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MANHATTAN, Kan. -- People walk on it, plant their gardens in it and build foundations over it. Yet most people do not give soil a second thought. To many, it is just dirt.
But Chuck Rice, distinguished professor of soil microbiology at Kansas State University, disagrees. “Dirt is misplaced soil,” he said. “Soil is more than dirt. When people see water, they can see clean water or dirty water. But soil is just something people walk on without thinking about what’s in it.”
That is why the Soil Science Society of America has embarked on a general awareness campaign to help people understand the importance of soil to daily life. The campaign, called “The Story of Soil,” was launched last October in conjunction with the soil society’s 75th anniversary. It is comprised mainly of three video public service announcements, available in both English and Spanish, and a website with more information.
Rice was the 2011 president of Soil Science Society of America and head of the committee responsible for the campaign. Gary Pierzynski, interim dean, K-State College of Agriculture and director, K-State Research and Extension, is the 2012 president of the soil society and was also involved on the committee.
“The role of the PSAs was to make the non-agriculture community, the urban communities, aware of the value of soils,” Rice said.
Each PSA focuses on a specific benefit of healthy soil. The first explains how soil acts as a filtering agent for water, cleaning out human or industrial waste from water. Whether it comes out of a bottle or out of the tap, all water has passed through soil at some point.
The second focuses on the importance of healthy soil in producing nutritious food. Soil that is healthy and has a good balance of organic matter will produce more nutritious crops – like wheat – for people to eat in bread, breakfast cereal, pasta and other food staples. Healthy soil even indirectly influences meat, for example, by producing high quality forages for cattle to graze.
The final PSA directly ties the health of soil to the health of people with one simple, little-known fact: There are more organisms in a tablespoon of soil than there are people on the planet, and those organisms are used to treat human diseases.
Rice said antibiotics such as penicillin and streptomycin come from soil microbes. Other drugs, like immunosuppressants or anti-cancer drugs, are also made from natural products derived from soil.
According to Rice, the scientific community has barely even begun to tap into the diversity of soil microbes.
“We only know one percent of those organisms in that spoonful of soil,” Rice said. “It’s kind of an untapped reservoir.”
The direct tie between soil and human drugs emphasizes the importance of maintaining and enhancing the health of our soil.
So, how healthy is the soil?
According to Rice, healthy soil has high organic matter. “Black or brown soils indicate high organic matter,” he said. “The more organic matter, the healthier that soil is from a microbial point of view.”
Rice said soil in the U.S. is relatively healthy when compared to other areas, like southeast Asia or Africa. Nevertheless, he estimated Kansas soil has lost approximately half of the organic matter it had when it was primarily grasslands. Still more soil is being lost to what Rice called urban sprawl, or the expansion of cities.
Degraded soil can often be restored—with time and proper management. Some areas of land with high erosion are placed in the conservation reserve program, or taken out of production and put back into grasses to restore soil by giving organic matter time to rebuild. Rice said planting high residue crops, such as wheat or corn, and using minimum tillage practices also helps to rejuvenate the organic matter.
Rice is hopeful the soil science society will do a follow-up campaign with outside funding. “The first thing is making people think that soils are important,” he said, “just as important as water or air.” Once that idea is planted, Rice said he believes the follow-up should help people understand what degrades soil or makes it better.
To find more information about the Story of Soil campaign, or to watch the PSAs, visit The Story of Soil.
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