ABSTRACT
Healthcare is defined by Merriam-Webster.com as “the prevention or treatment of illness by doctors, dentists, psychologists, etc.” The United States spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world, yet is 11/11, worst, of the 11 most developed countries in measurements of population health. This most costly healthcare system is, ironically, the third leading cause of death in the United States. The model of treatment and prevention is purely what the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, via their mouthpieces at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Osteopathic Association (AOA) and nearly every research university, formulate as “standard of care.” Paralleling the medical industry is its sister industry in agriculture, whose equivalent model focuses on pesticides and farm machinery, termed plant protection and precision farming. In fact, many of the pesticides recommended and applied to our food cause the diseases treated by the drugs manufactured by the sister pharmaceutical industry. Many such industry entities are simply divisions of the same company, such as Bayer Crops Science and Bayer Pharmaceuticals under the umbrella of Bayer-Global. Both healthcare and agriculture fail to acknowledge nutrition as the underlying determinant for human health and disease as well as plant health and disease. Here lies the disconnect between agriculture and medicine in the present-day models of each. In reality, agriculture and medicine are inseparable. Soil nutrition/microbiome determines plant health and productivity and subsequently, nutrient density and balance, which in turn, determines human health and disease. Genetics and genetic expression in both arenas are truly determined by “environment,” which is determined, foundationally, in the soil. Agriculture, consequently, fundamentally holds the key to solving healthcare success in both prevention and treatment of disease at a fraction of the current cost. We already possess non-genetically engineered crop varieties, grown under nutritionally balanced organic production systems, that out-produce all genetically engineered, pesticide-laden crops. Nutrition as the foundation must be incorporated into both medicine and agriculture as the primary and most important medical therapy and agricultural functional practice.
