Soil Doesn’t Follow Trends
These past few weeks have been busy as I’m sure most of you are experiencing too. Mine has been filled with meetings, conferences, presentations, farm visits, homeschool activities, and trying to fit in planting somethings in my garden.
As I’ve talked to what feels like hundreds of people recently, there has been one reoccurring theme I have been brought back to
Soil Doesn’t Follow Trends Markets Do
So, what exactly do I mean.
Soil is a dynamic highly evolved ecosystem that in spite of all the good or bad we do, it has a single mission to be in a state of constant growth. It is home to organisms that are continually going through every stage of life in order to provide life to the plants that grow in it.
1. It has no idea what type of cropping system or gardening method you choose to use this year. It has no idea how many books you have read, conferences you have gone to, or how many speakers you have listened to telling you about farming and gardening systems.
2. It doesn’t give a flying fig about what the latest and greatest trend in agriculture is either. It is not reading all the gardening and farming magazines touting all the benefits of the next best super go-go grow juice or the magic results you see if you apply only 500# to the acre of the best fairy dust ever.
The only thing soil wants to do is be what it was intended to be which is a healthy, resilient, and highly efficient system in which life can grow. Get out of its way and let it happen. Stop buying into one method or product that promises yields beyond your imagination and tomatoes that Instagram dreams are made of.
Am I saying turn your back to all the progress we have made with science and technology-NO!
In my perfect world, in which I believe Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton are genuinely best friends and platonic despite Islands in The Stream, I want growers, farmers, gardeners to-
Start paying attention to the soil they have and work with it to apply science and technology in practical ways to harness its natural abilities.