You have found our story book in the ‘peculiar non-fiction’ section.

As children, we used to love playing in it. We would carry it on our knees and under our fingernails. When we would enter the house for dinner, our parents would make us wash it off our hands before eating. The dirt made us dirty, and only clean kids were allowed at the dinner table. Little did our parents know the true value of the dirt under our fingernails.

You slowly wake up to the soft morning sunlight peeking through your curtains. As your house is situated on the edge of the forest, you wake up daily to an orchestra of birds and crickets. Barefoot you make your way to the kitchen, only to notice you are out of fresh fruits for breakfast.

One thing is for sure: in the long run, farming with nature is easier and cheaper than farming against nature – especially with the skyrocketing prices of energy, fertilizer and pesticides. Farming with nature eventually catapults us into a virtuous cycle, in which a healthy biodiverse soil with more organic matter and more soil life, manages nutrients and water better.

If we follow the English dictionary, waste would be nothing more than ‘unwanted matter or material of any type, especially what is left after useful substances or parts have been removed.’ However, in natural, healthy ecosystems there is no such thing as waste. Because what is waste for one organism, is food for the next in line.

One of the key lessons we learn within Mustardseed Trust from our partners is that interconnectedness is at the core of our relationship with the soil. We can trace this idea back to our ancient roots. According to John D. Liu, all living things on earth function as a single meta-organism.

Although the current state of our soils and natural ecosystems is worrisome, there are positive developments all around us. After many decades of denial and confusion about the consequences of our behaviour on the planet, we have slowly come to realise that our own survival is at stake. We simply can’t continue like this.

“We are what we eat”. This famous quote from the 19th-century German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach appears to more true than he, and many after him, thought. Evidence is piling up that there is a close relationship between the health of our food systems and our own physical and mental health.

As we travel to the universe below our feet, we see the flowing currencies of carbon and nutrients between vibrant microbiome communities. The exchange provides mutual benefit and fuels their enduring circle of life. Could we say the same about our economic system that makes billions of money fly across the globe every second?

As we now understand, when it comes to ecosystem restoration, every location needs its own unique approach. But, as Maddie from The Weathermakers tells us, there is one specific spot that holds a key secret to turning climate change around. Welcome to the Sinai desert, a mountainous wilderness in Northern Egypt that sits between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea.