Soil isn’t something most of us spend time thinking about. It’s just there, doing its thing, like lightwaves from the sun beaming down on earth. Despite just being there, soils are complex and have a wide range of properties that we take for granted, from nutrient balance, to density, and structure.
With the growth of industrial farming, soil erosion has become a serious issue that will eventually threaten food supplies if better agricultural practices are not adopted. As Jason Hickel puts it “our soils are being turned into lifeless dirt.” An example of this comes from a 2018 study, where evidence was provided of an 83% plunge in earthworms biomass, causing the organic content of soils to collapse by more than half.
What we are doing to our soil is terrifying as it is interconnected with the rest of nature and not something we can get away with over the long run if we expect to support our current population levels.
Through Wendell Berry’s words, take a moment to appreciate the process of new soil forming and its interconnectedness with all natural systems:
“The old bucket has hung there through many autumns, and the leaves have fallen around it and some have fallen into it. Rain and snow have fallen into it, and the fallen leaves have held the moisture and so have rotted. Nuts have fallen into it, or been carried into it by squirrels; mice and squirrels have eaten the meat of the nuts and left the shells; they and other animals have left their droppings; insects have flown into the bucket and died and decayed; birds have scratched in it and left their droppings and perhaps a feather or two. This slow work of growth and death, gravity and decay, which is the chief work of the world, has by now produced in the bottom of the bucket several inches of black hummus. I look into that bucket with fascination because I am a farmer of sort and an artist of sorts, and I recognize there an artistry and a farming far superior to mine, or to that of any human.”
All of this is to say, we must shift to more sustainable practices that work in unison with nature’s natural processes rather than trying to dominate or manipulate it through human invented practices. A couple of books on the matter that are worth a read include: The World-Ending Fire by Paul Kingsnorth and Less is More by Jason Hickel.
