By Adam Rabiner
Note: Symphony of the Soil was first shown by the Safe Food Committee in October 2016 to an enthusiastic and well attended audience. With nearly one hundred films screened since our 2009 debut, Plow to Plate has decided that each December we will bring back a very special film for those who may have missed it the first time. Below, slightly edited, is the review published in the Gazette in 2016.
Movie makers think hard about what they call their creations. A film’s title is like a short advertisement, ideally pithy, attention grabbing, relevant and informative. Symphony of the Soil succeeds at this level. You know what it’s about, soil. But why a symphony? Here’s where filmmaker, Deborah Koons, gets to play with alliteration and metaphor. Like a symphony, healthy, living soil - which is 50% solid and 50% empty spaces, including air and water vapor (as opposed to mere lifeless dirt, a much maligned substance whose principal adjectival meaning is the antonym for clean) is composed of many elements that together make up something complex – a sum greater than its parts. Instruments make music. Soil, a crazy mixture of non-living minerals and rocks together with living bacteria, protozoa, insects, and fungi, (as well as their chemical by products) is the foundation of life itself.
Adam’s name in the Old Testament derives from the Hebrew adamah which means “earth.” Similarly, Eve’s name comes from Chava/Havah meaning “living.” Symphony of the Soil makes these biblical allusions at its tail end, a coda following one hundred minutes of biology, geography, geology, chemistry and ecology lessons. It’s nice to see an example of science and religion co-existing so well on the same page.
Symphony of the Soil shows and tells how soil is born, in different places, times, and in varied ways: on the Arctic frozen Norwegian glacial tundra, wherever oceans and seas meet land, and in lava fields created by volcanic eruptions of ashy tephra. It traces how soil matures over millions of years, from infancy as non-organic clay or mud carried down icy cold rivers before settling, through to old age as biologically rich and productive prairie soil (mollisol) or at the bottom of an ancient mossy peat bog. Soil has parents and comes from somewhere. Loess is a loamy deposit formed by the wind; eluvium is created from an overflowing river; glaciers melt and drop their materials; some soil forms in place.
As an orchestra is composed of various string, wind and percussion instruments, soil is diverse too and highly dependent on climate. The family includes entisol (baby soil); inceptisol (young soil); ultisol (old soil); the aforementioned mollisol, with its good infiltration and water storage capabilities that makes up 22.5% of the soil in the United States compared to 7% globally; alfisol (forest soil – another good soil and 12% worldwide but 18-19% of the U.S. - again above average); oxisol (tropical soil); andisol (volcanic soil); histosol (wetland soil); vertisol (clay soil); spodosol (cemented soil); gelisol (permafrost soil); and aridisol (desert soil).
There’s another way in which the word “symphony” is a good metaphor for this film and it’s to do with the way the documentary slowly unfolds, its gradual thematic transitions, the stories it tells, the big argument it ultimately makes. Symphony of the Soil’s internal almost mathematical logic is like a geometric proof paralleling the path of an extended musical composition, classical or modern, which however groundbreaking or novel, must also follow rules and norms.
Symphony of the Soil embarks with hard science and gradually finds itself solidly in the realm of political science, economics and agricultural policies. However complex the initial science - involving enzymes, carbon capture and release, oxidation and photosynthetic chemical reactions, nitrogen fixing, nutrient transfer via symbiotic relationships between plants and fungi, carbohydrates emitted by plant roots, the chemical (nitrogen, phosphorous, sulphur, magnesium, calcium, iron, zinc, copper) byproducts of protozoan ingestion of bacteria and exudates which become available to plants - the conclusion of this film is very straightforward and commonsensical.
In order to restore balance and health to our agricultural systems, we must first care for the soil. We must reverse course from the green revolution legacy of unsustainable industrial agriculture and return to systems that care for the land, for example through crop rotations, organic farming, composting, drip irrigation, no-till farming, cover crops (i.e. planting 50% for people and 50% for nature - e.g. nutrient-fixing weeds, clovers, mustards), and other practices.
Symphony of the Soil debunks the myth that traditional agriculture is less productive than industrial. In fact, if done correctly and wisely, it appears to be more so. Let us hope, for the sake of the planet, that enough people take this advice to heart, and call for change, and that the film does not simply preach to the choir.
Note: Symphony of the Soil was first shown by the Safe Food Committee in October 2016 to an enthusiastic and well attended audience. With nearly one hundred films screened since our 2009 debut, Plow to Plate has decided that each December we will bring back a very special film for those who may have missed it the first time. Below, slightly edited, is the review published in the Gazette in 2016.
Movie makers think hard about what they call their creations. A film’s title is like a short advertisement, ideally pithy, attention grabbing, relevant and informative. Symphony of the Soil succeeds at this level. You know what it’s about, soil. But why a symphony? Here’s where filmmaker, Deborah Koons, gets to play with alliteration and metaphor. Like a symphony, healthy, living soil - which is 50% solid and 50% empty spaces, including air and water vapor (as opposed to mere lifeless dirt, a much maligned substance whose principal adjectival meaning is the antonym for clean) is composed of many elements that together make up something complex – a sum greater than its parts. Instruments make music. Soil, a crazy mixture of non-living minerals and rocks together with living bacteria, protozoa, insects, and fungi, (as well as their chemical by products) is the foundation of life itself.
Adam’s name in the Old Testament derives from the Hebrew adamah which means “earth.” Similarly, Eve’s name comes from Chava/Havah meaning “living.” Symphony of the Soil makes these biblical allusions at its tail end, a coda following one hundred minutes of biology, geography, geology, chemistry and ecology lessons. It’s nice to see an example of science and religion co-existing so well on the same page.
Symphony of the Soil shows and tells how soil is born, in different places, times, and in varied ways: on the Arctic frozen Norwegian glacial tundra, wherever oceans and seas meet land, and in lava fields created by volcanic eruptions of ashy tephra. It traces how soil matures over millions of years, from infancy as non-organic clay or mud carried down icy cold rivers before settling, through to old age as biologically rich and productive prairie soil (mollisol) or at the bottom of an ancient mossy peat bog. Soil has parents and comes from somewhere. Loess is a loamy deposit formed by the wind; eluvium is created from an overflowing river; glaciers melt and drop their materials; some soil forms in place.
As an orchestra is composed of various string, wind and percussion instruments, soil is diverse too and highly dependent on climate. The family includes entisol (baby soil); inceptisol (young soil); ultisol (old soil); the aforementioned mollisol, with its good infiltration and water storage capabilities that makes up 22.5% of the soil in the United States compared to 7% globally; alfisol (forest soil – another good soil and 12% worldwide but 18-19% of the U.S. - again above average); oxisol (tropical soil); andisol (volcanic soil); histosol (wetland soil); vertisol (clay soil); spodosol (cemented soil); gelisol (permafrost soil); and aridisol (desert soil).
There’s another way in which the word “symphony” is a good metaphor for this film and it’s to do with the way the documentary slowly unfolds, its gradual thematic transitions, the stories it tells, the big argument it ultimately makes. Symphony of the Soil’s internal almost mathematical logic is like a geometric proof paralleling the path of an extended musical composition, classical or modern, which however groundbreaking or novel, must also follow rules and norms.
Symphony of the Soil embarks with hard science and gradually finds itself solidly in the realm of political science, economics and agricultural policies. However complex the initial science - involving enzymes, carbon capture and release, oxidation and photosynthetic chemical reactions, nitrogen fixing, nutrient transfer via symbiotic relationships between plants and fungi, carbohydrates emitted by plant roots, the chemical (nitrogen, phosphorous, sulphur, magnesium, calcium, iron, zinc, copper) byproducts of protozoan ingestion of bacteria and exudates which become available to plants - the conclusion of this film is very straightforward and commonsensical.
In order to restore balance and health to our agricultural systems, we must first care for the soil. We must reverse course from the green revolution legacy of unsustainable industrial agriculture and return to systems that care for the land, for example through crop rotations, organic farming, composting, drip irrigation, no-till farming, cover crops (i.e. planting 50% for people and 50% for nature - e.g. nutrient-fixing weeds, clovers, mustards), and other practices.
Symphony of the Soil debunks the myth that traditional agriculture is less productive than industrial. In fact, if done correctly and wisely, it appears to be more so. Let us hope, for the sake of the planet, that enough people take this advice to heart, and call for change, and that the film does not simply preach to the choir.