These opening words are from an interview with Daniel Hillel, an Israeli-American soil scientist and hydrologist who was awarded the World Food Prize in 2012 for his work in high efficiency irrigation systems. Hillel died in 2021 at the age of 90. The comments were included in the 2013 documentary Symphony of the Soil.
“In the original Hebrew, Adam is the masculine form of the Hebrew word Adama… Adama is “soil”… so Adam literally means “earthling”, and is described, in the second chapter of Genesis… Adam is fashioned by God out of Adama, out of the earth! The translation is the “dust of the earth” but it is really the afar, the material of the soil…
And now the question is, Adam’s mate… in Hebrew Hava, or in English rendered Eve. Hava means literally “life”, or “life giver”. So together the combination of Adam and Eve mean quite literally: soil and life… perceiving that life is associated with the soil. Adam and Eve are placed in the garden of Eden which means literally the garden of delights, which is Nature. And, given an assignment. Not mastery, but a role, a task. The King James’ translation says to “dress it and keep it”, but my translation is to serve it and preserve it.
We banish ourselves from the garden of Eden by despoiling it. And when mothers see their children playing in the soil now they, “oh, oh, that’s dirty”, and they quickly wash their hands of the dirt. And we misapply that terrible word dirt to soil, which is the fount of all cleanliness by the way.
Of all the many generations of people, from past generations, who’ve died of all manner of disease, somehow the soil cleanses them all.”
This essay was originally given as a spring service at Bell Street Chapel, Providence RI 3/30/25
I have made an effort in my life to develop a relationship with the natural world. That relationship has been attempted in different ways, approached from different angles, and from very different points of view, and states of mind. One approach has been to try and understand the natural world, sort of from the outside looking in. More so in the last decade I’ve endured to be of the natural world. As a farmer, that effort has been through a modest stewarding of land generally, and soil, plants, and animals specifically. Spiritually it has been through a cultivation of inclusion, of seeing myself within these natural relationships, as something to be counted instead of someone to be counting.
One aspect of the natural world that I have found spiritually compelling, and particularly fascinating is the nature of soil. Soil we must understand to be quite literally the foundation of, and more empathically the fount of, all terrestrial life. Here today, we find ourselves once again in the fecund season of spring so there is no better time to rejoice and pay tribute to this life-giving creator beneath our feet, who as I speak is beginning to stir and bubble anew, ready to once again play it’s humble and magnificent role as the breath of mother Earth.
In the late winter soil begins to thaw and by late March it will reach an ambient temperature of about forty degrees. The earliest plants to react to this warming soil are the herbaceous winter annuals. These are plants like shepherd’s purse, yellow rocket, chickweed and cresses, which germinate in the fall and overwinter as tiny, green sprouts on the surface of the soil. In late March, as the soil warms, these tiny, hardy plants explode with growth, attempting a head start in order to get out in front of the sleepy perennial grasses and herbs that are still shaking off the winter cold, and the woody plants that have not yet broken bud and cast their shade. The soil microbes become active again at this time as well, like a microscopic community opening it’s shutters after a long, dark winter. By the time soil reaches fifty degrees and dandelions start to bloom in the headlands the winter is fully behind us. If you listen closely you can hear soil organisms gently tapping on the accelerator, revving the engine of the earth.
Soil is a composite material determined by the geological inheritance of its region. In New England we have inherited a relatively young soil wrought primarily from various forms of granite rock. We are the recipients of a predominately sandy soil that has been maturing only recently, since the last glacial period ended and the Laurentide glacier receded from southern New England, about twelve to thirteen thousand years ago. Along with the remnants of weathered granite rock, our soil is composed of the collected remains of countless once-living organisms, degraded and then naturally re-engineered into a remarkable material known as soil organic matter. Soil organic matter and granite are the primary building blocks of soil in our area, yet on their own they would simply be inert, dead material. Biology is required to activate this material and facilitate the flow of nutrients that make life on earth possible.
The ground we walk on is an ecosystem, a habitat for countless species of macro and microorganisms. Soil habitats are the most diverse and abundant environments on the planet. A single gram of healthy soil will contain billions of microscopic living things, a staggeringly diverse collection of Achaea, bacteria, fungi, nematodes, amoebae, ciliates, flagellates, rotifers, and micro-arthropods all living within it. It is these living organisms that activate soil, organize and distribute its nutritive profile, and facilitate the development of all terrestrial life.
It is the microorganisms in fact that give soil its physical structure. Soil organic matter and granite particles are fused together by microbial exudates (microbial glue), forming extremely important things called soil aggregates. Without aggregation soil would be nothing more than dust, with no integrity or ability to function. By forming aggregates microbes create space within, a soil matrix, allowing air pockets to form and water to sorb and flow within it. I like to use the imagery of a child’s ball-pit, the aggregates of soil being the balls themselves while the space between the balls is the vital part of the soil where air and water flow. If you deflated all the balls in the ball pit there would be no room for air and water between them, and hence only a small sliver of life could persist in this environment of little to no oxygen.
The majority of soil organisms, from earthworms and moles to beneficial bacteria, need air to breath, just like us, and so these aggregated pathways are essential to their survival. One particularly important group of air-breathing, soil-dwelling organisms is, of course, plants. Plant roots need oxygen, and when they arrive in poorly aggregated soil they grow poorly and become host to pathogenic microbes that take advantage of their sub-optimal situations. Farmers use a tool called a penetrometer to measure the degree of compaction in soil. When we find that soil has a density of between 200 and 300 ppm we know that aggregates have been crushed together, that oxygen levels will be low, and that plant roots will find it challenging to penetrate and thrive in this soil. In order to keep soil well-aggregated (i.e. well aerated) growers apply various practices, such as cover cropping, and should attempt to disturb their soil as little as possible.
Soil is similar to the human gut. Within our digestive system we have billions upon billions of microorganisms helping to facilitate the acquisition of the nutrients from our food into our bodies while keeping us comfortable and healthy. Soil microorganisms perform the same function for plants, they just happen to be living primarily on the outside of their bodies then on the inside, like an external gut. I mentioned that healthy soils are tremendously diverse but the factor that is required in order to make a healthy soil healthy are plant roots. If you observe a soil matrix with roots growing within it you will find that the closer you get to the roots the more diverse and abundant the soil microbes become. The most diverse and abundant area of the soil is right up against the root tips themselves. This unique habitat is called the rhizosphere. The rhizosphere is only several millimeters thick but it is teeming with activity. Plants maintain and encourage their attending microbes by shunting some of the carbohydrates that they produce in their leaves through photosynthesis down to the plant roots and out into the soil. This exudation of microbial food can be highly and elegantly sophisticated, allowing the plant to communicate to it’s external gut what specific nutrients it needs from the soil and in what quantities. Plants also “fish” for microbes by, for instance, exuding chemicals into the soil that attract beneficial fungi to grow in their direction.
Fungi play a fascinating role regarding the healthy metabolism of plants. Many beneficial species of fungi that exist in the soil are known as saprotrophs, fungi that decompose dead things in the soil, primarily woody things. If you see mushrooms growing in your gardens or lawns then you are most likely witnessing this style of fungi. Other species of fungi form symbiotic, mutualistic relationships with plants by associating directly with their roots. This fungal-to-plant relationship is remarkably common and is a co-evolved feature that over eighty percent of all terrestrial plant species exhibit. Many of the plants you may grow in your gardens form these mycorrhizal relationships with fungi. Tomatoes for instance, will have beneficial fungi penetrating their roots. These fungal filaments fan out into the soil, greatly extending the reach of the plant, like an augmented root system, and harvest nutrients otherwise out of reach to the plant. These relationships are so co-evolved and adaptive that most plants fail to thrive without their fungal partners and will be outcompeted in the environment by those that do.
We people often fall victim to the conceit that we are individuals, packaged within our skin as one distinct organism. The truth is far more complicated, that in fact we have more microbial cells and microbial genetic material inside our bodies then we do our own. That is to say we carry more distinct microbial DNA in our bodies then we do our own human DNA. In this sense we could say we are more habitat than human, but on the other hand we understand that we are symbiotically intertwined with our microbiome, and that without us these organism could not exist. Likewise we could not persist with out the microbes that facilitate our digestion, our heart function, our brain, our mind. That old paradox of where we end and the world begins demands that we consider ourselves as not one thing, but many.
If we consider “soil” to comprise all that I’ve described today, the granite-organic matter aggregates, the soil matrix and the rhizosphere, and all the organisms found within it, then we need to accept that soil and plants are not really distinct, but rather one thing. Yes, plants can be grown artificially in hydroponic greenhouses but I would argue this is not dissimilar to a person persisting on a life-support machine. If you visit a hydroponic greenhouse you will find, not a farm but a hospital, where growers dress in hospital gowns and caps, are gloved, and are constantly preoccupied with sanitation to keep pests and diseases at bay. This is because plants grown in this manner have been deprived their natural immune system, which is the soil, and are being grown on life-support. Flourishing soils are referred to by scientists as “disease-suppressing soils” because the microbial community that exists there protects the plants from diseases and from pests. Plants grown without soil cannot benefit from these services, which only, only, soil microbes provide. Like plants, when we are deprived of our microbiome we suffer. Even though necessary, antibiotics often make us feel worse than the illness we’re trying to correct. Realigning our microbiome during and after antibiotics is critical to our wellbeing.
As I pointed out last spring when I had the chance to share my thoughts with you, I’m very interested in how our brains divide our minds into two distinct personalities, as neuro-anatomist Jill Bolte-Taylor puts it. The left hemisphere of our brains places us in a domineering mindset that sees plant as distinct from soil, each microbe a curiosity, and each plant little more than a means to an end, whether as a cash crop to sell, an ornament for our home or garden, or a specimen to study. The right hemisphere however sees the whole system, and all the participants within it as part of a gestalt, or a wholeness. As we learn more about the incredible complexity of soil and plant/soil synergy, the appreciation of the right hemisphere becomes more and more expansive, the gestalt becoming more beautiful with its expanding complexity. Yet what is so beautiful to me in the right brain perspective is that through this amassing complexity comes a liberating simplicity. The expansiveness itself is an opportunity to throw away the overwhelming reducibility of these systems. Within the awe of these soil/plant dynamics we as growers can arrange elegant yet simple systems to steward these relationships, this gestalt. My farm for instance is home to over three hundred naturalized plants and over sixty different commercial crops, and all are part of my management system. Yet I manage them all with one simple, four-part criteria, something that I can keep at the forefront of my mind and apply easily, often without thinking.
This method is deceptively simple. It is to hold the four primary elements of soil in mind with every management task performed on the farm. These four primary soil elements – air, water, earth, and fire (which represents soil life) – must all be considered as one functional whole, one gestalt, in order for the farm to be in ecological harmony. This may sound straightforward, yet it flies in the face of typical farming practices, even traditional organic practices, which tend to manage one element at a time and often at the expense of the other three. This four-fold soil management system has changed the way I farm dramatically, and in fact has altered the way I think about most subjects, from my relationships, to my parenting, to my hobbies, and to my work.
It’s this frame of mind, this right-brain perspective, that doesn’t scoff at the idea of joining plant and soil together as a synergistic whole. The left-brain will say no, no, no these things – these plant roots and soil aggregates – they are all distinct! Distinct, specific things, and they must be understood as such, managed as such.
Within the reducibility of these different facets of the system we loose more than just our perspective. We also lose our moral clarity, our responsibility to all the parts.
This left-brained, reductionist view is familiar to us for it governs so much of our relationship to the natural world. It is the mindset that sees hydroponic food production, application of pesticides in crop production, laboratory-raised fake-meats, contamination of seed stocks through genetic modification, and the torturing of animals in confined feedlots, as acceptable methods for growing food. These are not acceptable. These are not real systems. They are heresies removed from nature’s orthodoxy, which is a system woven with not just elegance but also honor for its parts.
Agricultural soil comprises over 35% of the earth’s surface, roughly the size of South America and Africa combined. Much of this soil has been dramatically abused and degraded, eroded and ravaged. Yet it can be revitalized, regenerated as people say these days, and remarkably quickly. Unlike the atmosphere and the ocean, where carbon levels must be kept in a delicate balance, soils are eager and open to storing carbon. Unlike the ocean, which becomes more acidic as it takes on more carbon, soils become more fertile, more productive, more vivacious, and more stable. Soils are eager to be our partners in our need to stabilize our dizzyingly unbalanced climate. They offer a salvation that no technology can begin to replicate, and they can do so while at the same time creating abundant and nutritious food for us all.
Yet they can only do so if they are fully recognized for what they are, which is an art form of plant, animal, mineral, and breath. If we can see soil for all that it is, then perhaps we can see ourselves for all that we are, and we can begin again the work of repair, replenishment, and reciprocity that the earth so generously demonstrates.
May it be so.
In closing, a meditation on the seasons, from a farmers perspective:
Summer is the season of reality, sharp, direct.
Fall is the season of relief, of reckoning with goals, of completion.
Winter is the season of rest and reflection.
Spring is the season of promise, the season of hope.