By Kisean Joseph

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The health of Antigua and Barbuda’s soil is directly linked to human health, medical experts told participants at a recent workshop.

The event, hosted by the American University of Antigua College of Medicine in partnership with the University of Illinois and the University of Birmingham (UK), examined how microbiomes, the trillions of bacteria, fungi and other micro-organisms living in soil, plants, animals and the human gut, connect farming practices to the nation’s chronic disease burden.

Microbiologist Dr Helen Onyeaka, deputy director of the Birmingham Institute of Sustainability and Climate Action, urged attendees to reconsider what lies beneath their feet.

“I want you to now think of soil not as dead, but as a living ecosystem,” she said. “If you were to take a tablespoon of the soil and grow it in the lab, you get trillions of micro-organisms living there. The soil microbiome combines organic matter into nutrients, and recycles essential elements like nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon.”

Gastroenterologist Dr Davendra Ramkumar carried the through-thread from soil to the human body, explaining that the gut hosts the largest concentration of microbes in the human system, roughly four pounds’ worth by his estimate, comparable to the weight of the brain. He said imbalances in this internal ecosystem, known as dysbiosis, are now linked to a wide range of conditions, including metabolic syndrome, liver disease, allergies and even certain neurological and psychiatric conditions.

“Diet is the strongest modifiable factor shaping the gut microbiome,” Ramkumar said, adding that diets low in fibre and high in processed foods reduce microbial diversity and drive systemic inflammation.

Dr Japhia Jayasingh-Ramkumar, the internist who co-organised the workshop, framed the connection as a single continuous system rather than separate problems.

“The main message of this workshop is that farm, food and health are all connected through microbiomes,” she said, adding that industrial farming practices such as monocropping, synthetic fertilisers and heavy tillage can damage soil microbes and reduce the nutrients in the food people eat.

Local internal medicine expert Dr Jason Belizaire connected the science to Antigua and Barbuda’s own numbers, noting that roughly 85 per cent of deaths nationally are attributable to non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease, conditions he said are shaped significantly, though not exclusively, by diet.

Senior Nutrition Officer Susan Gardner closed the loop by pointing to what is already available locally. She noted that dishes such as pepperpot and “chop up” already incorporate gut-supportive ingredients, and encouraged households to expand further into callaloo, spinach and pigeon peas.

“When we nourish the soil, we nourish our foods,” Gardner said. “When we nourish our foods, we nourish the microbiomes. And when we nourish the microbiomes, we are nourishing the health of the people of Antigua and Barbuda.”

Dr Leslie Walwyn, associate dean of Global Health at AUA and co-coordinator of the workshop, said the discussions reflected a wider national opportunity. She said that the connection between soil, food and health outlined at the workshop points toward a national strategy, one that draws together the health, agriculture and education sectors rather than treating chronic disease as a problem for hospitals alone to solve.