“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.” – Wendell Berry
Soil is a living and breathing thing. It is composed of organic matter, minerals, gases, and liquids, and also of earthworms, fungi, bacteria, algae, insects, nematodes, protozoa, yeasts, mites and a multitude of other creatures. The soil is an ecosystem, or many ecosystems. In the soil are a wide range of niches and habitats, and these contain a large percentage of the all the genetic diversity that exists in the world. In one gram of soil you can find millions of organisms that belong to thousands of species. Many of these we know nothing about. When I talk about soil, I talk about all of the things that live inside the soil as well as its more inert components.
Just like any other balanced ecosystem, the soil is self-regulating and self-sustaining. It recycles nutrients through processes of decomposition, whereas waste (ie dead plants and animals, and plant and animal droppings) are broken down and turned back into soil. In turn, nutrients are taken from the soil by plants, then eaten, then recycled back into the soil again. Soil is mixed and made porous through the activity of microorganisms, and it stimulates growth through the interactions between microbes, their predators, and plant roots.
Soil, in its capacity to hold and absorb oxygen, water and nutrients, as well as its ability to moderate temperatures, is an ideal place for seeds to germinate and grow. The soil and the seed and the plant exist in mutuality. The soil holds the seed so that it can grow, the seed, in growing, produces roots that hold the soil in place so it doesn’t erode away. When the seed becomes a plant, it produces fruit the falls back to the soil, and eventually the plant itself also falls back to the soil, and is turned back into the soil again by the microorganisms that live in the soil, allowing an airy layer of nutrient dense topsoil to exist, which in turn give the seed a hold again to grow. Without healthy soil, there would be no flowers, no trees, and no grasses. There would also be no food, and no herbivores and no carnivores. There really wouldn’t be much at all.
There exists within the soil a bacterium, M. Vaccae, that has been proven to reduce depression and anxiety in humans. It works by boosting levels of serotonin and norepinephrine in the brain and body, just like antidepressants do. By putting our hands in the soil and breathing it in, the soil can make us happier and more human. As Wendell Berry wrote, the soil is a healer and a restorer, a resurrector and a community maker, a life giver.
But the soil cannot always be these things. The soil can fall out of balance, just like all ecosystems can. This is what is happening to the soil with conventional agriculture. More is being taken from the soil, (ie the food that we eat) and less is being given back. Our agricultural processes are accelerating soil erosion and depletion. The soil is being disrupted. It is being ploughed open and tilled under, it is being sprayed with toxic pesticides and herbicides, it is being left bare during the winter. When the soil is treated as if it is not alive, it begins to die. Its healthy systems fall out of balance, it becomes unable to regenerate itself, and it begins to erode off the land and into bodies of wate at an alarming rate.
In an attempt to make up for the break in the nutrient cycle that farming creates, it is common for farmers to add amendments to the soil in the form of fertilizer. For several reasons, this doesn’t make the soil healthy again. Fertilizer doesn’t have organic matter in it, which the soil needs in order to thrive. It is difficult for the soil to absorb the nutrients in fertilizer, and therefore much of it runs off, polluting lakes and rivers. Some research suggests that nitrogen fertilizer decreases the microbiological diversity of soil and alters its composition. Some types of fertilize can cause soil acidification. Some can lead to the build-up of salts, heavy metals, and nitrates. Not only is fertilizer not effective at making the soil healthy again, it is also energy intensive to create, and therefore contributes to climate change.
Long term, conventional farming practices could deplete the soil to such an extent that we can no longer grow the food we need in it. Currently, the world grows 95% of its food in topsoil. Due to conventional farming practices, nearly half of the topsoil in the world has disappeared in the last 150 years. The way we grow food now is feeding the world, but it may be leaving the future world hungry.
But we can farm in harmony with the soil, we can grow things in it and take things from it, while keeping it healthy and alive.
A few years ago I met a farmer named Will. He was in his mid-90s and had been farming for over 70 years. When Will started farming, he noticed that the soil on his land had been eroding away. He was losing his topsoil; the soil needed to nurture and grow the seed. A young man in his twenties, Will had just graduated from high school and begun work as a farmer on his father’s land with his brother.
“Those boys” he told me his neighbors used to whisper, believing that Will and his brother were creating a scar on the landscape, rather than healing one. With the help of local soil conservationists, Will began a long, slow process of protecting his land and building the soil back up for generations to come. To reduce soil erosion, he planted cover crops, which held the soil in place and helped store nutrients until the following years crops could utilize them. He put in place a system of terracing to stop water from running downhill, so that less soil would be lost when it rained. He put some of his land into conservation, and allowed it to return to the state it had once been, such as wetlands, ponds, and forest. He also began to practice crop rotation. If he planted corn, a crop that takes a lot of nutrients from the soil, he would plant nitrogen fixing legumes the following year. Rather than adding synthetic fertilizer to the soil, he added manure, compost and organic matter, which the soil was more able to absorb. He tended his land and his soil, he became a steward of it.
When I met him, Will was still farming. It was fall, and the previous day he had been on his tractor harvesting crops. His daughter and her husband had returned to the farm and they were taking care of it in the same way he did. They had added cows to the land and practiced rotational grazing, a farming method that reduces soil erosion, decreases soil compaction, and improves manure distribution as compared to normal grazing. Childless, they planned to one day give the land and its now healthy soil to a family friend who had promised to continue their stewardship practices.
Sitting with him at his dining room table, Will told me about how the soil on the top of the hill outside the window had grown healthy again. The land, once rocky and thin, was now full, thick, and alive. A perfect place to grow the seeds he plants in it. Will nurtured the soil, and the soil, in turn, nurtured the seed, which in turn nurtured him.
