Sometimes I get asked about my work. Sometimes people hear 'soil' and don't ask any more questions. In an effort to learn how to better communicate my work, I took a science communication course this last semester. Here is an example editorial that I wrote as my final project:
“This isn’t dirt,” he asserted to an attentive class. “It is soil.” While he said this, my instructor let a handful of dark, earthly aromatic, crumbly soil fall through his fingers. I, a skeptical undergraduate, had never heard the distinction and thought it was all just semantics. Why the stipulation? Status, I thought. To be called a ‘dirt scientist’, I would admit, didn’t sound nearly as important as the alliterative ‘soil scientist.’ It didn’t take long, however, before I would agree that there was certainly a difference between dirt and soil.
While both words may denote basically the same meaning, I think it’s safe to say that they don’t connote the same thing. ‘Dirt’ can imply filth, something tread upon, even something lower in class – “dirt poor,” for example. ‘Soil,’ however, doesn’t have such extraneous meanings. Like air and water, it is an important part of our environment, and it deserves the respect of a respectable name.
Most of us understand the importance of studying air and water. These are environmental resources that we directly consume, and research on them has led to quantifiable standards for quality. Soil, on the other hand, lacks such standards, perhaps because it is not directly consumed. Without such quantifiable standards, soil is usually only labeled as “healthy” or “unhealthy” at best, where a healthy soil has many desirable characteristics, and essentially, an unhealthy soil lacks those characteristics. Just think of the societal confusion if we only labeled air and water as “healthy” or “unhealthy”.
The ambiguity of soil quality, or health, is alarming given recent data on soil degradation. The UN Environmental Program on Global Assessment of Soil Degradation reported that 40% of agricultural land has been degraded due to human activity and that 6% is in such a state that only major capital investment could restore it to its original, productive capacity (Oldeman, 1994). In a report by the National Research Council (1993), protecting soil quality was deemed as important as protecting air and water quality and considered integral to national environmental policy. The report goes on to recommend to the USDA and USEPA that there be quantifiable standards and cost-effective monitoring methods to evaluate the impacts of farm management on soil health. Such standards would help codify soil protection policy.
Soil protection policy is not new in the United States, but it, too, has often been ambiguous. The USDA began urging soil protection in the 1890’s when abandonment and westward expansion were the cure for deteriorated land, but it wasn’t until 1936, with the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act (SCDAA), that there was legislation to protect soil quality. This act only supported soil conservation tangentially, however. While it paid growers for taking poor quality land out of production, it was actually a commodity-control policy in disguise and aimed primarily at reducing crop surpluses and mitigating falling commodity prices. In the 1970’s, when commodity prices sky-rocked, the government essentially abandoned the SCDAA and promoted the expansion of agricultural production, often at the expense of soil quality. Without clear definitions for quality it was easy to demean soil conservation policy. So, while ‘dirt’ had left the lexicon of soil conservation policy, there was still no status for soil.
More recently, soil scientists have attempted to change this. Some attempts at defining soil quality have been mostly theoretically – implying both agricultural productivity and environmental stewardship – but applied field research takes the theory and defines standards for soil health in relation to cropping systems. Studies in annual crops suggest using certain sets of tests – like pH, compaction, microbial activity, among others – to quantify soil health. Quantified standards allow for ratings of various land management practices which optimize agricultural productivity and environmental sustainability. In orchards and vineyards, however, management and timescale are quite different, and little work has been done to define proper management for these perennial crops. That is the gap that my work stands to fill. It is not known whether the methods for quantifying soil quality in annual crop systems would be appropriate for orchards and vineyards. Developing methods for testing soil quality in these perennial systems could attract a new community of growers to take interest in soil health.
Some growers are already convinced of the importance of studying soil quality on their farms. Jay H. – a Lake Erie region grape grower – is one of them. “I am absolutely convinced that maintaining soil health is extremely (even critically) important in sustaining the long-term productivity of any vineyard (or other crop for that matter).” For those needing more persuasion, interest in soil quality could be augmented if research shows a relationship between soil health and their bottom line. Management practices which enhance soil health would gain popularity if soil quality was linked with crop productivity or land value. Providing evidence that soil health improves yield and land value could give growers further incentive to manage soil in ways which enhance soil health.
The aforementioned report by the National Research Council indicates the need for environmental policy to monitor soil quality, and the report challenges that “research should be directed at the design of market-based incentives to protect soil quality.” This is the intent of my work. My hope is for growers to be proactive in monitoring their soil’s quality, determining standards, and even helping to develop policy such that they are rewarded for land stewardship. Air and water have quantifiable standards for safety and health. Soil, as another component of the biosphere, will likely have them in the future, and by using environmental, economic, and policy incentives, there will be more than just semantics separating dirt and soil.
References:
National Research Council. 1993. Soil and Water Quality: An Agenda for Agriculture Committee on Long-Range Soil and Water Conservation. Board on Agric., National Resource Council. National Academy Press: Washington, D.C.
Oldeman, L.R. 1994. The Global Extent of Soil Degradation. In: Soil Resilience and Sustainable Land Use. D.J. Greenland and I. Szabolcs, ed. CAB Int.: Wallingford, Oxon, England.
