“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.”

-Wendell Berry, American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer.

Our Connotations With “Dirt”.

What do you think when you hear the word “dirt”?

Does it conjure an image of your mom crouched in the grass with a giant sunhat on, planting brightly-colored flowers in your front yard?

Maybe it evokes that smell, geosmin, the “earthy odor that comes with rain”.

Do you imagine worms? Manual labor, and then contemplating your efforts over a cold glass of lemonade?

Maybe you see your dog, tracking little pawprints of mud all through the house, unaware of all the hard cleaning he/she has goofily undone. 

Turns out, we have history…

Our tie to the earth, to the soil, to the dirt, to the ground that holds us up as we walk, goes way back. 

You can see the hints of this in our language. 

The word “human” derives from the Latin humus, meaning soil or earth, and shares the same root (pun intended) as words like “humble” or “humanity”. 

This connection even has biblical roots. 

We see the notion that all of us come from dust, and “to dust we shall return”, in Ecclesiastes. 

And then there’s Adam, the biblical name of the very first human being, founder of the human race. This very name comes from the Hebrew word adamah, meaning ground. 

If you enjoy staying alive…

So our tie to the soil goes way back, with clear spiritual and etymological roots.

But it is also absolutely vital for our survival right now.

We rely on soil to feed us (agriculture), and to create a global climate that is actually hospitable for human beings. 

On top of this, we rely on soil to store carbon and support most of the world’s terrestrial ecosystems. 

Why is no one talking about this?

Herein lies the issue: Dirt is in big trouble, and you only just found out right now. 

And I’m willing to also bet that a lot of your friends also haven’t heard about what our good friend, the soil, has been going through lately. 

My latest obsession. 

After reading Dr. Jo Handelsman and Kayla Cohen’s (a Minerva alumnus!!) book A World Without Soil, I became kinda obsessed. 

I started to wonder what on earth was going on with our dirt, why we don’t hear so many people talking about it, and what can be done to help the situation. 

The more I learned, the more I felt you would probably like to hear the answers to these questions too. 

So here goes. 

What’s the deal with dirt?

#1: Soil is disappearing faster than it can regenerate. 

If you want to not run out of money, we generally agree that it’s wise to not spend more than you make. 

However, when it comes to soil, that’s exactly what we’re doing…and it doesn’t bode well.

How does soil actually get “used” up though?

That boils down to how we define “soil health”. 

According to the Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils, soil health is “the ability of the soil to sustain the productivity, diversity and environmental services of terrestrial ecosystems”.

So essentially, much like how people who never get enough rest tend to burn out, soil that is constantly overworked will become infertile, and thus erode. 

Now here’s an alarming statistic to start your day off terrified:

As of October 2025, the world’s soils have lost 133 billion tonnes of carbon since agriculture first emerged 12,000 years ago. 

To give you a rough idea of how much that actually is, a million tonnes is roughly the weight of 5 fully loaded cargo ships. 

A billion tonnes is 1,000 million tonnes. 

So imagine 5,000 cargo ships worth of soil. 

Here’s another way to look at it: 

Imagine you went into your backyard, filled a single coffee mug with dirt, and dumped it onto a degraded field. 

If you did this for every hour of your life (avg lifespan being 80 years), day and night- no sleep, no bathroom, nothing else but dirt and coffee mugs- it would take you 250 million lifetimes just to replace a single year of global soil loss. 

Oh, and by the way, there’s 11,999 years’ worth to go!

#2: Modern farming is degrading soil, making it erode even faster.

Ah, so remember that bowl of oatmeal you and I both had for breakfast this morning? 

Maybe you had some eggs or bacon. Dare I say, you even had a sip of coffee?

Yeah, so all of that was farmed somewhere, and if it was an animal product, it was likely from an animal that was grazing on a field, or fed on another crop. 

This is all brought to you by soil… with a twist! 

How we grew and harvested your breakfast also played a role in degrading the soil too. 

In fact, scientists now describe a little over one-third of all the world’s agricultural land as being “degraded”, an alarming predicament for someone like me who rather enjoys having food to eat.

That’s about 1.66 billion hectares, another incomprehensibly huge number. So let’s throw another creative analogy into the mix. 

1.66 billion hectares is basically 1.66 billion international soccer fields. You could probably walk from one end to the other in 1 or 2 minutes. 

Now imagine this: you start walking at birth. Every single minute, you cross one hectare. You never stop to sleep. You never get tired. You never even stop for a bathroom break.

By the time you reach the end of a long human life of 80 years, you would have walked across only about 42 million hectares.

To cover 1.66 billion hectares, you would need to live about forty lifetimes of nonstop walking.

Now try to wrap your head around that. 

That is how much land is at risk here. 

Why? 

In large part because of modern modes of agriculture, like monocropping, over-tilling, heavy machinery, and synthetic pesticide and fertilizer use which degrade soil through overgrazing, contamination, and erosion. 

#3: Soil is one of Earth’s biggest carbon sinks, but damaged soil releases carbon instead of storing it.

A little known super power of soil is carbon sequestration. 

This happens in various ways, but mostly takes place when plants convert CO₂ into organic compounds like glucose through photosynthesis, or when dead plants and critters are decomposed (shoutout to the amazing fungi that carry this out!!).

In an interview with Carbon Brief, Dr. Helena Cotler Ávalos, an agronomic engineer at the Geospatial Information Science Research Center in Mexico, remarks, “Life in the soil always starts by introducing organic matter.”

So naturally, with all this taking place in soil, over time, it accumulates a bunch of carbon. 

This is great for us humans, because it means we get to do a bunch of cool stuff, like breathe. 

Thanks to soil, our atmosphere has been able to accumulate the exact right proportion of oxygen for us to exist. 

However, like we mentioned before, since the dawn of agriculture 12,000 years ago, a lot of this soil has been degraded, and a lot of the carbon stores in only the top 2m of the world’s soil have been lost. 

To be more specific, that is about 8% of the total global soil carbon stocks.  

When the soil gets degraded, the carbon gets released, and it goes into our atmosphere, where it can contribute to things like climate change, acidification, and so on. 

#4: Soil loss threatens food security, which leads to more problems.

Around 95% of the food the world consumes is produced either directly or indirectly from soil. 

This means that when you combine the above problems with the fact that one of the things we need most to survive is food, you get a more urgent challenge: food insecurity.

And when you get food insecurity, a lot of ugly things follow: civil unrest, poverty, war, malnutrition, and overall disaster. 

I don’t think I need to really explain why food is important, but it’s worth throwing it out there:

If you like food, you should really love dirt. 

What can interdisciplinary misfits like us do to save the dirt?

Okay, so that’s all a huge bummer. 

The upside is…we have you! 

If you’re a big thinker looking for a meaningful passion project, career pivot, or obsessive new hobby, this goes out to you. 

And by the way, I’m not just talking to farmers, gardeners, scientists, and policy folks. 

I’m also looking at the entrepreneurs, architects, entrepreneurs, data nerds, engineers, and artists in the room!

It will be people with unique backgrounds, skillsets, and interests like yours who can tackle these sub-problems with success. 

So here are some of my ideas. 

#1: Measuring & Monitoring Soil Health (Data Science + Geochemistry + AI)

Do you love data and dirt? Well, this one’s for you.

We need better global soil monitoring, cheaper soil sensors, and AI models that can predict soil degradation before it gets bad. 

Make it cheap and scalable. Make it easy to use. 

After all, you can’t fix a problem when you can’t even define what is going on. 

This one is great for: data scientists, engineers, remote sensing specialists, and GIS designers.

#2: Making Regenerative Farming Scalable & Profitable (Agriculture + Engineering + Business)

Okay, if you have binged as many YouTube videos as I have about alternative farm techniques, this one will excite you. 

We need not only regenerative farming methods, but actually scalable regenerative farming methods. 

These are crop rotation systems, low-cost composting tech, soil-friendly machinery, and business models that don’t push farmers to compromise soil health in exchange for profit margins. 

The trick here isn’t exactly coming up with something new, but bridging the gap between solutions we already have, and business incentives to use them on a larger scale. 

How can we make regenerative farming work on a huge scale, so that big corporations see profit without compromising soil fertility?

Experts who would be great for this one: systems engineers, agricultural economists, product designers, ecologists, entrepreneurs. 

#3: Design Cities That Promote Soil Biodiversity (Architecture + Urban Planning + Engineering)

Loving dirt is also about loving the critters that live in the dirt.

This means not only protecting the dirt in remote forests and grasslands, but also the dirt in your city! 

We need architects, urban planners, and civil engineers to think about building “green cities” also as promoting soil fertility in cities. 

Right now, cities seal soil beneath concrete, preventing water absorption and carbon capture. 

Addressing this could mean incorporating more permeable pavements, green roofs,  and “living walls” into design. Similarly, additional regulations for “soil-per-square-meter” minimums could be beneficial.

#4: Treat Soil Degradation As A Public Health Issue (Medicine + Epidemiology + Nutrition + Agriculture)

When we think about the system which food moves through globally, it can be easy to forget that while soil is on one end of the system, our bodies are on the other. 

What goes into our bodies falls under the domain of public health. This is doctors, epidemiologists, and nutritionists.

Soil degradation reduces the micronutrients that end up in our food, impacting immunity, development, and mental health. 

That means the apple you snack on today is actually less nutritious than the apple your grandparents snacked on 50 years ago. 

We need public health professionals to invest in research linking soil mineral content and human disease, to conduct routine clinical screening for nutrient depletion, and really highlight to policy makers that  “healthy soil = healthy humans”. 

#5: Soil Insurance For Farmers (FinTech + Economics + Agriculture)

As it stands, farmers take on all the risk when transitioning to regenerative practices. So currently, they simply don’t have strong incentives to actually do so.

This is why we need actuaries, bankers, and economists to work on insurance products for soil restoration periods, micro-insurance for small farms, and risk-pooling models for climate-damaged land. 

Don’t wash the dirt off your hands. 

We should pick our battles in life. 

Choose whether to argue with our family at Thanksgiving. Ask if it will accomplish anything meaningful. Decide whether to leave an angry comment on a Facebook post. Consider whether to donate to yet another charity. 

Here’s why the problems with our dirt are different: it really is, in a very real way, a matter of life and death. 

The demise of soil, and therefore of agriculture, biodiversity, and the precisely calibrated conditions we need to stay alive, means the demise of us. 

This is then tempered with the fact that for every single person on the planet, there is an interaction with the soils, whether it’s by the foods you eat- taken from the soil- or what you throw in the trash- what inevitably goes into the soil. 

So when it comes to dirt, there is a call to action for everyone. Yes, varying levels of call to actions, but call to actions nevertheless. 

Ultimately, the future of the ground beneath your feet depends on these choices we all make. 

What will you choose?

Thought to Action

1. Set One “Next Try Intent”: Choose one thing from your failure archive and decide a small, doable step you’ll try next quarter — no perfection, just continuation.

2. Pause and Write Your “Failure Archive”: List three things you tried that didn’t go as planned this year. Don’t fix them. Instead, just name them and how they made you feel.

3. Reframe Effort as Evidence: Track one kind of effort for two weeks (reading time, daily creative minutes, meaningful talks). Let the action be the metric, not just the outcome.

4. Create a “Growth Pause”: Pick one thing you’ll do less of (doomscrolling, chores as avoidance). Put a boundary around it and note what space that creates for something nourishing. 

5. Rediscover Joy in the Small and Slow: Read one short piece of writing without pressure—no speed goals, no expectations.

Sources

DeLong, Catherine, et al. “The Soil Degradation Paradox: Compromising Our Resources When We Need Them the Most.” Sustainability, vol. 7, no. 1, 13 Jan. 2015, pp. 866–879, https://doi.org/10.3390/su7010866.

Dunne, Daisy. “World’s Soils Have Lost 133bn Tonnes of Carbon since the Dawn of Agriculture.” Carbon Brief, 25 Aug. 2017, www.carbonbrief.org/worlds-soils-have-lost-133bn-tonnes-of-carbon-since-the-dawn-of-agriculture/. Accessed 20 Jan. 2026.

Ellis, Hattie. “Is the Source of 95 Percent of Our Food in Trouble?” BBC Food, www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/soil. Accessed 20 Jan. 2026.

FAO. “FAO Knowledge Repository.” Fao.org, 2026, openknowledge.fao.org/items/dd568913-8938-4705-96c4-3f0ebb2a22b6. Accessed 20 Jan. 2026.

—. ITPS INTERGOVERNMENTAL TECHNICAL PANEL on SOILS towards a DEFINITION of SOIL HEALTH # 1. 2020.

Handelsman, Jo, and Kayla Cohen. A World without Soil : The Past, Present, and Precarious Future of the Earth beneath Our Feet. New Haven, Yale University Press, 2021.

IPCC. “Summary for Policymakers — Special Report on Climate Change and Land.” Ipcc.ch, Special Report on Climate Change and Land, 2019, www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/summary-for-policymakers/. Accessed 20 Jan. 2026.

Kopittke, Peter M, et al. “Healthy Soil for Healthy Humans and a Healthy Planet.” Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology, vol. 54, no. 3, 30 June 2023, pp. 1–12, https://doi.org/10.1080/10643389.2023.2228651.

Quiroz, Yanine. “Q&A: The Role of Soil Health in Food Security and Tackling Climate Change – Carbon Brief.” Carbon Brief, 29 Oct. 2025, www.carbonbrief.org/qa-the-role-of-soil-health-in-food-security-and-tackling-climate-change/?utm_source=chatgpt.com. Accessed 20 Jan. 2026.

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