{"id":45956,"date":"2019-05-05T06:59:14","date_gmt":"2019-05-05T11:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=45956"},"modified":"2019-05-05T06:59:18","modified_gmt":"2019-05-05T11:59:18","slug":"the-story-of-soil-is-the-story-of-all-of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=45956","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Story of Soil Is the Story of All of Us\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"content-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.yesmagazine.org\/planet\/soil-story-community-earth-annie-leonard-tom-newmark-20190422\">\u201cThe Story of Soil Is the Story of All of Us\u201d<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Annie Leonard and Tom Newmark on how they came to see soil as a solution to one of our biggest environmental problems\u2014and as a tool to build more resilient communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.yesmagazine.org\/planet\/soil-story-community-earth-annie-leonard-tom-newmark-20190422\/1-handsinsoil.jpg\/image\" alt=\"1. HandsInSoil.jpg\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wendell Berry called it \u201cthe great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all.\u201d&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fao.org\/soils-2015\/news\/news-detail\/en\/c\/277682\/\">Ninety-five percent of our food<\/a>&nbsp;is grown in it, it stores and filters our water and provides a home for the majority of life on the planet, and yet most of us rarely pay much attention to it. We dump poisonous chemicals on it, inject it with synthetic nutrients, slash it with plows, strip it of its natural diversity, and bury our trash in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But soil has a story to tell us, and we are all a part of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For as long as humans have engaged in agriculture, and even before, we\u2019ve relied on healthy soil and the organisms it supports. And for most of that time, we\u2019ve cultivated good soil. Early societies developed food production systems that actually enhanced soil fertility and food abundance, such as with \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2002\/03\/1491\/302445\/\">terra preta<\/a>,\u201d or Amazonian dark earth, and the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.speroforum.com\/a\/17292\/Forests-helped-start-Little-Ice-Age#.XKQBP5NKhuU\">food forests of the Mayans<\/a>. We planted, harvested, and consumed but also took care to nourish and regenerate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What changed? At some point, humans started relating to the planet differently, and our emotional and spiritual connection to the earth was severed. Whether the shift happened during the Neolithic Revolution, when humans settled and established agriculture, or the Age of Enlightenment, when nature became viewed as an object to be observed and controlled, the result was a disconnect from nature. We became, in the words of Daniel Quinn in his book\u00a0<em>Ishmael<\/em>, \u201cTakers\u201d and not \u201cLeavers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe Story of Soil Is the Story of All of Us\u201d Annie Leonard and Tom Newmark on how they came to see soil as a solution to one of our biggest environmental problems\u2014and as a tool to build more resilient communities. Wendell Berry called it \u201cthe great connector of our lives, the source and destination [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[25807,319,1912,1091,25808,25809],"class_list":["post-45956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-annie-leonard","tag-food","tag-food-production","tag-soil","tag-tom-newmark","tag-wendell-berry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45957,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45956\/revisions\/45957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}