Hannah Chouinard

Plunging my hands into soil is one of my first vivid memories. I remember the contrast between the cool, moist earth and the hot summer sun, the shock and fear when I realized just how close my fingers came to the pill bugs and earthworms that made their home there. There was something almost spiritual about moments like this, being immersed in life in a pile of dirt. 

Years later, in a cold, fluorescent-lit classroom, I encountered a very different version of soils. During an undergraduate soil science course, my classmates and I were handed charts and graphs. We were taught to examine soil as a collection of component parts, determining the names of different soils, and more importantly, what they could do for us. We learned to categorize soil, along with the rest of the ‘natural world,’ based on its potential economic value. 

This capitalist and anthropocentric system of value assignment destroys soils around the world, as soils today continue to wash and blow away at unprecedented rates. Such human-centered conceptions of soil not only alienate us from our world, but actively threaten the future of humanity. As the world searches for solutions to the global soil erosion crisis, the definition of soil can and must expand. Western institutions can no longer see soil as a collection of components serving exclusively human needs, such as agricultural outputs. Instead, leaders must recognize soil as a critical component of every living system, supporting and in conversation with all life on Earth.

Global soil erosion is an existential threat to humanity. Each year, the world loses between twenty-four and forty billion metric tons of soil.[1] Since 1900, roughly a third of all soil has been lost globally; other places, such as Iowa, have lost about half of their topsoil in the same period.[2] Some scientists estimate the earth is losing soil as much as forty times faster than we can replenish it,[3] and a thousand times faster than the rate of soil erosion in the absence of human intervention.[4] Studies suggest that unless human interactions with soil are dramatically altered, the earth will only have enough viable topsoil to produce food for another sixty years[5]—or another “sixty harvests.”[6]

The current soil crisis is a direct reflection of how the West defines and values soils. Most governmental agencies, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), define soil by its “physical, chemical, mineralogical, and biological characteristics”[7] and assign it value according to the degree to which these properties create “a host of goods and services integral to ecosystems and human well-being.”[8] From this perspective, soil is simply a matrix of minerals and organic material, containing the macro- and micro-nutrients necessary to support life—an entity that can be fully characterized based on texture (i.e., the relative proportions of sand, silt, and clay) and structure (i.e., the size, density, and organization of soil aggregates).[9]

When characterized solely according to its chemical and physical properties, soil becomes merely a surface waiting for human intervention. It becomes “an empty container for chemical fertilizers”—an inanimate object with no value except as a vessel in which to produce agricultural commodities for human consumption.[10] Because this perspective is “embedded into agronomic practice” at the global level,[11] intergovernmental agencies embrace an anthropocentric approach to soil erosion, mainly focusing on its agricultural impacts.[12] For example, the “key messages” of the FAO’s 2015 Global Symposium on Soil Erosion (one of the culminating events of the United Nations’ International Year of Soils) almost entirely deal with the ways in which soil erosion affects agricultural output and therefore global food security.[13] These messages imply that soil is valueless or expendable unless it can be used to produce food. Land-use and social justice scholars Salvatore Enget Di Mauro and Levi Van Sant explain that this mode of valuation has led some people “to accept soil erosion when it is more profitable than soil conservation.”[14] Soil erosion mitigation efforts premised on the assumption that soil is only valuable as a tool for conventional agriculture will never lead to long-term, meaningful change. 

In the US, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) is attempting to solve soil erosion through conservation programs that reflect a technocratic, human-centered perspective of soil. These programs are exclusively concerned with farmland soils, which they categorize as either working or retired.[15] Most federal soil conservation schemes focus on retirement: the USDA pays farmers to conserve land for a period of time—typically ten to fifteen years—after which it can be once again conventionally farmed.[16] However, the long-term impact of retirement is questionable. It is unclear whether farmers who participate in these conservation efforts alter their agricultural practices when land returns to cultivation. Erosion may not be stopped, just postponed.

The most concerning aspect of these programs is the implication that soil conservation and agricultural production cannot coexist. USDA retirement programs may appear effective in the short-term, but periodically removing land from agricultural use is not a sustainable solution to soil erosion. Retirement programs require that land is not farmed at all, so participation can dramatically affect farmer income. Studies by the USDA’s Economic Research Service have shown that participation in land retirement programs is almost entirely dependent upon the promise of financial subsidies.[17] This is particularly troubling given how easily changes in political will can bring conservation programs and affiliated subsidies to an end (as happened to the Grassland Reserve Program in 2014).[18]  Even if subsidies remain in place, the economics will likely not favor land retirement as a long-term solution as climate change continues to stress conventional agriculture yields. By failing to adopt an approach that integrates crop production and soil conservation, global efforts to save the world’s soil are doomed to fail–or, more accurately, to be abandoned. To define soil as an inert input for conventional agriculture is to accept soil erosion as a tragic but necessary externality. 

To foster a livable soil future, conventional relationships with soils must be reconsidered and shifted away from the established and reductionist paradigm that soil is merely a resource to be manipulated to increase human welfare.[19] It is essential that a more holistic approach is embraced, in which soils are recognized as absolutely essential to all life on the planet and human co-evolve with all other living and non-living beings is acknowledged.

Soil is much more complicated than a simple matrix: it is place-based and constantly in flux. From water-logged marshes, to carbon-rich histosols, to the dry, sandy desert aridisols, soil’s mineral and organic composition varies dramatically based on climate and ecological environment. Trees, fungi, insects, and animals all leave their mark on soil structure and health. Climate change, tectonic movements, and pollutants in the air or water all impact soils. As Di Mauro and Van Sant write, “it is only as reasonable to treat soil as a homogenous or static unit as it is a forest or river.”[20] Soils are not inert or fungible; they are context-dependent ecosystems that function almost as organisms, constantly changing and evolving with the environment around them. 

World leaders can only address the failures of conventional agriculture and imagine an alternative after acknowledging that soils have value outside of immediate human use. Luckily, alternative agricultural systems exist. Indigenous peoples all over the world have created agricultural systems based on “cohabitating rather than dominating”[21] the earth and its resources, focusing on reciprocity and relationality rather than extraction. Centuries of practice have shown that companion planting, polycultures/mosaic agriculture, and permaculture improve or maintain soil health while also providing sufficient food.[22] There are sustainable ways to conserve soil. National and global leaders have simply failed to embrace them.

The evidence in favor of what are often called alternative agricultural practices is difficult to ignore, even for organizations that have historically supported and subsidized the spread of industrial agriculture across the planet. Despite advocating for “judicious” fertilizer use[23] and defining soils in terms of economic value,[24] the FAO notes that “proven [agricultural] technologies exist that can curtail and even reverse degradation of the Earth’s vital soil resources.”[25] By their own admission, the changes that must be implemented are not a mystery – they include basic practices like reducing or eliminating tillage and using cover crops to protect soils from erosion.[26]

Expert scientists and farmers know which agronomic practices build soils. The issue is not a lack of knowledge, but a lack of will. To solve the problem of global soil erosion, world leaders must reorient contemporary understandings of soil toward something more holistic, re-examining what is known about soils, recognizing soils as a valuable part of ecosystems rather than an economic input. This understanding is key to move institutions toward adopting methods of agriculture that build rather than deplete soil, and move humanity toward sustainable relationships with this critical part of our world.

Unlike the many wicked problems plaguing the world today, soil erosion stands apart as one the world has the tools to fix. We know what it takes to decelerate the crisis of soil erosion if we can find the political will.

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[1] Vandana Shiva, Who Really Feeds the World: Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2016), 16; Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils, Status of the World’s Soil Resources – Brochure (FAO, 2015), 3, https://www.fao.org/3/i5228e/i5228e.pdf.

[2] Richard Gray, “Follow the Food: Why soil is disappearing from our farms,” BBC, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/follow-the-food/why-soil-is-disappearing-from-farms/; Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “Key Messages.”

[3] Shiva, Who Really Feeds the World, 16.

[4] “Global Symposium on Soil Erosion: Key Messages,” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, https://www.fao.org/about/meetings/soil-erosion-symposium/key-messages/en/.

[5] Elizabeth Gamillo, “More Than 50 Billion Tons of Topsoil Have Eroded in the Midwest,” Smithsonian Magazine, April 19, 2022.

[6] Philip Lymbery, Sixty Harvests Left: How to Reach a Nature Friendly Future (London: Bloomsbury, 2022).

[7] Luca Montanarella, Mohamed Badraoui, Victor Chude, Isaurinda Dos Santos Baptista Costa, Tekalign Mamo, Martin Yemefack, Milkha Singh Aulang, Kazuyuki Yagi, Suk Young Hong, Pisoot Vijarnsorn, Gan Lin Zhang, Dominique Arrouays, Helaina Black, Pavel Krasilnikov, Jaroslava Sobocá, Julio Alegre, Carlos Roberto Henriquez, Maria de Lourdes Mendonça-Santos, Miguel Taboada, David Espinosa Victoria, Abdullah Alshankiti, Sayed Kazem Alavi Panah, Elsiddig Ahmed El Mustafa El Sheikh, Jon Hempel, Dan Pennock, Marta Camps Arbestain, and Neil McKenzie, Status of the World’s Soil Resources – Main Report (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils: 2015) 33, https://www.fao.org/3/i5199e/i5199e.pdf.

[8] Montanarella, “Status of the World’s Soil Resources,” 4.

[9] Montanarella, “Status of the World’s Soil Resources,” 33.

[10] Shiva, Who Really Feeds the World, 16.

[11] Anna Krzywoszynska, Steve Banwart, and David Blacker, “To Know, To Dwell, To Care: Towards an Actionable, Place-based Knowledge of Soils,” in Thinking with Soils: Material Politics and Social Theory, ed. Juan Francisco Salazar, Celine Granjou, Matthew Kearnes, Anna Krzywoszynska, and Manuel Tironi (London: Bloomsbury) 2020, 89.

[12] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Brochure.

[13] “Key Messages,” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

[14] Salvatore Enget Di Mauro, and Levi Van Sant, “Soils and Commodification,” in Thinking with Soils: Material Politics and Social Theory, ed. Juan Francisco Salazar, Celine Granjou, Matthew Kearnes, Anna Krzywoszynska, and Manuel Tironi, (London: Bloomsbury, 2022), 66.

[15] Dayton Lambert and Patrick Sullivan, “Land Retirement and Working-Land Conservation Structure: A Look at Farmers Choices,” United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, June 1, 2006, https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2006/june/land-retirement-and-working-land-conservation-structures-a-look-at-farmers-choices/; “An Introduction to U.S. Soil Conservation Programs,” SoilErosion.com, September 20, 2019, https://soilerosion.com/an-introduction-to-u-s-soil-conservation-programs/.

[16] “Conservation Programs,” United States Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency, https://www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-services/conservation-programs/index.

[17] Lambert, “Land Retirement.”

[18] “Grassland Reserve Program,” United States Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency, https://www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-services/conservation-programs/grassland-reserve/index.

[19] Shiva, Who Really Feeds the World, 16.

[20] Enget Di Mauro, “Soils and Commodification,” 61.

[21] Devon G. Pena, “On Intimacy with Soils: Indigenous Agroecology and Biodynamics,” in Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States, ed. Devon A. Mihesuah and Elizabeth Hoover, (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019), 278.

[22] Pena, “On Intimacy;” Mary Siisip Geniusz, Plants Have so Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do is Ask: Anishinaabe Botanical Teachings (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2015). Xxx  Lilikala K. Kame’eleihiwa, “Kaulana O’ahu me he ‘Aina Momona,” Food and Power in Hawai’i: Visions of Food Democracy, edited by Aya Hirata Kimura, and Krisnawati Suryanata, University of  Hawaii Press, 2016; Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Milkweed Editions, 2013); Shiva, Who Really Feeds the World.

[23] FAO, Brochure, 7; Montanarella, “Status of the World’s Soil Resources,” 34, 40-42.

[24] Montanarella, “Status of the World’s Soil Resources,” 9, 13-30.

[25] FAO, Brochure, 3, 7.

[26] FAO, Brochure, 3, 7.

Biography

Hannah Chouinard is pursuing a Master’s degree at the Department of Food Studies at
New York University and has a BA in Sociology and Environmental Studies from University of Wisconsin. Her current research focuses on the intersections of food, identity, and popular
success in the American food service industry.