20SOS: SAVE OUR SOULS SOILS
A
nyone who has read The Grapes of Wrath may have in mind
clear images of the ominous black cloud that came roar-
ing across the Plains states of this country in the 1930s.
A massive environmental disaster created what is known as
the Dust Bowl, but dust doesn’t quite do justice to the magical
material that was being disrupted. Soil is one of the most pre-
cious resources on planet Earth. Plant life, animal life, and the
biodiversity of both all rely on the stuff. As does our entire food
and water supply. Soil is also alive. Like our gut microbiomes,
soils have their own microbiomes.
Although soil health is not yet a top-of-mind factor in most
Americans’ food decisions, there’s a hint in the air from a
growing movement of farmers, manufacturers, investors, and
consumers that it soon will be. You may have already noticed
that the growing practices showing up on food labels are
expanding beyond just conventional versus organic. You may
have seen biodynamic wines, for instance. And coming to a
supermarket near you: regenerative agriculture.
You can think of it as organic plus. Or, put another way,
rather than just doing less bad, regenerative agriculture does
more good: The farming methods shift from simply not using
stuff or doing stuff to the earth that’s harmful to actively
enriching the soil and the surrounding ecosystems—i.e., leav-
ing the land even better than when you found it. Another way
to think about the comparison is that organic agriculture is
primarily about the process—how food is grown; regenerative
agriculture is about the outcome or result—how the land, wild-
life, water, and so forth are affected by the way food is grown.Stuff that Comes from the Ground 71