1.2: Thoughts on Soil

The View from This Side of the Fence

After 50 years of digging around in soil, I would like to think I have learned a few things. I want to share with you how I, as a farmer, scientist, and teacher, think about soil. As we begin this soil journey together I share some philosophical thoughts with you rather than the scientific information we will explore later. I want you to get a feel for soil as something you can begin to appreciate and also care about. You will want to know some of the basic things about soil so that you can grow healthy, strong plants, but also, I hope you will learn about soil like you would want to know more about a good friend.  I think it is an interesting coincidence that the word “SOIL” and the word “SOUL” are just one keyboard touch away from each other. I often type in Soul instead of Soil; is that an accident or a neat reminder of some quiet kinship?

Definition of Soil

My favorite definition of soil is:

"The interface between the living and the dead."

—Henry Foth

I like the definition because it loops us back to both meanings of 'Undiscovered Country', a place where unseen things happen, and a place where the living who die find rest before becoming alive again. The quote describes a hidden, essential role of soil that most people do not consider. Soil is a place, a habitat, for billions of microorganisms. These are the first link in a food chain full of life that transforms non-living materials we call nutrients (like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) into living beings. Its alchemy. Magic. The microbes knit the nutrients together to form their bodies. These are then eaten by bigger and bigger organisms as you will discover in Chapter 10.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Depiction of the connection of death to life through the soil.

One body (corpse) decomposes and becomes another body’s life. We truly never remain dead forever, our body’s components are recycled and resurrected and become alive again through the magic of microbes in the soil and plants that grow from them. The plants may be eaten by a cow, the cow eaten by a person, and thus the circle of life continues via the place we call soil. What if the person from the grave in the picture is now living again as an oak tree? Their nutrients are taken up by the roots and sent out to the tree's crown. An acorn from the tree is eaten by a squirrel. The squirrel is eaten by a hawk. The hawk takes wing. The molecules that were you, fly.  I, for one, plan to get recycled as soon as possible and get back in the game when I'm done with my corporeal body and go on to the next journey. This may be too philosophical for most people, but I wanted to give you a glimpse of the awe and respect I have for soil.

Outside - In

When we eat plant or animal material that springs from the soil, we bring the external environment inside ourselves. We have a tube running through us, our guts, our colon, where we allow the external to become internalized and absorbed. Our colon and soil are both places of re-animation, a place where the dead becomes alive again as it is incorporated into our bodies. Remember, "corpse" is just another word for a body. We should colonize our colon with good bacterial life, some of which should come from the soil. “Soil” has been used as a term for what comes out the end of a digestive system.... poop. It is accurate, though in our culture it has a negative connotation. I think the image of “soil-as-poop” is unfortunate because it equates the material with “waste” when rather it is a rich resource. On our farm, cow poop is the base ingredient for compost. Compost is the source of inoculum for organisms that re-cycle the nutrients in our soils and build the base of fertility for our crops.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Colon. Photo Credit SomkiatFakmee. Getty Images

Our food should be alive, vibrant, and nutrient-dense. Because of my background, with degrees in microbiology and agronomy plus 35 years of farming experience, I know that life starts with the soil. If we do not have vibrant, living, healthy soil our food will be dead. If our food is dead, our guts will be messed up. Pretty simple to comprehend, right? I’ve come to see a connection between the many illnesses associated with the modern, western diet and a lack of good bacteria, good soil, and good farming practices that give us good food. It is simple to understand, but completely unfortunate that many people do not realize that how we practice farming and treat our soil has a profound impact on the quality of our food and our digestion.

Soil Health on Full Circle Farm

At various places in this book, I bring you onto my family farm, Full Circle Organic Farm. We are located just west of Green Bay, Wisconsin, and the farm has been in my husband's family since the land was cleared in the 1890s. Some of the farming practices we use to enhance soil health include; managing animal grazing, composting, crop rotation, planting perennial legumes and cover crops, and plowing a field only every fifth year or so. I think it is very important to have animals on any crop farm because of the manure they produce. The livestock adds manures and beneficial bacteria back into the farm crop system. Composting adds organic matter, that jungle gym-type habitat, back into the soil. Rotating crops keeps non-beneficial pests from gaining a foothold in the system. Using legumes adds nitrogen to the soil, and perennials keep living roots in the soil year-round. Roots exude what soil microbiologist Dr. Elaine Ingham describes as “cakes and cookies” into the soil for microbes to feed on. The perennials and cover crops leaf out very early in spring and have leaves later into the fall. This keeps the soil covered with “many little tents” which prevents raindrop impacts from dislodging soil particles which may then flush them away with the rain. We explore all these soil-healthy farming techniques in the book.

Sustainable farmers understand that soil is alive–it is a biological system. We try to amplify the soil livestock - that is, the microbes and arthropods. There is a complex web of soil life that we have only just begun to explore. Organic farmers foster soil that is fecund with beneficial tiny critters. Organic farmers bank nutrient wealth in the soil for their children’s children. We respect all life, even a bacterium. We cheer on soil life and its magic of resurrection. Welcome to the undiscovered country.

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Organic farmers protect and nourish the soil; letting the soil feed the plant.

A Guide to this Undiscovered Country Called Soil

How can farmers and gardeners do their part to farm better and improve soil health so that we improve plant health, improve our human diet, and as a bonus the environment? The journey takes us, chapter by chapter through that territory. 'Territory' is a word of Latin origin meaning 'Earth', in the sense of soil. Throughout this book, I will occasionally point out the many words in our vocabulary that are 'grounded' in soil-like terms. Terroir is an example of a soil-related word. It is the French word indicating that the region a food/wine comes from, a certain place with certain soils, will give it special characteristics.

Let's get going on the path:

• Our first step on the journey is to get this philosophical 'feel' for soil as more than just dirt - in Chapter One.
• Chapter Two helps us understand the physical nature of the soil. Of what material is it made? It is part air, water, and minerals. How is it formed? What makes some areas of the world so productive that they are called breadbaskets?
• Next, in Chapter Three, we explore the chemistry of soil--yes, chemistry, pH, and electric charges--to understand how nutrients behave in the soil.
• Chapter Four explores Organic Matter, what it is, how it matters, and how we have been losing it rapidly with modern farming methods. In this chapter, we also examine what it means to have healthy soil. There are some tests that help us understand if our soil is as functional as good soil should be.
• Chapter Five is perhaps the territory most people are familiar with--nutrients. That is because we have been taught we can just apply them from a box or a bag and all will be well with the crops we grow. In fact, good organic farmers can grow their most important nutrient, Nitrogen, right on the farm, with no need to buy it as an input. We will also see what fertilizers are available, both synthetic and organic.
• Chapter Six is about carbon flows and large-scale movement of nutrients and cycling. The movement of nutrients in an ecosystem provides plants with goodies that do not harm soil life nor exploit and extract nutrients from one place and haul them to our farms and gardens. Interestingly, we are mining some areas of the earth and seas and depositing those nutrients on our crop fields, then shipping them to the coasts and urban areas and into the bodies of the eight billion humans on the planet. We are digging a metaphorical canyon in America's Midwestern belly, a 'metabolic rift'.
• Chapter Seven delves into soil sampling, soil tests, and reading test results. I am not a big fan of soil testing, I would rather let the plant health and yield tell me if I have got things right. But, as humans, we like to measure things, so we will put some numbers on our soils and see how we stack up.
• After we've got our soil test results or a guess about our soil's fertility, we move on to Chapter Eight to take a look at both organic and conventional fertilizers. What makes them so different from each other? Why do they have such a large impact on the environment if applied incorrectly? What can we do differently to be better stewards of the land and acres we tend? Fertilizers are nutrients we add to the soil to get better crop yields.
• Chapter Nine is all about compost. That great, under-appreciated amendment we add to soil to increase organic matter and fluff up the all-important habitat for soil microbiology.
• In Chapter Ten, we dig into the unexplored territory of the life beneath our feet. It is a fascinating jungle down there. We get a glimpse of soil life and the critters that dwell there.
• Chapter Eleven takes us to livestock and manure. There are two things we need to consider if we want healthy soils. We need livestock for their poop and for how they recycle nutrients and organic matter back to our fields. Plus, watch out, manure can be a pollutant.
• Chapter Twelve is all about soil loss and the practices farmers and gardeners can use to stop it. Are we losing a thousand years of soil in just 100 years? Not just focused on problems, this chapter explores how we can help the soil, improve it, and perhaps even fix it if it has been damaged.  We explore making better choices in our farm's soil management. We specifically review cover cropping, tillage, and compaction. We explore some soil conservation practices our best farmers are doing to ensure we have healthy soils for the next generations to farm.
• Chapter Thirteen brings us to the 'so what' of this book. Does it matter how we farm? Can't the earth and land just cleanse themselves as they have always done and keep giving us the gifts of food? Does the way we farm affect carbon and climate change? The answer to all these questions is 'Yes'. We leave you with some thoughts on who our next farmers will be and how land tenure and care look going into the future.
• Chapter Fourteen is about managing soils in urban settings and will be helpful to those new farmers reclaiming that land.