Soil Has Soul
“Whether you’re a meat-eater or choose to embrace a plant-based diet, at the end of the day, everyone needs topsoil.”
If you live rurally, and especially if you’re in farm country, you’re bound to see tractors out tilling the fields this time of year, readying it for spring planting.
The telltale cloud of dust you see in the air is probably familiar, but what you may not know is that that cloud is precious topsoil being disturbed and it unfortunately signals the destruction of the soil’s tilth. Tilth is the soul of soil. It’s basically the condition of tilled soil, especially in respect to suitability for sowing seeds.
Did you know that soil is alive?
Healthy soil has layers that are built naturally over many seasons. It’s made up of falling leaves, animal droppings, and bug and earthworm activity. The “top” soil is where we plant and grow our food. The healthier that soil is, the better our food quality.
Living soil creates its own nitrogen and phosphorus, which it needs to thrive and grow food. When we till (and destroy the topsoil) we are actually killing what gives us life.
Let me pause here and say that this is NOT an attack on farmers who till. I am a farmer. I realize and recognize the challenges. Today’s farmers are tasked with producing massive amounts of food for an ever-diminishing profit. This is simply a request to consider what's (or who’s) actually behind large scale farming and why they’ve made it difficult for farmers to feel they have any other options.
In modern agriculture and large scale farming, tilling and monocropping (planting the same crop year after year, on the same land, in the absence of rotation through other crops) thousands of acres of gmo seed have become the norm. It’s what we’re told is the most efficient way to grow enough food for our ever increasing population. We’ve been taught that the synthetic fertilizer we’re dumping into our soil (and ultimately our food), because the tilth has been depleted from monocropping, is a necessary means to an end.
It might be efficient in the moment, and it might make farming easier than it used to be, but it’s not sustainable in the long run.
The vast scale of farming today puts us all at risk. It does so in a lot of ways:
By landing farmers in millions of dollars of debt to obtain the machinery they need to destroy the soil we rely on for food
By the gmo seed that is manufactured by just one or two huge companies (we’ll flesh this out later - but basically, we’re entrusting pretty much ALL of our food that comes from seed to one, large company)
By incentivizing farmers (with cold, hard cash) to use the synthetic fertilizer they pour onto the soil that inevitably makes its way into our rivers and oceans, killing our sea life and causing an overgrowth of algae and plants which are causing problems we are only beginning to understand.
It demeans the animals we eat for food by crowding them into filthy lots that make them (and us) sick, which then pollutes our groundwater with concentrations of manure.
Whatever you believe about plant-based diets vs. meat-based diets, we ALL eat, and with the disrespect for what feeds us and the medium in which it grows, we are throwing away our health, and our ability to feed ourselves in the long run.
So where do we go from here? Is there a more sustainable solution? Sustainable solutions are out there, but they’re rarely popular - especially if there’s money to be made, or a corner to be cut ...
The solution is a return to small farming and more farmers. We need more small farms to support communities, and we need communities to support their small farms.
When we farm on a smaller scale we eliminate the need for tilling, expensive farm machinery, and the burden of debt for farmers. Small farmers are able to save their own seed, preserve the tilth of soil, and return to being stewards of the land.
Small farmers raise fewer animals in more space when they allow the animals to go to their feed, instead of bringing what they naturally would graze on in open fields to them on a feedlot. They spread their manure as they go, fertilizing pastures and improving soil tilth.
We can't win by domination, but everyone can help make small farming a possibility by looking for opportunities to support any local, small farm. It will mean giving up the instant gratification (tomatoes in winter, anyone?) we have been told is our right, and instead choosing long term benefits.
Buy from your local farmers whenever you can. Don't eat out-of-season produce or produce that is shipped from outside of your county. No matter where you live, city or country, there is a small farmer near you that needs your help. And now you know you need theirs, too.
