Soil Is Alive: What Lives In Our Soil?
Ever wonder what worms and centipedes are doing as they crawl through your soil? They’re actually working to improve the soil’s health, which benefits the environment and all living things in the long run.
The following is an excerpt from Farming on the Wild Side by Nancy J. Hayden and John P. Hayden. It has been adapted for the web.
It’s All About the Soil
Healthy soil is, and has always been, the foundation of our organic regenerative farm. Healthy and biodiverse soil regenerates itself through the interactions among the microbes, other soil inhabitants, and the root zone to create healthy plants and healthy food, while also storing carbon and cleaning water.
That is one reason why allowing the organic labeling of hydroponic tomatoes or other hydroponic crops makes no sense to us. That is why using fungicides, herbicides, or pesticides (even organically approved ones) that get into the soil and kill untargeted organisms makes no sense to us.
These chemical tools are best thought of as ecological sledgehammers that have detrimental effects on nontarget insects, soil fungi, and other beneficial organisms.
Prioritizing Biodiversity
At our farm, we want to be purveyors of life, not death, and promoters of biodiversity, not the sterility of the monoculture mind-set. The founding principle for organic has been to “feed the soil.”
While special interests and Big Food may have usurped the term “organic” and are eroding its fundamental tenets, we will continue to march to the beat of ecological, regenerative, and biodiverse agriculture with special consideration for taking care of the living soil that we are a part of, and that is a part of us.
Soil Is Alive
Whether we’ve focused on raising vegetables, animals, or, as we do now, fruit, it’s always been about the soil. And the scary thing is that since the 1950s, the Global Assessment of Land Degradation and Improvement estimates we have lost almost two billion hectares of arable land (about 22 percent) worldwide due to soil degradation.
Our society treats soil like dirt, and as our friend Vic Izzo, an instructor at UVM, likes to say, “Dirt is dead. Soil is alive.” We need to adopt a “living soil” cultural mind-set, one that acknowledges soil, the skim layer of biofilm resting on top of the parent material, as the support for all terrestrial life on the planet. Soil is the key to resilience and human survival!
Living Examples of Soil
In fact, humans and other organisms are all living manifestations of soil. We are the recycled carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, and other stardust elements that came together to form this planet Earth over four billion years ago.
We are connected and a part of everything and everyone else that has existed through this common origin and pathway of the soil.
Science has shown that certain microbes release calming endorphins when we plunge our hands into their soil home. Other microbes help populate that little pouch of soil-like activity that we carry around in our gut.
We rejoice in being part of this dance of life with microbes, fungi, plants, humans, and other animals continually springing forth from the biofilm during a shared time and space. To be disconnected from the soil is unthinkable. We shall return to the soil and eventually become parts of new organisms as they take their turn in the dance.
The Sacred Mystery of Soil
Over the years, we’ve enjoyed learning about the scientific studies that examine many of the processes occurring among microbes, fungi, and plants, but we also recognize that the soil harbors infinitely complex interrelationships among all things. These interactions are beyond our capacity to completely unveil through scientific methods or models.
It reminds us of our efforts to try to understand the infinite universe, in that we get glimpses, yet never full comprehension. Not that we should ever stop studying soil, but perhaps at times, we should recognize our intellectual limitations and sit back and revere soil as being part of the sacred mystery of life.
Ecology: Undiscovered Territory
As ecologists and longtime organic farmers, when we reflect on soil and soil cycles of birth and decay, we think about all the organisms—the plant roots, bacteria, fungi, insects, and more—that call the soil their home. These are our partners and cocreators.
It’s estimated that a teaspoon of healthy, rich soil contains millions of organisms and that 95 percent of these soil organisms are unclassified and unknown. Much of what we know about ecosystems comes from aboveground and aquatic studies.
Soil ecology remains pretty much undiscovered territory. While new DNA sequencing and profiling tools help provide estimates of genetic diversity, these tools don’t help us discern the holistic community structures and relationships that are critical for understanding an ecosystem. After all, ecology is the study of communities and interactions.
What Lives In Our Soil: Fungi & Organic Matter
Scientific studies are beginning to shed more light on the importance of fungi and their role in creating healthy soil and healthy plants.
While we knew that fungi are the great decomposers of organic matter, recycling it into slow-release nutrients and carbon, we are now even more appreciative of the benefits of fungi-dominated soil systems.
In mutually beneficial relationships, plant roots exude sugars as a reward for the fungi that make nutrients available from the soil. Fungal mycelia can extend over large spatial scales and act as communication networks within the soil.
With their antibiotic properties, beneficial fungi can also help keep diseases and pathogens in check. No-till agriculture favors a fungal-dominated food web near the soil surface, which leads to increased aggregation of soil particles, increased decomposition rates, and overall greater soil carbon storage.
Nutrients and Minerals Found in Soil
Besides living organisms, soil also includes organic matter, nutrients, and minerals. It includes the geological parent rock material from which it’s derived, as well as the water and the air within pore spaces.
We want our soils to act as a carbon and water sponge, not fully saturated but more like a wrung-out sponge. We can continually improve soils by adding organic matter in the form of compost, manure, and woodchips and by not working them over with tillage. This improves the tilth (structure) of the soil by increasing pore spaces between the particles, while the carbon from these inputs feeds the living system to allow for long-term fertility.
How Soil Can Help Our Planet
It’s now widely believed that even if we could dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it would still not be enough to reverse catastrophic climate change. We must also remove carbon from the atmosphere.
Sequestering carbon in soils by increasing organic matter and using no-till farming is an important way to do this. How we treat the soil has always been a matter of survival for civilizations. Ours is no different.
Recommended Reads
Read The Book
Farming on the Wild Side
The Evolution of a Regenerative Organic Farm and Nursery
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