oil

Written by: Shelley Michael CHHC Shelley is a certified wellness counselor and advocate for using toxic free, organic healthy home and personal care products and natural remedies that support healthy people and a healthy planet. You can read Shelley’s blog at: www.LifeStyleEntrepreneurist.com It is no secret we love peppermint. We ...
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Are Sugar and Carb Addictions Real?

Don't Take Carbohydrate Addictions Lightly I was caught off guard last week in an interview with Andree Clearwater, of Gill, Massachusetts, when she mentioned her addiction to sugar. Andree is thin, healthy, and meticulous about what she eats. Yet here she was describing an addiction that once dominated her, and ...
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Permaculture and Healthy Eating

Suzanne Ricketts of Plano Texas has always embraced healthy eating. Like so many of us, her understanding of what healthy eating represents has changed over the years. A pioneer in our Cultivating Victory movement, Suzanne recently joined us to discuss how interests in nutrition led her to permaculture. Today, she ...
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Five Important Health Facts Your Doctor Never Shared With You

1. Doctors Don't All Take the Hippocratic Oath. I learned about the Hippocratic Oath from my parents, who believed all physicians took a Hippocratic Oath that bound them to serve the patient and "do no harm." Only recently did I revisit this information. I learned that only about 11% of ...
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Chemical Dependencies That Are Impacting You!

Thinking Beyond Opioids and Street Drugs Chemical dependency is often viewed narrowly, as dependence on drugs. The phrase itself conjures up images of meth labs in trailer parks, and homeless addicts shooting heroine in dark alleys. But most of us know deep inside that this is only one tragic aspect ...
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Freedom to Diversify

Civilization has always been a struggle to find balance between personal freedom and cooperation with our communities and government. Discussions here explore the tipping point in which governments we build to ensure liberty and justice actually become the cause of of inequity, food insecurity, and enviromental decline.

Is Education a Path to Freedom? Or an Instrument of Oppression?

Varied Emotions and Perspectives Make Freedom Difficult to Discuss As regular listeners already know, this podcast aims to rotate topics so that each episode examines aspects of one of the four cornerstones, the environmental issues, the agriculture, the health, and the freedom that set the foundation of healthy food systems ...
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A Decision Tree for Building a Farm

Why Should I Build a Farm? The economy of the post-pandemic world has changed. As the world takes on the challenge of economic recovery in the post-COVID-19 world, displaced workers are looking at digital sales, direct marketing, and, believe-it-or-not, organic farming as niche industries where they can hang their hats ...
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Freedom is Essential for Regenerating Healthy Food Systems

Regenerative Agriculture is a Promising Approach to Building Better Food Systems. Regenerative agriculture is rapidly becoming a buzzword, largely because it offers great promise for restoring soil and environmental health while building farm profits and improving human health and nutrition. What is not to love about the concept? Food Systems ...
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Food Security in the Classroom

Food Insecurity is a Barrier to Education Food insecurity is a growing problem in public schools, including college campuses. In a nation that was once considered the bread basket of the world, even prominent media like the Washington Post are making note of growing food insecurity on campus. Authors of a ...
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Finding Freedom Within the Herd

Most of us claim we want freedom to do as we please. Yet throughout history we see examples of individuals and civilizations alike fighting for freedom only to gravitate back to states of oppression. Whether we describe the Hebrews asking Moses to be their king after leading them out of ...
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Six Traits Keep Angels Standing Tall In New Mexico’s Economic Whirlwinds

Changing Times are Troubling We often hear about challenges we are facing in modern times. Real and/or perceived effects of climate change, globalization, big data, and the largest human population ever are undoubtedly stressing contemporary society. Some of these have been put into perspective with the popular YouTube Video, Did ...
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Education for Sustainable Living

What is Sustainable Living? Sustainable living refers to the adoption of lifestyles or cultures that support healthy and prosperous communities and healthy ecosystems for present and future generations. Lifestyles are shaped through education. Education that allows students to interact with their environment and experience healthy, prosperous living is more likely ...
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Public Education Will Succeed When We Stop Forcing Horses to Drink

Every Horse Lover Knows You Can Bring a Horse to Water, but You Can't Make Him Drink. Horses will drink when they are thirsty, and students will learn when they have need of knowledge. Public Education is Built on the False Premise that We Can Make Unwilling Students Learn. In ...
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Ending the Fight with Diversification

Soil, water, and air pollution. Chronic disease epidemics (Heart Disease, Obesity, Diabetes....) Chemical dependencies Civil unrest Food insecurity.... Wouldn't it be wonderful if one set of simple and affordable actions could address all of these problems simultaneously? End-O-Fite Enterprises LLC was built on the premise that the most significant common ...
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Restoring the Cornerstones of Healthy Food Systems

What is a healthy food system? Food systems are made up of complex webs of interactions that provide access to food. Healthy food systems are economically and nutritionally secure. Ideally, a healthy food system provides access to safe, healthy, and nutritious food for everyone. Because healthy food systems are essential ...
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Visit our primary site

End-O-Fite Enterprises LLC was founded to restore heathy food systems. We recognize the need to approach restoration from the soil to the gut. So we started our original blog and subsequent podcast to address all four cornerstones. However, we focus the bulk of our daily efforts where we feel we can have the greatest impact: helping growers and consultants find success with biologically centered growing methods. Please visit our parent site below to learn more.

End-O-Fite Enterprises LLC

Meet the Author

Dr. Mary Lucero is a biologist who uses the living communities we call microbiomes to restore health:

from the soil to the gut.
from the farm to the table
and from the ecosystem to the economy