The real deal is that without soil microbes, we would all die. The work they do in our soil is incredibly complex but it all boils down to this: microbes eat, thus we eat. Plants are unable to take from the soil the nutrition they need without microbes working in the soil. Microbes are alive, and must have nutrition to survive, and that nutrition comes from organic matter. As they consume the nutrients they need, microbes create foods like nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus, potassium and trace minerals for our plants. It is the microbes that convert the NPK and minerals in the soil into a form our plants can use to grow and produce food and flowers for us.