Dr. Elaine Ingham

Founder & President at Soil Foodweb, Inc

Elaine Ingham, PhD. is Founder of Soil Foodweb Inc., an international laboratory system that assesses the balance of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, and mycorrhizal fungi in all materials.  The major emphasis of her work is to return health to soil, so that natural nutrient cycling and disease suppression occur, allowing nutrient-dense, maximum yields of the desired plants, without requiring use of pesticides or inorganic fertilizers. 

Elaine started her academic career at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN graduating in 1974 with a double major, cum laude, in Biology and Chemistry. Elaine earned her Master of Science in Microbiology in 1977 at Texas A & M University and her doctorate degree from Colorado State University in 1981 in Microbiology with an emphasis on soil.

Elaine was a post-doctor fellow, along with her husband Russ (who also has a doctorate from Colorado State University in Zoology, emphasizing nematology), at the Natural Resource Ecology Lab at Colorado State University. In 1985, Elaine accepted a Research Associate Fellowship at the University of Georgia.

In 1986, Elaine moved to Oregon State University, but in 1991, because the samples from outside Elaine's immediate program being sent to her for analysis were becoming a large component of what she was doing, a service through the University was opened called the Soil Microbial Biomass Service. The Service offered researchers and commercial clients the ability to have soil samples analyzed for soil food web organisms.

In the fall of 1996, Soil Foodweb Inc. became the commercial enterprise doing this work and labs began to spread around the world.  Working on compost tea with many people around the world has brought a greater understanding of how to properly manage compost, vermicomposting, and compost tea to guarantee disease-suppressive, soil-building, nutrient-retaining composts and compost teas.

Dr. Ingham works with Soil Life Consultants around the world, maintains a website, writes books, writes articles, publishes scientific papers, and gives talks at meetings and symposia around the world. Recently, a benefactor helped Dr. Carole Ann Rollins and Dr. Elaine Ingham buy a research farm in California in order to have a place to perform Proof of Concept trials with the soil food web using many different agricultural approaches. Our research focus is currently on small and medium scale sustainable management of vegetable and pasture systems, on carbon sequestration with agricultural crops where observations of as much as 10 more tons of carbon per acre sequestered per annum have occurred in crop soils, to food forest systems to hydroponics and aquaponics.