Cultivating an Ecological Conscience: Essays from a Farmer Philosopher

On Becoming Lovers of the Soil

284 On Becoming Lovers of the Soil I have seen so many delicate shapes, forms, and colors in soil profiles that, to me, soils are beautiful.1 —Hans Jenny As farms and farmers continue to disappear from the landscape in many parts of the world, citizens have increasingly begun to ask themselves whether they should become more concerned about farm issues. This is a good question. Why should we be concerned about what happens to farms or farmers? After all, food is more abundant and available in global supermarkets today than ever before. For the most part, our food is safe. Industrialized nations spend less of their earned income on food than ever before. And all this despite the fact that farm numbers have been declining steadily for almost a century. So why should we be concerned about farms and farmers? Isn’t everything just fine? Still, at some level, most of us are concerned. But why? The Heart of the Matter I think we should be concerned because the issues at stake go to the very core of who we are as human beings on a planet that nurtures our life. If I really want to understand why I should be concerned about farm issues, I have to look beyond questions of food safety and environmental protection . I have to begin exploring my real connection to the soil and how that connection, or lack of connection, affects who I become as a person and the kind of society I create with others. This is an edited version of an essay that first appeared in For All Generations: Making World Agriculture More Sustainable, edited by J. Patrick Madden and Scott G. Chaplowe, 101–14 (Glendale, Calif.: World Sustainable Agriculture Association, 1997). 285 On Becoming Lovers of the Soil Our modern industrialized society has gone through a divorce. We have become divorced from the soil. And I submit that until we heal that divorce and become lovers of the soil again, many of our social problems will go unsolved, including our food safety and environmental protection problems. This essay is an invitation of sorts: it is an invitation to all of us to become lovers of the soil again as a way of healing our soils and our souls. Ivan Illich and some of his friends recently called attention to such an invitation. Their invitation was specifically addressed to colleagues in the field of philosophy . But I would suggest that it is an invitation that applies to us all: The ecological discourse about planet earth, global hunger, threats to life, urges us to look down at the soil, humbly, as philosophers. We stand on soil, not on earth. From soil we come, and to soil we bequeath our excrements and remains. . . . Our generation has lost its grounding in both soil and virtue. We were torn from the bonds to soil—the connections which limited action, making practical virtue possible—when modernization insulated us from plain dirt, from toil, flesh, soil and grave. The economy into which we have been absorbed . . . transforms people into interchangeable morsels of population, ruled by the laws of scarcity. Commons and homes are barely imaginable to persons hooked on public utilities and garaged in furnished cubicles. Bread is a mere foodstuff, if not calories or roughage. To speak of friendship, religion, and joint suffering as a style of conviviality—after the soil has been poisoned and cemented over—appears like academic dreaming to people randomly scattered in vehicles, offices, prisons and hotels.2 Illich and his friends then go on to say that they also lament “the neglect for soil in the discourse carried on among board-room ecologists.”3 I realize that an invitation to become lovers of the soil is an alien request . We cannot take this request to a national government, the United Nations, or environmental organizations as part of the sustainable agriculture debate. Food activists cannot take this issue to their members. University researchers will not be interested in exploring the topic, and organic farmers are unlikely to be receptive. It is certainly not a project that will attract funding from a private foundation. 286 Cultivating an Ecological Conscience However, I submit that becoming lovers of the soil is absolutely fundamental to the work that all of us are doing. Soil is the connection to ourselves. From soil we come, and to soil we return. If we are disconnected from it...