What Your Food Ate and Why it Matters

By Paul Weinstein 

The Bucks County Foodshed Alliance and Delaware Valley University are pleased to announce that they are hosting renowned author and biologist Anne Biklé who will speak at the Life Sciences Center on the campus of Delaware Valley University on the evening of April 9, 2026. Ms. Biklé and her husband, geologist David Montgomery, are the authors of The Hidden Half of Nature: , The Microbial Roots of Life and Health and What Your Food Ate: How to Heal our Land and Reclaim our Health. She’ll share recent and forgotten science to highlight the concept of one health through the evidence connecting soil health to human health. Farming practices can support this fundamental linkage—and help keep money in a farmer’s pocket. The pathway ripples from the soil, winding through the bodies of microbes, crops, and livestock, eventually reaching us. These intimate connections reveal a fundamental truth—what’s good for the land is good for people too.

Anne Biklé is a science writer and public speaker trained in biology, natural history, and environmental planning. She explores our tangled relationship with nature through the lens of history, agriculture, medicine, and microbiomes. She is particularly enthralled with the botanical world and has been known to coax garden plants into rambunctious growth and nurse them back from the edge of death with her regenerative gardening practices. Her work has appeared in digital and print magazines and newspapers, and her gardening practices have been featured in independent and documentary films. She has been a guest on numerous podcasts and radio programs that focus on farming, food, and human health.

Ms. Biklé will be joined by a panel of local integrative medical doctors and regenerative farmers who will answer questions about the practical applications of these concepts to farming practices and our health.

You’ve probably heard of the gut microbiome, trillions of bacteria, fungi and viruses living in our intestines. Just as a healthy gut microbiome is integral to human health, a healthy soil microbiome is integral to soil and plant health. Healthy soil contains trillions of bacteria, protozoa, fungi and nematodes. Just as there is an intimate connection between our intestinal cells and the microbiome, there is a connection between plant roots and the soil microbiome. As you may recall from high school biology, plants use photosynthesis to create glucose from sunlight, carbon dioxide and water. Besides using the glucose to nourish their own cells, plants exude a large amount of glucose into the soil through their roots, feeding the microbes living there. In turn, the microbes produce nitrogen and trace minerals that the plants need.

Regenerative farming practices seek to maintain and grow a healthy soil microbiome. This results in healthier crops and livestock in addition to added benefits such as carbon sequestration, reducing topsoil runoff and increasing groundwater retention. These practices include minimal or no tilling, cover crops, reduction of inputs such as artificial fertilizer and pesticides, biodiversity and animal integration. Regeneratively raised livestock are rotated through different pastures to prevent overgrazing and restore grasslands.

Biklé and Montgomery conducted a study comparing the nutrients in crops from ten regenerative farms to the same crops from neighboring conventional farms. They found that the regeneratively grown food was higher in vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients, compounds which reduce inflammation and may fight cancer. They also compared regeneratively raised beef and pork to conventional meats, finding that the regeneratively raised meats were higher in Omega-3 fatty acids, which are a healthy fat.

Please join us on April 9 to learn more about soil health, regenerative agriculture and what you can do to support local farmers, the health of our lands and your own health.

To find out more about the event on April 9, please click here.