Kiss the ground (and make a wish): soil science and hollywood

Abstract

When I was a young professor at Berkeley, my colleagues and I would frequently run into Jean Jenny, the wife of Hans Jenny, at various events on campus. Jean, a formidable force of nature with a deep interest in the future of soil science (and in the 1980's, its state of languishing in the backwaters of popular science), would frequently walk directly up to me and say, literally pointing her finger at me, ''you guys need to make soil sexy!!''. I would laugh, but I pondered the issue many times. As a young and then minor participant in the field, it seemed well beyond my ability, or even vision, that soil science would somehow be the stuff of popular appeal.Yet, here we are today. In the past decade or so, we have had high-end soil documentaries narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis (Dirt! The Movie) and Woody Harrelson (Kiss the Ground), with cameo appearances by people like Gisele Bu ¨ndchen and Tom Brady. How much sexier can we get!? Soil is on the cover of The New York Times Magazine (Velasquez-Manoff 2018), and the op-ed pages of the Washington Post (Barker and Pollen 2015). At this point, it is maybe useful to examine what this new-found sexiness means, for soils and for Soil Science, and consider if, or how, we might better create our own sciencebased stories about soil and human society.Narrative framing, or more simply -telling stories, is a fundamental human quality. ''We tell ourselves stories in order to live'' (Didion 1979). But our stories can also be wrong, and ultimately destructive. The new wave of Hollywood soil documentaries, and particularly ''Kiss the Ground'', tell a story of hope, coupled with a ''happy ending''. This is the approximate story line about soils that pervades the core of this Hollywood narrative: ''We'' have, in the recent decades, abused soils through industrialized farming, creating or contributing to looming food and climate challenges. But wait! ''We'' can change this, and ''we''can solve our food and climate challenges by getting back to some basics, regaining lost arts and knowledge from our agricultural past or from traditional practices. ''There could be a way to eat food that heals the planet!'' Soil is the answer! Pan to a shot of a smiling Woody Harrelson, then fade to black. THE END.

Surface‐soil carbon stocks greater under well‐managed grazed pasture than row crops

“…The effects of climate change are daunting, but agricultural soil C sequestration may be part of the solution (Amelung et al., 2020; Zomer et al., 2017). Soil C storage, a key function of soils, can help mitigate climate change and ameliorate its consequences globally (Wiesmeier et al., 2019; but see Amundson, 2022), while providing other environmental and agronomic benefits. Increasing soil organic C (SOC) has the potential to reduce eutrophication of surface and ground waters by reducing leaching, runoff, and erosion from agricultural land (Hussain et al., 2019; Jackson, 2020; Motew et al., 2019; Porter et al., 2015).…”

Soil biodiversity and nature-mimicry in agriculture; the power of metaphor?

“…In the past decade, with the support of many soil scientists, the metaphorical use of soil biodiversity, similar to soil health (Janzen et al, 2021), has been instrumental in focusing attention on soils in policy and public circles. Yet, we question if such a metaphorical use of the term soil biodiversity is helpful if we are to advance our understanding of soil ecology to inform context-relevant approaches for sustainable soil management, beyond “holistic approaches” that enhance soil life and multifunctionality (Bender et al, 2016; El Mujtar et al, 2019) and magical ‘‘win–win’’ solutions (Box 3,4; Amundson, 2022).…”

Support for “we” visions and for broadening the scope in the debate on alternative forms of agriculture

“…Some of their statements stress adamantly that stakeholders need to actively influence the direction of soil research: “future soil science research can only be successful if stakeholders are part of the research effort in transdisciplinary projects” (Keesstra et al, 2016), “scientists need to listen and learn the language, priorities and procedures of the business world to facilitate change” (Davies, 2017), “we call for improved research communication and greater stakeholder involvement to shape the future soils research agenda and ensure the sustainable use of soils across multiple areas of society” (Cimpoiasu et al, 2021). In this context, Amundson (2022) considers that the disconnect he sees “between an elite group of motivated citizens, and the people who manage the land that all these changes are intended to occur on, is an enormous blind spot—for both environmental advocates and many scientists—in terms of what can be realistically expected to change over decadal time frames.”…”

“…The key encouragement for proposing such a reflexion in the present article came from the recent publication by the journal Biogeochemistry of a provocative opinion by Amundson (2022), who fustigates the way a recent wave of Hollywood documentaries approach soil-related issues and propose to deal with them more sustainably. A natural scientist “who must labor in the world of fact and reality”, Amundson makes a number of well-grounded points with which it would appear difficult to argue.…”