On Soil

That a New Yorker would know next to nothing about soil probably doesn’t surprise anyone. Nonetheless, I spent my fair share of time digging for clay on the Pine Pond shores, attempting to make popcorn grow for my 3rd grade nursery business, and yanking rocks out of our garden for stone-wall-construction. I’ve gotten dirt under my nails plenty of times; I know what earthworm poop looks like. That said, I’d never paid a lot of attention to the intricacies of soil. I knew that plants grow out of it and remembered a few nuggets about the nitrogen cycle. From reading Wendell Berry, I encountered a worldview in which “earth” signified soil more than blue marble. Yet the pieces I’d learned in this department played little part in shaping how I looked at land. Whether out a car window or from a canoe, I explained the patterns across a landscape of corn, apples, tomatoes, sheep, trees, rocks, etc as a product of human design.

In my first week of work for Doug, I had to find a quotation for a book project on land ethics. When I came across this one, by a R. Neil Sampson, I marveled how this idea had never crossed my mind before: “We stand, in most places on earth, only six inches from desolation, for that is the thickness of the topsoil level upon which the entire life of the planet depends.” Obvious, perhaps, but something I’d never considered. I turned my attentions soil-wards.

Listening in on various farm inspections and agricultural meetings over the past few months has given me time for further reflection on soil-as-destiny. Certainly, no crops get planted without a farmer deciding which varieties should go where. Yet as I listened to farmers detail how the subtle differences between fields determine the success of crops, I began to realize the extent to which topsoil determines the possibility of a place. The first farms I saw here, bountiful polyculture operations north of Buenos Aires, can produce their vast array of crops thanks to thick, rich, black topsoil deposited in the floodplains of the massive Parana River. As flying over the area showed me, many farmers squander their invaluable capital through overuse and carelessness: erosion gullies scar field after field, while streams fill with silt. Yet when cultivated with attention and restraint, that area may bloom into centuries of productivity.

Whereas here around Pumalin, farmers have to face facts: even the most deliberate, informed, and determined efforts can work no miracles. The settlers who cleared coastal forests in the 1940s and 1950s failed because of not only sloppy techniques, but also the grim realities of an area with thin, nutrient-poor topsoil, heavy rains, and low temperatures. Dozens of compost bins, vermiculture programs and biostimulant application, along with erosion control and pasture management, may promote the health of the soil, but farmers aren’t exactly working with gold here.

Even with capital and careful design, the search for a sustainable local economy has seen its share of setbacks. Yesterday at the Vodudahue farm, we saw rows of zarzaparilla berries that never thrived ripped up and replanted with other varieties. Only a few hundred yards away, masses of zarzaparilla berries clustered on the branches of healthy trees. On slightly higher ground, these bushes did not suffer from the perpetual wet feet of their neighbors. Francisco, in charge of this farm, offered this example as proof of the limitations of scientific agriculture management, which trains farmers solely in generalities. Good farmers, he says, understand every inch of their land, often through generations of trial and error. But how to jumpstart that process in an area where agricultural failure is the only history?

To me at least, the farms’ various transitions and adjustments on the road to ecological production do not imply inevitable failure or the impossibility of certain ideals, but rather reveal the challenges in determining exactly what possibility the soil contains. All the soil scientists in the world could not traipse around to every bump, ditch, and corner of the earth to measure their exact productive capabilities. As I’m seeing here, figuring out truly sustainable production requires years of hard, frustrating work, informed both by science of general principles and the specificities of land itself. So, then, connection to place then becomes less a spiritual ideal than a requirement for future life on earth.

I realize all this, and then ask myself: could I really be a farmer myself? I spent the morning helping out in the garden here in Reñihue, transplanting little lettuces, weeding inside the greenhouse, picking slugs out of the tomatoes. I wanted to enjoy the work; I loved the idea of it, and the idea of liking it. Poking holes in planter-boxes and setting in baby lettuces, just sprouted, gave me new appreciation for the life-cycle of my salad. Dirt under the nails feels virtuous. But as the radio announced the time again and again, a bit of anxiety crept in. It’s only been two hours, I fretted. What would a month feel like—or a lifetime? Routines do carry you along more than you expect; I imagine the quality of the hours would change with weeks of work in the garden. Nonetheless, at this point I doubt I’ll point myself in a farming direction—I’ll have a windowbox or a little fenced-in plot, but not a piece of land as my livelihood. How I can accept this while acknowledging the centrality of agriculture confuses me, though—if I consider this important work, shouldn’t I take it on myself? Has my education somehow exempted, even prohibited, me from this basic act of living on, and caring for, the earth?