"...The bugs ate up the diseased plants and refused to touch the healthy plants. This research shows that insects, in nature's balance, are intended to eat and destroy that which is not fit for human consumption. Thus, in all our perverted wisdom, we eat that which is worthless in nutritional value, but garnished with insecticide."
      -Dr. Arden Anderson, Science in Agriculture

Food isn't what it used to be. The Journal of Contemporary Medicine recently published a study showing that since 1940, the mineral content in fruits and vegetables has significantly declined (in some categories as much as 76%). As The Real Food Campaign reports "A hundred years of commercial farming and soil erosion have eroded our health. Once rare or unknown diseases like Parkinsons, ADHD, and Alzheimers are becoming more common and are linked to a deficiency in minerals that were once present in the soil and the crops we grew and ate." Faced with these alarming facts, we've decided to help reverse this trend by cultivating mineral-rich soils to produce food fit for human consumption.

As stated in our mission, our farm "strives to provide the local community with nutrient-dense food that is produced in a sustainable manner and free from toxic chemicals." We do this by amending our soil with not only the "big 3" elements - nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus - but also lesser known trace elements such as boron, manganese, iron, selenium, molybdenum, cobalt, sulfur, calcium, and zinc. These elements, often overlooked in conventional agriculture, are crucial to the overall well-being of not only our plants, but also ourselves. The plants absorb the nutrients in the soil, and when we eat the plants or fruit, we in turn absorb those same nutrients. It makes sense, then, that the quality of food we harvest reflects the quality of the soil we cultivate - only a nutrient-dense soil produces nutrient-dense food. In this way, a diet of Second Nature Farm produce becomes ‘health assurance,’ a proactive and relatively inexpensive alternative to ‘health insurance.’

Importance of Trace Minerals in Plants and Humans

Element	Plant Function	Human Function
Calcium	mobilizes nutrients, root and leaf growth	developing/maintaining healthy bones and teeth
Magnesium	protein production and enzyme functions	nerve and muscles function
Zinc	chlorophyll formation	essential part of enzymes for digestion, metabolism, and wound healing
Manganese	growth and photosynthesis, oil production	brain function and reproduction
Iron	chlorophyll production, energy release in cells	red blood cell formation
Boron	promotes flowering and pollen, cell wall formation	healthy bone and joint function
Molybdenum	enzyme functions	contributes to normal growth and development
Cobalt	Nitrogen fixation	formation of red blood cells