Choosing to Nurture: A Building Block for Soil Health

I was recently watching an episode of “This Old House” and Jan, the landscaper, was visiting a university soil testing lab to learn more about what’s involved in soil testing. The laboratory technician walked her through the different processes involved in testing soils for the chemical components of a soil sample, from a simple pH test to testing potassium levels using a flame photometer that generates temperatures equal to the surface of the sun. Throughout the whole process, I’m thinking “what about biology?”  

While I know that having your soil tested for the chemical composition will allow you to amend your soil and increase crop yield, I also believe it makes it easy to exploit and degrade soil.  

In the book The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, Wendell Berry wrote about how society has trained us to exploit rather than nurture, and that construing this in a conqueror vs victim mentality is misguided. He argues instead that this choice is most often a personal one, that we must all make.  

Excerpt from: The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

We can understand a great deal of our history—from Cortes’ destruction of Tenochtitlan in 1521 to the bulldozer attack on the coalfields four-and-a-half centuries later—by thinking of ourselves as divided into conquerors and victims. In order to understand our own time and predicament and the work that is to be done, we would do well to shift the terms and say that we are divided between exploitation and nurture. The first set of terms is too simple for the purpose because, in any given situation, it proposes to divide people into two mutually exclusive groups; it becomes complicated only when we are dealing with situations in succession—as when a colonist who persecuted the Indians then resisted persecution by the crown. The terms exploitation and nurture, on the other hand, describe a division not only between persons but also within persons. We are all to some extent the products of an exploitative society, and it would be foolish and self-defeating to pretend that we do not bear its stamp.

As such, I often struggle with the value of a chemical soil test. While I know that having your soil tested for the chemical composition will allow you to amend your soil and increase crop yield, I also believe it makes it easy to exploit and degrade soil.

Pools of Energy and the Soil Web

Jim talking keyline swales at Island Lake Farm, with Bruce listening intently. Photo by HDT staff.

My late friend and mentor, Bruce Bacon, taught me to think of healthy soil as pools of energy. He suggested that there are four pools of energy in soil, one of them being the “chemical” component. He most often spoke of this one last, simply to say we know most about this source of energy in plant growth. Thinking back on this now, I believe it was his way of avoiding exploiting the land. 

The other pools of energy he spoke of included;

• Exudate (plant sap) that plants release into the soil which serves as food for the base of the soil food web. 

• Biology is arguably the most important pool. Microorganisms, the smallest of which feed on the exudate and in turn are eaten by larger and larger organisms, eventually dying or defecating to provide nutrients to plants 

• Soil carbon, the sum of living and dead plants and organisms. Carbon is vital to soil function, the ability to hold nutrients and water in the soil and release it to plants when needed. 

While the chemical pool is fairly stable and easy to manipulate, the other three are highly dependent on how the land is treated. Without a diverse mix of living plants growing on the land, exudate is limited in availability, both in terms of quality and quantity, to support a healthy microbial population. Without a healthy microbial population, soil carbon is depleted due to natural decomposition processes.  

Exploiting soil is easy. We know how to test and balance the chemical composition of soil. We have technology that creates a miniature sun in the laboratory that can tell you this for $26. Just add the correct nutrients that are lacking and your plants will grow. We can grow large quantities of food efficiently and keep food prices down, but what are the consequences?  

There are numerous and cascading consequences from exploiting the soil. Here are three important ones. 

• Adjusting pH by adding cations (positively charged nutrients such as calcium, potassium, and magnesium) makes other nutrients more available to plants, but also also allows nutrients such as phosphorus to leach from soil and travel downstream, degrading water quality.  

• Synthetic sourced nitrogen depletes soil organic matter by fueling hardy bacteria that multiply countless times over while also consuming organic matter, then they die, providing nitrogen in a usable form for plants. The very action of applying this type of fertilizer degrades the carbon pool of energy. 

• Synthetic and mined fertilizers, chemical pesticides, and the vast amount of fossil fuels that drive chemical-based agriculture are owned by increasingly larger companies that export wealth from our rural communities. 

To nurture our soils we must build systems that enhance all four pools of energy. That is the beauty of the soil health principles. Minimizing soil disturbance creates a livable home for soil microorganisms, most of which require good soil structure to survive and thrive. Keeping the soil covered with living plants and roots in the soil fuels the soil food web through exudate and protects the carbon pool. Increasing diversity and integrating livestock enhance the soil food web by diversifying food sources for microbes and naturally cycling nutrients in the system.  

Recognizing Nurturing

Acknowledgement of the importance of soil health and the need to nurture soil is becoming more prevalent. Testing for the biological component in soil is improving with high tech methods such as mass assay genomics and fatty acid testing that can identify the abundance of various groups of microorganisms, giving you a measure of the health of the soil. We know what healthy and nurtured looks like in a microscope. 

Soil expert Kent Solberg–seldom seen leading a pasture walk without a shovel–uses his nose. Photo by HDT staff.

For me the tests I like the most involve a shovel and my nose. Digging in the soil, examining the aggregate and soil structure, and looking for life, be it macroorganisms or fungal strands, can tell you a lot about the health of your soil. Pull a handful close to your nose. Does it smell fresh and earthy, telling you your soil is healthy with abundant life. Or does it smell dank or metallic, signs of low microbial activity?

I’ve been watching This Old House for most of my life. I love how they take old houses, degraded from use and neglect, and nurture them back to life. Though the landscape portion of the episode I was watching focused on soil chemistry, in general I’ve seen the show move to more natural and nurturing landscape techniques in their programming.  

HDT garden, nurtured abundance. Photo by HDT staff

Learn more about how you can nurture your land. Visit the Happy Dancing Turtle Grower/ Farmer webpages to find more details on soil health, agroforestry, grazing management, as well as other partners and resources. Reach out to resource professionals at your local Soil and Water Conservation District, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, or nonprofits such as the Sustainable Farming Association or Savanna Institute. Attend a local farm field day, or visit a HDT Open Garden event during the summer.

Find local food products at MN Grown https://minnesotagrown.com/search-directory/

If you don’t farm or garden, buy from growers who nurture their land and support local communities by visiting an area farmers market or farm stand.  Shop at local stores and Cooperatives that sell sustainably raised products.

A quote that’s often heard around the sustainable farming community is “If you want small changes, change how you do things. If you want big changes, change how you see things.” Seeing soil and the land as something that must be nurtured, and understanding the ease of which exploitation is possible, is the first step. Soil is incredibly fragile, yet resilient at the same time. It’s easy to harm soil and the food web that supports its ability to function. Yet by changing how we see the land, as a living community that is fueled by interacting pools of energy, dependent on each other, we can make drastic improvements to the land in just a few growing seasons. Join us.

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