Proven™ Bread: Healthier Bread Starts in the Soil
Some morning I used to wake with a pit in my stomach. Now it is most mornings. As I write this it is raining. This isn’t just rain. This rain has been continuous and a google confirms that this is 31% above average for November. The UK total of Met Office 162.1mm made it the wettest month of 2025 so far. The Midlands where I live are the hardest hit.
Farms and our food systems are under dire threat.
In the 12 months to June 2025, a record 6,365 UK farms closed — the highest since records began. Spiralling costs, extreme weather, and policy failure have created what many are calling a “perfect storm” for British farming. This isn’t an abstract problem; it is an existential one. Supporting farmers is now urgent, and it is the reason Proven™ bread exists.
As a baker I cannot ignore that connection between soil and bread. Once you look closely, it becomes impossible to ignore — and it is all about the microbes. Most of our courses include some information about fermentation; after all, we teach people to ferment their bread and to understand the gut microbiome. The common thread running through soil, dough and digestion is microbes and microbial equality.
This is one of the reasons that Proven™ bread exists in the form is does. It is not jsut bread it is a systems change — a loaf that connects regenerative soil, botanical diversity, and human health in one daily act of nourishment.
Elevating bread
I have on three occasions over the past 5 years spent many months and resources working closely with large bread production units to get this bread into production. It has never been my aim to make bread to sell. My work has been about changing the system to empower others. You cannot change the system alone, so this approach made sense to me. At the end of each attempt change the system I failed. It can’t be done I was told. It is too much. It is too expensive. You cannot reconnect all the breaks in the system.
Well I can, and I have. You can join the Proven Bread programme here
Here is what you need to understand. Bread is a fibre delivery system and it is connected on ever level to microbes. Microbes are essential at every stage of the bread-making story. They live in the soil where our wheat is grown, in the starter that leavens our bread, and in our gut where the bread is digested. In each of these environments, microbes are doing the heavy lifting. Healthy soil is full of a diverse community of microbes – bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and others – that help plants grow. They cycle nutrients, decomposing organic matter into forms that plants can absorb. Microbes also improve soil structure, promoting water movement and root growth, and they help plants resist pests and diseases. When we care for soil health, we are caring for these microbial communities – and in turn we grow healthier, more nutritious crops.
The Microbial Connections – Proving it
In the Starter: The magic of sourdough lies in my starter – a simple mixture of flour and water that becomes a living community of beneficial yeasts and bacteria. These microbes ferment the dough, leaven the bread, build flavour, transform the structure of the starches and gluten, and make the bread more digestible.
In the Gut: Once the bread is eaten, the work of microbes continues in our gut. This is where most of my doctoral work and dietary intervention studies was concentrated on. Proving it. Our gut microbiota – the vast community of microbes living along our digestive tract – aids digestion, modulates the immune system, and produces essential vitamins and metabolites. A diet rich in diverse, fibre-filled foods such as long-fermented wholegrain sourdough supports and diversifies this microbial community, which in turn supports overall health.
Understanding the role of microbes in baking and beyond changes how we see bread. It allows us to understand a loaf not just as a finished product, but as part of a larger ecosystem that starts in the soil and ends in the gut. It helps us recognise the deep interconnectedness of our food systems and our health, and it underscores the importance of nurturing our soils, our sourdough starters, and our own bodies. In this way, baking bread becomes environmental stewardship, self-care, and community health, all at once. That is the power and beauty of Baking as Lifestyle Medicine (BALM).
Healthier Bread Means Supporting Farmers Across the Full Rotation
Most bread — even bread marketed as “regenerative” — only supports about 25% of a farmer’s crop rotation. Wheat alone cannot sustain a regenerative system. Proven™ bread uses flour blended from 30+ plant ingredients drawn from the full rotation: grains, pulses, legumes, seeds, and botanicals. This creates a genuine market for the crops farmers need to grow for soil health but often struggle to sell. When you eat Proven™, you support the whole farm, not just the wheat field.
Baking as Lifestyle Medicine and Proven Bread Challenges The Power Structures:
Our food system concentrates power in the hands of a few, while the costs are borne by farmers, soils, and communities. Teaching people how food, soil, microbes and health fit together is a quiet but powerful form of resistance. A diverse group of informed bakers, eaters and activists is far better placed to challenge entrenched power structures than a passive, disconnected public.
My Botanical Blend Flour is about the reconnection and it stands for Social Justice: Embracing diversity in the fields, in the flour and in the people who bake with it reflects the principles of equality and social justice that underpin most activist movements. It signals a commitment to a food system in which everyone, regardless of background or identity, has a fair opportunity to participate, influence, and benefit.
Soil is Not Dirt
When we care about our health we must also care about how our food is grown. Agrochemical-heavy systems externalise costs onto soils, water, wildlife and human health. So when we teach, we lean into organic principles wherever possible. We try to minimise agrochemicals in our bread and work with regenerative agriculture as far as we can. We know that organic farming can be more costly to implement, but the evidence is clear: organic practices perform significantly better against a range of soil health indicators, especially microbial abundance.
Why Organic Principles Matter for Healthier Bread
Even with ploughing still in use on many organic farms, organically farmed soils are found to have, on average, 21 per cent more soil organic matter than non-organic soils. Another major study analysing twenty-five years of scientific work comparing microbial communities in organic and conventional systems found that long-term organic farming enhanced microbial abundance and activity – all linked to key soil functions such as nutrient cycling and soil structure formation.
A comprehensive meta-analysis of 394 research papers on pesticides and soil invertebrates concluded that in 71 per cent of cases, synthetic sprays harmed earthworms, ants, beetles, and ground-nesting bees. Pesticides and climate change are also damaging beneficial soil microorganisms – and a single handful of soil contains about 10–100 million of them. Their excretions act as binding agents for soil particles, increasing aggregate stability, water infiltration and water-holding capacity. Beyond soil formation, Naylor and colleagues show how the soil microbiome and often-overlooked subsoils play crucial roles in fertility, plant growth and stress tolerance, nutrient turnover and carbon storage.
By farming organically, the additional carbon stored each year in the UK’s arable and horticultural soils is comparable to the emissions saved by taking nearly a million cars off the road.
Agrobiodiversity: The Foundation of Healthier Bread
Around 60% of our calories not come from UPF. Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are heavily manufactured products built from a small number of commodity crops. Unprocessed or minimally processed foods, by contrast, are based on a wide variety of plants, animals and fungi in their natural state. According to the FAO, we have around 6,000 plants available for cultivation worldwide, yet in 2017, 66 per cent of what we grew came from just nine crops (sugarcane, corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, soybeans, oil-palm fruit, sugar beet and cassava). An ongoing Brazilian study examining over 7,000 UPF products shows how these foods displace variety in our diets, as their main ingredients came from only five sources: sugarcane, corn, soy, milk and wheat. We need whole foods and plant diversity in our diets in order to be healthy.
Minimally processed foods are often produced on smaller farms in ways that are far more benign to the environment. In contrast, our modern food system leans heavily on unsustainable industrial production: agrochemicals, high-yield monocultures, and intensive mechanisation that demand large amounts of land, water and energy.
Intensive farming relies on loosening or turning the soil through ploughing (overturning the topsoil) and tilling (cutting and breaking soil into smaller pieces). No-till is the least intensive form, with seeds slipped into sliced, but not overturned, soil; conventional tillage is the most intensive. Tillage is sometimes used in organic systems to control weeds, but frequent tillage destroys soil structure and accelerates carbon loss. There is, however, growing interest in organic strategies that reduce tillage. Studies on organic systems show that minimal tillage, such as shallow non-inversion tillage (“vertical tillage” or “strip-tillage”), can increase both yields and soil carbon storage, with significantly higher earthworm populations and improved weed control.
Improving soil health and productivity through different cultivation systems is being studied in the ongoing five-year Allerton project at the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust’s 320-hectare heavy-soil farm in Leicestershire, and at a similar light-land farm in Kent. In partnership with two agrochemical companies, a conventional plough-based system is being trialled alongside minimum-cultivation and no-till (direct-drilling) across a rotation of crops (barley, oilseed rape, wheat, beans and wheat). Early findings show an increase in biodiversity (a doubling of bird numbers in direct-drilled systems, and more earthworms in the soils). Soil greenhouse gas emissions have dropped by 16–17 per cent at both sites and the overall carbon footprint has fallen by about 10 per cent. Fuel use has dropped by 50–65 per cent in the direct-drilling system due to reduced tillage.
Healthy Soils Are Like a Sponge – And Proven™ Supports Farmers Who Protect Them
The most practical and cost-effective way to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere is through living plants and soils. Earth’s soils store roughly three times as much carbon as plants and the atmosphere combined. In their 2018 Policy Briefing, the Soil Association estimated that around 9.8 billion tonnes of carbon are stored in UK soils – an indispensable resource if we are serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and curbing climate change. They also highlight an IPCC estimate that 89 per cent of agricultural emissions could be mitigated by increasing soil carbon levels. Poorly managed, however, soil can shift from being a store of carbon to a source.
Farmers and landowners can capture significant amounts of carbon per acre by improving soil health – keeping the ground covered year-round, minimising disturbance (including tillage and compaction), increasing plant and crop diversity, and using organic inputs.
Proven™ bread is built on partnerships with regenerative farms practising exactly these principles. The flour in every loaf comes from soil that is being actively healed, not stripped.
Once carbon enters the soil (as organic material from soil fauna and flora), it can be stored for decades, centuries or even millennia. Topsoil grows 95 per cent of our food, yet it is disappearing around ten times faster than it is being replaced. The NRCS estimates it takes about 500 years to create an inch of fertile topsoil, which can be destroyed in minutes by careless human actions.
Eventually, soil organic carbon – the main component of soil organic matter – can be released as CO2 or CH4 from eroded soils, or washed out as dissolved organic carbon into rivers and oceans.
A collaborative study between Northeastern University and The Organic Center showed that organic agriculture keeps more carbon in soils and out of the atmosphere. Analysing 659 organic soil samples from thirty-nine US states and 728 conventional samples from forty-eight states, they found that organic soils contained 44 per cent more humic substances, 13 per cent more soil organic matter and had 26 per cent more potential for long-term carbon storage. Healthy soils act as carbon sinks.
New research in the UK suggests that zero-tillage can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase soil carbon sequestration. Data from thirty-one UK farms showed a 30 per cent reduction in net global warming potential after ten years of zero-till farming. Zero-till not only reduces costs and labour while improving soil quality (more microbial biomass and earthworm activity, less erosion), but also offers meaningful CO2 mitigation – a genuine win–win.
Soils with high organic matter have more nutrients available for crops and hold more water, resulting in more vigorous, abundant and resilient production. Organic carbon improves soil structure, drainage and resistance to degradation.
Supporting Farmers Through Resilient Crops
A key sign of land degradation is the loss of soil organic matter. The FAO reports that around a third of the world’s soils are already moderately to highly degraded due to decades of industrial farming. This threatens food security and increases carbon emissions. Soil degradation has become one of the most serious agricultural problems we face, and it demands that we change the way we farm.
Healthy, organic-matter-rich soils are more resilient because they can absorb and hold excess water – storing 18–20 times their weight – protecting farmland from droughts and floods, two of the most devastating consequences of the climate crisis. When the top layer of soil is disturbed, the small pores that help with water uptake are destroyed. Compacted, depleted soils, lacking moisture, nutrients and microbial life, become brittle and vulnerable; they are more likely to erode in floods and demand more water when they dry out. Minimum-till or no-till systems slow the decomposition of organic residues and offer better protection against erosion.
Resilience Equals Profit for Farmers
The pressure to produce ever more crops, often as ingredients for UPFs, has driven expansion of cultivated land, increased irrigation, and heavy use of fertilisers – all at the expense of soils and waters. Soil organic matter is central to soil health, but it also underpins yield. Soils with higher organic matter produce crops with stronger root systems and better foundations. These resilient crops cope more effectively with environmental stress because of improved water-holding capacity, leading to more sustainable systems, higher and more stable yields, and better long-term profitability. An increase of one ton of soil organic carbon has been shown to increase wheat yields by around 27 kilograms per hectare.
Proven™ is structured as a farmer-and-baker-owned company. This is not charity; it is a circular model in which the people who grow the grain and bake the bread share in the value they create. When soil health improves yields and crop resilience, farmers benefit directly.
With many of the world’s breadbaskets heading towards drier conditions under climate change, water is becoming a scarce resource. Findings from Woodwell Climate Research Center suggest that crop failure is far more likely in water-scarce regions. Researchers predict that crop yield failures will be four and a half times higher in the next eight years, and by 2050 could rise to twenty-five times current rates. For water-dependent crops such as wheat, this could mean repeated failures in regions like water-stressed areas of India, where up to 97 per cent of wheat is grown.
A recent global meta-analysis of fifty-five studies, examining both soil organic carbon and yields in corn and wheat, found that increasing soil organic carbon up to about 2 per cent is associated with higher yields in these staple crops. The authors also note that roughly two-thirds of the world’s cultivated corn and wheat fields currently have soil organic carbon below this level.
The long-term work of Lal and others on soil carbon sequestration and food security illustrates a vicious cycle: depleted organic matter leads to declining yields, food insecurity and environmental degradation. Breaking that cycle means rebuilding soil organic matter through sustainable technologies such as no-till, composting and mulching, cover crops, water harvesting, agroforestry, and more judicious use of chemicals. In Lal’s words, this is how we “break the tyranny of hunger”.
In general, the less we disturb our soils, the more resilient they become, with higher organic matter and better buffering capacity against climate stress. The good news is that overworked and damaged soils can be revived through careful management of organic matter and regenerative practices. They can be restored to productivity and stability.
Fossil Fuels and the Food System
Modern intensive agriculture is deeply dependent on non-renewable fossil fuels. A food system that leans almost entirely on a finite, polluting energy source cannot be described as sustainable.
Oil refined into petrol and diesel powers tractors, combines and other farm machinery used to plant, till, spray, harvest, dry grain and move crops. These engines release carbon dioxide with every pass. The manufacture of fertilisers and pesticides also depends on fossil fuels – most pesticides are petroleum-derived, and many commercial fertilisers (often sourced from Russia) are based on ammonia made from natural gas.
A forty-year research trial run by the Rodale Institute has shown that organic farms can use 45 per cent less energy than conventional ones, while maintaining or exceeding yields after the transition period (and producing up to 40 per cent higher yields during droughts). This long-running experiment demonstrates that regenerative organic systems can both reduce fossil fuel reliance and act as significant carbon sinks, cutting carbon emissions by around 40 per cent through reduced tillage, cover crops and diverse rotations.
Beyond the farm gate, the wider food chain is equally reliant on fossil fuels: processing, chilling, packaging, transport and retail all depend on oil-based energy. High global energy prices translate into food price inflation. Diesel costs have already squeezed the profitability of grain production in North America: US fuel prices at the pump rose by around 70 per cent in a single year, with knock-on effects on future harvests and food prices.
Reducing reliance on carbon-based fuels is a basic condition for avoiding the worst of climate breakdown. A 2020 Pew Research Center survey reported that 79 per cent of Americans favour investment in alternative energy over expansion of oil, coal and natural gas.
Proven™: From Soil to Gut – A Closed Loop
This is what Proven™ represents: a closed loop from soil to gut. Regeneratively farmed grain, stone-milled with botanical diversity, fermented for 18 hours, and delivered to your door. Every slice contains the work of farmers rebuilding soil, bakers practising their craft, and more than a decade of clinical and educational work. The microbes that begin in the soil end up supporting your microbiome. It is not poetic licence; it is measurable biology – and a glimpse of what healthier bread can and should be.
When you choose Proven™ bread, you are not simply eating healthier bread — you are supporting farmers who are actively healing their soils. You become part of the system.
