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Academic Papers & Books

What kinds of farmers care most about soils? This study suggests that soil-related challenges receive more attention from farmers when agriculture is their main source of income, when they depend on family labour, and when they own the land they cultivate. 

 

Using social practice theory, this article focuses on farmers' lived realities and examines how they incorporate carbon farming into their existing practices and what tensions this creates. 

 

What do farmers think about soil carbon markets? A study of UK farmers finds that they are reluctant to engage with the emerging carbon market because they struggle to evaluate messaging around it and the risks involved.

 

The SOLO project just published its final outlook articles on knowledge gaps regarding nine key areas of soil knowledge: soil pollution, erosion, sealing, structure, organic carbon stocks, biodiversity, land degradation, EU global footprint on soils, and soil literacy. The latter identified 10 knowledge development and application gaps including: improve targeted communication, promote understanding of the key factors that enable various actors to consider soil health and to adopt soil conservation practices, or explore how, where, and when soil knowledge contributes to responsible soil care. 

 

What literature support the rapid uptake of Agroecology Living Labs (ALL) in Europe. This critical review found that this movement emphasizes moving beyond technical innovation toward socio-ecological system governance, promotes the territory/landscape scale as a mediator for open innovation across the science-policy-society nexus and highlights the transformative potential of inclusive and participatory knowledge production within structures that scale via networks.

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This recent systematic review explores how relational values contribute to regenerative agriculture and the implications for its transformative potential. 

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What does it mean to care in industrial agriculture? This paper examines contradictions, limits, and possibilities of agri-care in industrial production. They identified five pathways for generating caring agriculture: more-than-human ethics; Indigenous, religious, and spiritual forms of care; aesthetics, values, and ethics in human-centric approaches; justice driven care; and ethics of care and social reproduction.

 

The last special issue of Soil Organism addresses Highlights from the International Network on Soil Biodiversity, highlight the knowledge gaps in soil biodiversity, including the connections between specific components of soil biodiversity and parameters such as threats, ecosystem services and soil degradation, and value and limitations of using soil respiration and soil organic carbon as a proxy to infer soil biodiversity.

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In a recent illuminating essay called Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature, Alyssa Battistoni explore how capitalism reliance on treating nature as a free gift hindered efforts to value and commodify ecosystems. Her materialist existentialism opposes capitalism limitations of our ability to be responsible for our relationships to the natural world, and tries to imagine how we might live freely while valuing nature’s gifts.

 

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Soil Arts

Kirsten Kurtz, SSSA Member, and assistant director of the Cornell Soil Health Lab, discusses her practice of painting with soil, the need for creativity in science and why “the skin of the earth” is more than just dirt.

 

Long night of farmers' films / Lange Nacht des Bauernfilms 

11.10.2025 - 21:30 - Provinziale / Filmfest Eberswalde, Haus Schwärzetal

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Through installation, film, performance, and text, Of the Land at SOIL Seattle brings together artists from various geographies to explore identity, ecology and place. Moving beyond ownership claims and extractive histories towards relations of kinship, memory, care –  the exhibition poses the question of how we might reclaim our relationships with the land.

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Land and Soil How We Live Together. The exhibition at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-westfalen in Düsseldorf invites visitors to gather around questions of living, owning, and sharing, and to envision a just and sustainable future. Thirty international artists and collectives will present various models of administrating resources—from indigenous ways of planning to co-ownership and utopian blockchain projects. 

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Soil Events 

As part of the SUITMA13 Conference (Soils of Urban, Industrial, Traffic, Mining and Military Areas), happening OCtober 6-9 there will be a special online Global Symposium on Soil Sealing and Urban Soils hosted by the FAO. Sign in here.

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In another urban soils event, the 10th Annual Urban Soils Symposium   -   Metabolism of Cities & Soils “wastED opportunities” will be the topic. This year’s topics focus on three R’s: Recycling, Remediation, and Reclamation. Save the Date: November 21 & November 22, New York City

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Registration for the 23rd World Congress of Soil Science that will take place in Nanjing, China on 7-12 June 2026 are now open.

 

Save the Date for the third European Mission Soil Week: from 5 - 6 November 2025 in Denmark at Aarhus University, Aarhus. The event brings together policymakers, researchers, farmers, land managers and engaged citizen stakeholder to share knowledge and explore challenges and solutions for sustainable soil management.

 

In other Soil Mission news, the SoilTribes project’s call for lump sum grants supporting initiatives led by mutli-actor teams (communication campagins, creative soil-relative activities and events, citizens’ engagement) is opened till the 10 October 2024. A live info webinar will be held on the 6th of October 17:30 CET.

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Registration for the 4th Global Soil Biodiversity Conference that will be held on 12-15 April 2026 in Victoria, Canada, is now opened!

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Anthropocene Campus Chicago (October 22-26, 2025). Rooted in place, yet oriented toward planetary concerns, Anthropocene Consequences is a four-day event that brings a wide range of disciplines and practices into dialogue, linking local urgencies to global entanglements.