It's never seemed to me that this whole "worse soil -> less nutrients" postulate makes sense on its face. There are, roughly, four categories of nutrients: - o

It's never seemed to me that this whole "worse soil -> less nutrients" postulate makes sense on its face. There are, roughly, four categories of nutrients: - organic macronutrients, which we'd definitely notice if they weren't there - organic micronutrients, which are generally carbon compounds, but carbon doesn't come from soil, it comes from the air - electrolytes, which do come from soil, but are always replenished with fertilizer, because plants need them too - inorganic micronutrients, essentially transition metals plus selenium and iodine, which are present in utterly tiny quantities in food (you need about half a milligram of selenium per day), and could certainly be replaced by fertilizer if we even tried, or easily supplemented. Speculation: manure could work well. - (extra) that wacky little devil cobalamin, which is both organic and a transition metal (cobalt), but doesn't come from plants anyway Now, I could certainly see some kinds of farming techniques impacting the nutritional quality of plants. If you can increase the water content of your broccoli ceteris paribus, you sell more broccoli but the concentration of vitamin C goes down. I could also see impacts on the physical properties (compaction, grinding) of soil leading to worse long-term crop yields. But in order to convince me that soil changes are going to impact the vitamin C content of orange juice, when the constituents of vitamin C come entirely from water and air, you need pretty strong evidence.