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Thinking this way is the exact problem. You believe you know what a plant needs but that's not true. We don't even know how plants "works" entirely.

There's one easy proove, anything grown the way you describe taste like nothing compared to an healthy plant. Quality farming is not about volume or look but the actual quality of the produce.

I wouldn't call what you say science at all. As soon as you state that you know everything and that someone who disagrees is anti-science is just plain arrogance, not science. If you're really interested in science though, please read the huge amount of research on soil and plant that has been done since the 1950's so that you catch up at least....

Edit: Forgot to mention something, soil is not only for plants, there's a whole ecosystem that depends on it and need to be taken into account

I partially disagree. For decades the taste of tomatoes coming out of Dutch greenhouses has been considered as 'underwhelming'. At least for small cherry tomatoes that is not the case anymore, they are usually superior to the stuff that comes from Spain. Furthermore all sorts of so called 'cultured' berries are often acceptable now, year round.

Don't know about nutrients though, since I have no real means to check for that.

So it seems, at least for some plants it is possible to selectively breed them over long times to make them adapt to greenhouse/hydroponics/etc without losing their taste.

And I remember the real taste of berries, because I picked them in the wild in forests in my youth, and sometimes, though much less often even now.

Someone in my family is a “plant reader” , he goes all over the world to help with production methods. He can just look at plants, examine it by hand and tell you what the plant needs. It’s quite incredible really. He always says all the factors need to be right, it’s a question of balancing.

That's sounds quite interesting. Never heard of this activity before. I'll look into it definitely!

"anything grown the way you describe taste like nothing compared to an healthy plant"

That's absolutely not true, it's been tested by thousands of people and you can try it yourself. Taste is affected by variety and ripeness, waay before it has anything to do with the soil.

I've tasted it, and agree with your parent. Most people just have no idea what their food is supposed to taste like, so if you give them decent tomatoes, they will think they are amazing.

Do your study in the south of italia in the summer for a fair fight.

So https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terroir is just marketing?

Too much scolding, too little substance. As soon as people relegate to taste, I tune out. Taste is a first world problem and highly subjective.

You mean taste, one of the sense that makes us what we are today? The thing that humanity and other animals have used to analyze what they feed themselves with?

I'm not talking about eating for pleasure, but you can definitely taste that something is wrong with industrially grown veggies and fruits (and the same apply for animal farming).

Food pleasure from taste is one of the most basic pleasure and so available to everybody and essential for your well being. The fact that immigrants continue to cook like where they are from for most of their life is a rebuttal to your statement. Food quality is of global importance, most problem with food production comes from disorganization and incentives or lack of it not from lack of production.

He's talking about the raw ingredients not some hyper processed supermarket food. If there is something wrong with the raw ingredients I think it is fair that we try to figure it out.

> There is no “magic” to soil, it’s a chemistry problem.

Soil biology is no "magic" though.

> Now of course, there is a whole organic and craft market segment for people who disagree

It's almost as if you were suggesting that organic regenerative ag is based on some sort of non-scientific cult but that's not really the case.

> It's almost as if you were suggesting that organic regenerative ag is based on some sort of non-scientific cult but that's not really the case.

From an agricultural stand point not necessarily from a consumers who are passionate about it perspective, there's a huge amount of culty anti science.

Maybe but we are discussing agricultural production techniques here, not marketing

Mehhhhhh...organic and / or natural anything is based on separating fools from their money. That's not to say that there aren't small numbers of highly informed people who understand what "organic" agriculture is doing, it's to say that the vast majority of people who believe things about "organic" foods believe wrong things. It's conflated with naturalness marketing woo.

That’s irrelevant though, because in this thread we are discussing agricultural production not marketing.

There is also a role for microbes in soil, which is an active area of research. Here’s some science on it, as an example:

https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/SAG-16

I would say that’s more than just chemistry, unless you mean chemistry in a sense that’s so general the statement becomes a tautology.

If the chemistry is perfect, why are store bought and fast food tomatoes so bland, for instance? I haven't been scientific about comparing them but the difference in flavor in garden grown tomatoes seems pretty pronounced.

The tomatoes you find in a shop have been picked before they are ripe so that they ripen during transport. This improves yields and reduces spoilage and bruising.

However, it results in a tomato that - while it looks like a normal tomato - the sugars and other flavours don't develop in the same way, rendering it bland.

If you want to buy tomatoes that taste good, you can get them from a farmers market and they will taste a lot better - even if grown in the same soil with the same techniques as the supermarket tomatoes. Alternatively canned/frozen/preserved tomatoes tend to be made with naturally ripened tomatoes. Obviously you can't really used those tomatoes the same way you'd use a raw tomato, though.

This isn't specific to tomatoes, many commercial fruits and veggies are picked before they're ripe.

Because they are different tomatoes, selected for long storage on shelves in shop, not for taste. Your garden tomato will be much tastier, but will start to spoil sooner.

Nope. I've seen many times seeds from letfover of tasteless salads grow into delicous plants after being just throw away in a fertile garden.

And honestly I met so many farmers that have no idea what tomatoes should taste like it's not even funny. Dining at their table, I hear them rejoice the produce in their plate is so good while I cringe because they feels like clown noses compared to the real thing.

Just like people can't fathom that we used to have bird migrations that cover the entire sky, people don't realize what we have lost with food. And they think they do, they think you are some kind of bragging posh to tell them that that's not supposed to be like this.

But I ate strawberries from my mother in law garden yesterday. It felt like eating sweets.

I haven't eaten some like that for 20 years, and I'm a very picky buyer.

Her soil is full of life.

Fruits and vegetable have been selected for being awesome for centuries. If you treat them well, you will not want to eat a kit kat instead.

But I don't blame the kids that do: currently, the kit kat tastes way better that whatever they have for lunch.

The tomato thing is no mystery - superparkets sell tomatoes taken off the vine weeks before they a ripe, because a ripe tomato is very gentle and will not survive handling.

And the message you are replying to is correct, supermarket tomatoes are different variety, farmers get paid for mass, not for taste.

Supermarkets have giant charts that determine shape, roundness, and colour of tomato. They will buy perfectly round, red tomato that tastes like water. They will not buy an ugly but tasty tomato from a farmer.

Interestingly enough consumers drove the market for tasteless tomatoes. customers bought more tomatoes that were more brightly colored and more round, which drove selection for these characteristics

Producers want to sell more, therefore they select varieties that look pretty, that are uniform in color and shape, they will also select varieties that keep for a long time for transport, or that grow bigger and ripen faster for better yields, being measured only by weight. Lots of factors but none related to taste or nutritional value. The consumer has very little say in all this.

Hmm, maybe because they can't select for taste? If it was possible to get sample of tomatoes or other vegetables before buying, maybe things would change?

Are they the same varieties? Vegetables grown to be sold in stores are selected largely fit their shelf lives, to minimize the loss during the lengthy distribution and sale process. Your garden grown tomatoes are probably a different variety... and almost certainly much fresher.

No, 2 years ago I ate amazing cherry tomatoes from a friend garden. He told me he didn't plant them, they came out themself out of the shitty store bought ones that he discarded one day.

The variety matters, but that's not the end of the story.

The other issue with many plants is that they're picked before they're ripe - if you'd eat it straight away, you'd wait longer before picking and it would be tastier, but as you want them to survive transportation and long waiting in store shelves, you're picking them long before they're fully ripe.

Of course, it's a collection of things, but it's not true for tomatoes in can, which you can put in right after the harvest. And my ex house mate cans from the garden would always feels like fruit juice while the supermarket one, well...

Tomatoes can crossbreed, so the seeds of one plant are not necessarily the same variety as the parent.