{"id":53704,"date":"2025-10-10T12:44:27","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T10:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crowdfarming.com\/podcast\/connecting-soil-health-and-human-health-with-raiza-rezende\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T14:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T12:10:09","slug":"connecting-soil-health-and-human-health-with-raiza-rezende","status":"publish","type":"podcast","link":"https:\/\/laruchequiditoui.fr\/what-the-field\/en\/podcast\/connecting-soil-health-and-human-health-with-raiza-rezende\/","title":{"rendered":"Connecting soil health and human health with Raiza Rezende"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n\r\n\r\n

Raiza Rezende wants to reshape how the medical world looks at agriculture. As a nutritionist and co-founder of RHEA \u2014 <\/strong>Regenerative Healthcare European Association<\/strong><\/a>, she works at the crossroads of soil health, nutrient density, and human medicine. We spoke with her about her path from the oil industry to the fields, why healthcare needs an ecological wake-up call, and the massive scientific challenge of proving that better farming actually creates healthier food.<\/em><\/p>\r\n

Rezende\u2019s perspective is shaped by a career trajectory that began far away from clinics or organic farms. Before she was advocating for soil microbiology, she was looking at the world through the lens of heavy industry.<\/em><\/p>\r\n


You have a highly unusual background. How did you transition from your early career into regenerative agriculture and healthcare?<\/strong>
I’m Brazilian, and given how massive our oil and gas sector is, I initially studied chemical engineering. But at a certain point, it just stopped making sense to me. I had a strong environmental awareness, and right after university, I took a course in syntropic agriculture\u2014an agroforestry method pioneered by Swiss farmer Ernst G\u00f6tsch, which is huge in Brazil. It was a revelation. For the first time, I clearly saw the systemic flaws in our food production, but I also saw how I could actually contribute to a solution. I moved to Europe, spent time working on various farms\u2014particularly with intensive tree crops\u2014and eventually went back to study nutrition. I wanted to build a bridge between agricultural practices and public health. That desire is exactly what led to the creation of RIA.<\/p>\r\n


What is the core mission of RIA, and who are you trying to reach?<\/b>
RIA started about three years ago as a collaboration between four female co-founders. We realized that solid, accessible data connecting farming methods directly to human health outcomes was incredibly scarce. We began sharing our research online, and the response was immediate\u2014people were genuinely starving for this information. Today, we are a registered non-profit focusing on education, research, and policy. Our primary target is the healthcare sector. We want to bring this knowledge directly to doctors, nutritionists, and hospital boards, formally embedding agriculture into medical practice. That\u2019s why we call it “regenerative healthcare.”
For a medical establishment historically built on pharmaceutical interventions, treating food as a primary health driver requires a major cultural shift. But Rezende argues that changing minds requires a deeply pragmatic, step-by-step approach.<\/p>\r\n


It sounds like you have a two-part message for healthcare professionals: first, recognizing food as medicine, and second, proving that where that food comes from changes its value. How do you approach that?<\/b>
The second part is definitely the harder sell, and it requires a lot of nuance. As an organization, our ultimate goal is a food system that is regenerative, organic, local, and seasonal. But we have to meet patients where they are: living in a society drowning in ultra-processed foods and chronic illness. In Europe, roughly 90% of deaths are caused by non-communicable diseases\u2014like cardiovascular issues, diabetes, and cancer\u2014which are largely driven by lifestyle.
So, step one is foundational: people simply need to eat whole foods, fruits, and vegetables, regardless of how they were grown. Once that baseline is established, we can introduce step two: focusing on the quality of that food, and explaining why sourcing from agricultural systems that actively rebuild soil health results in a completely different nutrient profile.<\/p>\r\n


We know that eating vegetables is good for us. But do we actually have the scientific data to prove that regenerative farming produces measurably better food?<\/b>
It\u2019s a very young field of research; most of the rigorous data has only emerged in the last five years. Right now, the science is mixed: we have studies that show clear nutritional advantages, and others that show no significant difference yet. We have to be very precise about what we label “regenerative.” You can\u2019t just plant a single cover crop for one season and expect instant magic in the harvest. Agriculture requires a transition period. During the first few years of converting a farm, a laboratory analysis might not show any change in the crop’s nutritional profile, and that is entirely normal.
The data indicates that you need to study farms that have been practicing high-level regenerative management for at least five years. It takes time to restart those dormant biological processes. Across the board, the single most reliable indicator of crop quality is soil microbial activity. If you don’t have a living, active soil microbiome, you cannot talk about true nutrient density.
While “nutrient density” has become a popular buzzword, establishing a scientific baseline for it is incredibly difficult. It is a data gap that RIA is currently trying to close in European fields.<\/p>\r\n


How do you actually define and measure nutrient density in a way that is useful for the industry?<\/b>
If you’re a farmer growing tomatoes, you can send them to a lab and get a report on the vitamin C or lycopene levels. But that data exists in a vacuum. What do you compare it to? Is your number high or low? To truly define nutrient density, you need a massive, diverse database of samples of that exact same crop, grown across various regions, soil types, and farming methods. Only then can you benchmark a specific tomato and say, “This is well above average.”
The logistical and financial cost of building that kind of comparative spectrum is immense. That is the work we are currently undertaking in Portugal, focusing on intensive olive and almond systems. We\u2019ve set up trial plots on large-scale commercial farms where we apply regenerative practices\u2014like tailored cover crops and bio-stimulants\u2014directly alongside conventional control plots. We track the soil biodiversity, water infiltration, and the resulting nutrient density. By doing this broad sampling, we want to provide the agricultural sector with clear methodologies, proven practices, and reliable metrics to track health outcomes.
Connecting soil biology to human chronic disease can easily sound abstract. But when it comes to cutting through the noise and changing minds, Rezende points to a single, unifying concept.<\/p>\r\n


When you are speaking with skeptics or outsiders, what is the concept that really makes the importance of this work click?<\/b>
It is the concept of “One Health”\u2014the realization that the health of the soil, plants, animals, and humans is a single, indivisible system. We do not exist apart from our environment. Some of the most fascinating research coming out right now looks at this through the lens of the microbiome. When you analyze the microbial links connecting the soil, the roots of the plants, the animals that graze them, and the human gut, you see that it\u2019s all one continuous, living network. We quite literally depend on the life in the dirt to sustain our own.<\/p>\r\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/a>\r\n\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"author":174,"featured_media":55237,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"categories":[],"class_list":["post-53704","podcast","type-podcast","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSoil & human health: Raiza Rezende bridges farms and healthcare<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\t\n