dirt propaganda: he says ‘the plants eat the dirt with their roots’ and ‘soil has nutrients’
air propaganda: air plants are a thing and also i reckon we would have run out of soil by now otherwise
It’s air. They take the carbon dioxide from the air and turn it into the carbon they are made of.
The carbon you are made of comes from the carbon plants took out of the air.
The stuff from the soil is like nitrogen and potassium and phosphorous and stuff but the primary constituents of the dirt are not being consumed
You can experamentaly verify this by planting a seed in some dirt in a pot, weighing the pot+seed then sealing the pot around the shoot and waiting forthe plant to grow, then drying ut the soil and plant and weghing them again.
If the plant was making itselffrom the dirt the weight of plant+dirt+soil will be the same, but there is an increase in mass that that hypothesis cannot account for.