SAVE OUR SOILS
Jana van Hummel | O5 | December 2021
An introduction into the urgency of a regenerative revolution in our agricultural landscape
As a landscape architect to be, the soil underneath our feet is an important study subject to me It is the base for plant roots, the home of a lot of biodiversity and the foundation on which we build our public spaces and buildings The design interventions I propose for aboveground are therefore always highly connected to what happens underground. As my master’s in landscape architecture progresses, I realise more each day how the soil is a very important key to the large challenges we face today due to anthropogenic impact. One of them being the degradation and loss of the soil in agricultural areas all around the world.
Right after the Second World War ended in The Netherlands in 1945, activist farmer Sicco Mansholt was appointed as minister of agriculture His job was to make sure the Dutch would never be hungry again. His policy played a big part in the rationalisation, mechanisation and upscaling of the agricultural landscape – the start of the Dutch Green Revolution Agriculture had to become as efficient and productive as possible, driving farmers into a factory-like world of maximum production growth. This meant the end of small-scale farms with a rich diversity in crops, where farmers worked in a holistic way together with the natural
local circumstances of soil, water and climate. The solution to a crisis turned out to be a nightmare for diversity, spatial quality, crop resilience and even human health Mansholt came to regret his part in this ‘revolution’ until the day he died (Vanheste, Nooit meer honger, nooit meer oorlog).
This historical development of agriculture in The Netherlands I find very tangible in the rural landscape, as most of it consists of cultural farmland. It makes me realise that as a Dutch landscape architect, I must gain a better understanding of the relationship between agricultural practices, the spatial layout of the cultural landscape and soil health. So, I took the opportunity to study the agricultural clay landscape of northern Groningen during my latest landscape design studio at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam1. I discovered that Groningen is in fact at the forefront of battling the mentioned soil crisis I dove into the world of regenerative agriculture and realised there is a serious need and possibility for a revolution. The responsibility for this change not solely lying with the farmers and politicians, but also with landscape designers. In this essay, I share some of the findings I made during this design and research process through four chapters
our Soils, Jana van Hummel, O5, December 2021
The soil crisis
We need to talk about soil. 95% of all life on land is in the soil Especially the first 30 centimetres, the topsoil, is full of life: fungi, bacteria and other microorganisms, insects and invertebrates like earthworms live between the plant roots. A great cycle of nutrient exchange between plants and these life forms make the soil healthy. Slowly we are starting to realise that everything that lives aboveground is dependent on what happens underground2 (Het excuus van de Boerenleenbank, 5:05) Healthy soil sequesters carbon, functions as a sponge for fresh water and is the source of healthy food and therefore our health Dr Christine Jones, an Australian soil ecologist, rightfully states that soil carbon is the driver for farm profit and that we should try to get as much carbon into our soils as possible (Brown, Dirt to Soil, 44-45).
Yet we have depleted our soils immensely with the agricultural practices of the past decades Tilling the land to plant seeds breaks the topsoil and causes soil erosion. Spraying the land with chemical
fertiliser and liquid manure kills the microorganisms in the soil and makes the crops addicted to more chemicals, as the soil can’t provide nutrients anymore. Chemical pesticides don’t just kill the pests, but all life on the field and also form a health hazard for humans. The practice of resting bare land between crops causes the evaporation of precious freshwater Heavy machinery causes soil compaction, so there is no space for air and water left
Our conventional agricultural system proved to be bad for the climate, bad for animal and human wellbeing and is exhausting our soils. Since chemical agriculture grew in the ’70’s we’ve lost one-third of the world’s topsoil (Kiss the Ground, 18:40-19:00). The UN states that we only have 60 harvests left In other words, in 60 years the soil won’t be fit to grow crops anymore (Kiss the Ground, 24:30-24:50) It is clear - we are literally losing ground and we need a revolution: we must save our soils.
2 Jeroen Onrust: “Alles wat bovengronds leeft is afhankelijk van wat ondergronds gebeurt.”
Save our Soils, Jana van Hummel, O5, December 2021
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The farmland as an ecosystem
To get a better understanding of northern Groningen, the students and teachers of our latest landscape design studio3 went on a three-day field4 trip there Walking and driving around, I took in the spatial qualities of this large, open landscape. I saw farmsteads popping up like little green islands in a beautiful sea of crop fields, as far as the eye could see. There was a certain rhythm be found in this strongly organised landscape. Field after field with long lines of soil ridges and tractor tracks, lined by long tree lanes disappearing into the distance.
Here the fertile clay soil proved to be the Groninger gold. For many centuries Groninger farmers have been some of the richest in the world. Their potatoes and wheat feed many people worldwide today. When I stepped into the fields to take a closer look at the soil by digging some of it up and going through it with my hands, I saw the fragility of these grounds In every field I dug, I found no worms, no insects and no living roots in the heavily compacted clay of a bare field after its crops had been harvested. I suddenly realised I hadn’t seen any birds flying around either. The fields appeared to have become ecological deserts The seemingly endless golden farmland I had previously romanticised in fact was a harsh factory of mass production. Far from natural and with an impending expiration date. I wondered, have we lost our relationship with the ground?
The question arose: how can we secure feeding this planet’s growing amount of people when we extract all life from our farmland? How can we cure these depleted agricultural grounds for a resilient future? I dove into the world of regenerative agriculture and I came to the realisation that the answer is beneath our feet. We need to blur the line between nature and culture and work together with the local soil conditions instead of fighting them In the case of Groningen, this means for instance being a lot
smarter about the water system. Less manipulating the freshwater supply and more embracing our natural resources. If we do so, we would be growing our best food crops in the higher and more porous grounds and we would be using the lower and wetter grounds as meadows. Similar to the way the first farmers of this region worked the land – more harmoniously collaborating with nature.
As American forerunners in regenerative agriculture and members of The Soil Health Academy state, anyone who grows food in soil should follow five principles, that are based on biomimicry5:
1. Limit mechanical, chemical and physical disturbance of the soil, as it breaks the soil structure.
2. Keep the soil covered at all times with a natural ‘coat of armour’, as bare soil is an anomaly.
3. Strive for the highest diversity in plant and animal species, as nature knows no monoculture.
4. Maintain living roots in the ground throughout the year as the soil needs a constant carbon supply.
5. Integrate animals with food crops, as nature does not function without animals (Brown, Dirt to Soil, 1-3).
When we start looking at the farmland as an ecosystem instead of as a factory, we can restore our relationship with the ground. We should be creating life – aboveground and underground –that creates more soil and in turn creates more life again. It all might sounds so simple and obvious, but it would actually mean a great transition in our system thinking – no longer farming from the perspective of maximum production and export, but from the perspective of soil health.
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Save our Soils, Jana van Hummel, O5, December 2021
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The responsible farmer
At the very northern edge of the Dutch coast, on the Dijksterweg in Hornhuizen, Groningen, lies Horaholm, the Westers family farm. The longstretched farm6 covers 120 hectares of young sea clay polder7 Neighbouring farmers grow seed potatoes, sugar beets or onions on large, monocultural fields. It is a bare landscape with neatly mowed roadside edges. “We do it differently,” Erwin Westers tells me during a video call8 Erwin split their four large fields into twenty smaller flexible fields. Here he grows a mix of many different crops – consumption crops, such as carrots, peas, kale, potatoes and vegetable seeds, always combined with cover crops, such as grassclover. This brings a lot more diversity to the landscape.
Erwin agreed to speak with me after I approached him with my curiosity about regenerative agriculture. He shows his face on camera for a brief moment, happy to have a look at who’s on the other side, but he quickly tells me he has to multitask if he wants to finish his work today. “This is the fourth talk I have this week with somebody interested in our practices.” This gives me a hopeful feeling – apparently, the topic is catching on in our country. So, after a minute or two, his phone disappears in the pocket of his blue overalls and we start talking while he sorts his potatoes.
Erwin's father Harm was a progressive farmer who founded an agricultural nature association in 1998, based on the ideology that agriculture and nature should merge instead of creating friction. Harm believed a farm can accommodate natural values just as well as other landscapes. On Horaholm, this reflects in many ways Here we find thickets, ecological banks with reed and a dike covered in wildflowers bordering the crop fields These elements are home to many insects as well as birds like Montagu's harriers and larks. In the open areas, Erwin makes sure field birds such as lapwings find a place to nest in spring. “There are two corners of land I want to design for more permanent nature development.” Erwin farms biodynamically, according to anthroposophical principles. He believes we are all part of a larger
whole and as a farmer, he should respect nature and collaborate with it.
The Westers can be considered true pioneers “The best development path to do this, farming differently than the conventional way, has not yet crystallised,” Erwin explains “We believe the soil is the only key to health, so we farm from that perspective, instead of aiming for the highest quantities A strong, healthy plant that does not get ‘ill’, is healthier for us humans to consume and will not be attacked by pests ” Erwin tells me that simple insects like lice cannot digest complicated food chains in strong plants – they will always find the weaker plants. Pests are in that sense nature’s cleaners So, if you farm well, in time you won’t even need field edges that attract natural pest enemies, as there won’t be any pests for them to eat. In conventional practices, plants are grown on degraded soil and therefore don’t get enough nutrients to become strong on their own The farmer will plant the crops further apart to hinder the pests and perhaps add natural field edges The crops are fed with manure for a growth spurt and become dependent on this ‘medicine’ “All of this is symptom management! In nature we also don’t see piles of manure being moved around. I want to farm in a preventive way and let the plants do their work.”
If we were to grab a handful of Erwin’s soil, we would find loose clay with a cottage cheese-like texture. This is where plant roots grow best – in an oxygen-poor environment, between all the right bacteria and microbes that are a part of the plant’s nutrient cycle Erwin makes sure his farmland is fully covered at all times, so that the soil is provided with nutrition year-round “The pretty golden fields full of sunflowers and wheat we see in summer are actually showing us dying plants. The soil biology obviously has nothing to eat there. Green cover crops to keep the photosynthesis process going are missing.” Horaholm is very much alive. “We see proof of life every day The day after we harvest the carrots, they are covered in spider webs. During the wheat harvest, we find lots of ladybugs and other beetles. Our soil is improving every day.”
Soils, Jana van Hummel, O5,
The responsible landscape architect
The story of Erwin Westers9 about his way of collaborating with nature makes so much sense to me. A question comes to my mind: why is all the information I find from Dutch knowledge institutes focussing on strip cultivation10 and natural field edges and not on creating the healthiest soil possible year-round? “We are dealing with a serious knowledge gap, and with something I call the ‘grandfather effect’11,” Erwin explains This entails reasoning from certainties and traditions when running a farm because that is the way grandfather used to do it. According to Erwin, many farmers do, as well as universities. And this is a big problem if we want to move towards a more sustainable agricultural system “Strip cultivation is a reactive form of farming, whilst we could be healing the soil. The farmers are the doctors of the future. But then they have to know what they are doing. And right now, the farmers are the problem.”
Those who want to innovate and experiment with more future-proof ways of farming, have to make this happen themselves. Getting financial support from the government or from banks to make the transition from conventional to responsible ways of farming is hard, as the knowledge about those methods is not well disclosed and therefore policy falls behind. Microbiological discoveries that are important for farmers don’t come from the Wageningen University, the number one knowledge institute for food and agriculture, but from foreign universities. “In The Netherlands, the used agriculture model is all about managing and controlling, opposed to prevention models they use in countries like Germany, Austria and Australia.”
And so Erwin is often browsing international networks to educate himself about the most up-todate knowledge.
The fact that the knowledge is out there and that pioneers like Erwin Westers are actively looking for it gives me hope. But rolling out a regenerative strategy over the entire Dutch agricultural landscape, as I feel is very necessary if we want to keep farming on our soils, cannot be executed easily and quickly if we depend on the curious few. It crosses property borders and many disciplines. It demands a great change in the way we all think about the system. The farmer, the consumer, the politician – there is a gap to be closed I don’t have the solution right here, but I realise I would like to be, or even should be, a part of it.
The revolution demands a new narrative for agriculture One from the perspective of soil, landscape and health. People need to realise we are all part of one big ecosystem. That requires a great campaign in this time we live in, where it’s so simple to buy plastic-wrapped food in supermarkets, without realising where it comes from, how it was farmed and if the farmer received an honest price for it We have lost our connection with our soil when it comes to food I do believe that consumers are willing to spend their money responsibly if the distance between them and the farmer would be smaller. This is where the landscape architect comes in. As a landscape architect to be I feel it is my responsibility to understand all the underlying knowledge about our agricultural system and the soil crisis we are in and to translate this into inspirational future visions Visions that show what we can accomplish when we all do our part More listening, more exchanging knowledge, more celebrating our cultural history We can stop losing ground and start building it.
9 Westers, interview
10 With strip cultivation several crops are grown in strips next to each other on a plot, providing a higher crop diversity, aiming at preventing pest spread
Save our Soils, Jana van Hummel, O5, December 2021
11 Translated from Dutch ‘grootvadereffect’
Sources
An introduction into the urgency of a regenerative revolution in our agricultural landscape
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Thomas Vanheste, ‘Nooit meer honger, nooit meer oorlog: Wil de Europeaan die dat nog gelooft nu opstaan?’, De Correspondent, 3 september 2014
The soil crisis
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Kiss the Ground, directed by Joshua Tickell and Rebecca Harrell Tickell (Benenson Productions, Big Picture Ranch, The Redford Center, 2020), 18:40-19:00 and 24:30-24:50, https://www.netflix.com/watch/81321999?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C0%2Cadd657a463dca37db90 dd2c29dc598e3f0ef6bfc%3A20ebb077a2cf491620a95c33abd1d5fc4930462f%2Cadd657a463dca37db90dd 2c29dc598e3f0ef6bfc%3A20ebb077a2cf491620a95c33abd1d5fc4930462f%2Cunknown%2C%2C
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Het excuus van de Boerenleenbank, Zembla, season 17, episode 1, directed by Ton van der Ham (BNNVARA, 2021), https://www.npostart.nl/zembla/28-01-2021/BV_101404400, 5:05
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Gabe Brown, Dirt to Soil: One Family’s Journey into Regenerative Agriculture, 1st ed. (Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018), 44-45
The farmland as an ecosystem
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Gabe Brown, Dirt to Soil: One Family’s Journey into Regenerative Agriculture, 1st ed. (Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018), 1-3
The responsible farmer
– Erwin Westers, interview by author, December 9, 2021
The responsible landscape architect
– Erwin Westers, interview by author, December 9, 2021
Save our Soils, Jana van Hummel, O5, December 2021 7