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Symphony Of The Soil

posted 5 years ago by [deleted]
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Hardcore organic vegan here: all the food mentioned exists in abundance in organic+vegan form, wanted to clarify that because it felt odd to type out all the food connections I made (and salivate over them) knowing that I myself was personally thinking about and salivating over my own personal "garden of veganism"/"vegan food culture"; all the foods have already been made from scratch (I've made them all myself at least once) in their organic+vegan form, and all the foods have already been produced in organic+vegan form and are sitting in a store or farmer's market etc waiting for you to purchase them. Had to clarify that because organic+vegan is the only way to be and I would hate it if somebody reads this message and thinks the writer indulgenty eats "conventionally" produced garbage, especially since the foods mentioned invoke a food lifestyle that would appear to blatantly contradict the whole point of the film

Like a symphony the film has four movements, the first is a lively ode to soil: its creation, purpose, function, diversity, aesthetic beauty; the second is a gently rolling patchwork plow across the nascent global spread of organic sustainable farming methods; the third is rapid round-up of frontline anthropogenic threats to our planet and the role sustainable organic farming and nutrient-rich soil will play in averting those threats as well as radically reorienating the way we live our lives; and the fourth and final movement occurs after the credits roll: the movement of we the viewers, the movement of our consciousness towards a science-based awareness of our earth that better informs our choices, a movement of responsibility for this planet, a movement into our frontyard/backyard to begin our own gardens and composting, a movement towards organic food, the fourth movement is what we the viewer take away from the viewing and re-invest back into this world we live in, and that movement is in our hands

And so it begins

Earth in space; sunlight glows down on glaciated region, next shot shows elliptical swath of sunglow over glaciated region [Norway]; sunlight gives and earth receives

A glacier in Norway; rock ground down by water; luscious creamy folds of mineral; viscous and seminal and spermy and pearly; nature's amniotic elixour; biblical humus from the soil to fashion humans ('adamah' means the soil), pottery folds ready to be swirled into earthenware, mineral slough ready to be soldiered into the pencil, mineral newly minted for casting into coin and printing into paper currency; moulten cement and granite ready to pour into the foundations; congealing lava spent of fury; raw cookie dough ready for baking; thick loamy creamery to churn into a vat of homemade pistachio icecream; buttermilk biscuit batter or doughnut glaze or almond mocha pie puree; vanilla mint malted shake; portobello soup; a poultice for regeneration; this creamy mineral is the constituent ingredient of the recipe, the porridge, the quickening gruel, the beginning of soil, a floe/flow of natural capital

landscape draped and scalloped and helixed in minerals, mineral-cupped, mineral-sastrugi, mineral-waves

life complexes upon itself, living things growing on themselves

peat holds mammoths; peat produces acids that keeps things from decomposing

Dr. Ignacio Chapela digs out (with what looks like a large cake cutter) a large carbon cube of peat that descends downward a thousand years in age, with wild green grass on top and strong eggwhite roots trailing down; looks like a super-sized chocolate brownie, a thickly textured richly fluffed intricately poroused and tunnelled double-handed block of double-decadent devil's food cake laced with vanilla candy strips yum yum yum, then he digs out a bouquet of chocolate cotton candy, flips the chunks over and they look like succulent blocks of double-decadent chocolate icing

living things growing on themselves, completely biological

Water and sand are having a dialogue of nutrients; nutrients in water pulled out by waves, winds, currents, also by uplifting of land; coral that trapped nutrients also comes up; a quick shot of sand shore that looks like an endless platter of basmati rice garnished with dollops of amber and apricot and honeytaffy; he scoops up a double-handful and it looks like enriched oatbrain, oats and vanilla and hempseed and flaxseed and millet and chia seeds and wheat, an ancient harvest, immeasurable ancient organic building-block nutrients, ready for churning into chunks of granula or an array of baked goods or diverse oatmeal risotto dishes, yeah, the director makes soil look delicious and makes you want to plunge your hands into it to feel its texture and richness, to feel its moist warmth or velvety coolness, the sensoral experience triggers the desire to cook everything from scratch, all of my meals from scratch

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then an underwater shot of pure white coral floating within blackness, friable like soil, carbon and calcium trappers, laticework sugar domes of white sprinkles and white nonpareils (aka Sno-Caps), confectionery crystals, sugar plums, frosty snowflakes, cellular configurations, star structures

then the scientist lifts up square blocks of the sandy oatbran and they look like rice krispies treats, his fingers crumble the blocks down, delicate matrices of diverse soil crumble at a touch, keystone infrastructures propping up existence are crumbling because of the human touch

Dr. Peter Vitousek [professor of biology]

Big Island Hawaii, gorgeous shots of oceanic volcanic eruptions, moulton lava flows fountaining upwards into the heavens, image of flowing waves of lava superimposed onto wavey tresses of a Hawaiin G-ddess: Pele, the G/ddess of the Volcano living in the crater of Kilauea (shown in the next scene), and the shot of Pele with hot spasming lava streaming through her tresses conjures grand universal mythical parallels of creation and fertilization and cataclysm; fiery tempests cool into Kilauea's spectacular lavascapes, Big Island a paradise vaunting millions of years of continuous and perpertual geographic, biologic, thermodynamic activity, the law of the conservation of energy and the first law of thermodynamics on display in perpetuity

Dr. Peter Vitousek visits a 50 year old soilscape, baby soil, volcanic rock fragments called tephra, tephra's microscopic structure looks like an prehistoric animal skull, coffee-black rocky soil like a tightly packed brownie made of a billion chocolate rock chips, dark and solid and pungent and studded with starry metallic glints, the scientist digs nine feet down a perfectly smooth polygonal chapel apse burrow of this black coffee soil replete with chips of quartz glitter, an earthen sanctuary, a blushing burst of erected pink nippled flora flush the surface; another tephra location is a healthy 300 years old,

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feeding a dark green tropical airy canopy-leafed forest with what appears to be the taro plant (national treasure of Hawaii) wildly burgeoning in the deeper depths, love the scenic switch from black soil to dark green forest, which is apt because the taro plant symbolizes a life force and the force of life is flowing in soil and vegetation; the next day the scientist explores a chestnut-hued powderpacked semisweet-chocolate-and-cinnamon nestlequikmix tephra that is 20,000 years old, matured into a mineral-and-nitrogen rich organic haven perfect for growing vegetables, I half-expected him to pull up a carrot or head of salad or radish, or plant some rows of vegetable seeds; the same day with Dr. Oliver Chadwick [professor of geology] they dig a standing-room only ovaltine burrow of lattebronzehued milkdudded soil that is 350,000 years old (ovaltine tastes weaker than nestle, ovaltine's colour is lighter than nestle's, older soil weaker and lighter-hued than younger soil); the next scene is 4 million year old soil of Kauai, a dried bird's nest of caked soil packed with clay accumulated through those millions of years, the microscopic structure of clay ranges from winding candy bracelets tightly packed with candy discs to harmonious conglomerates of uncooked spaghetti broken in half and riotiously stacked

The camera glides over a graphic mapping millions of years of Hawaiian soil to settle its gaze on the Palouse loess, rolling pastoral hills asymmetrically quilted with silken lilting loess ellipses, sunny-side up eggs, located in Washington state; musical score rings up golden brass notes

Dr. John Reganold [Regents Professor of Soil Science]: soil has parents just like we have parents; wind is the parent of the Palouse loess, bringing clay and sand together; other parents include but are not limited to water: overflowing waters of the Mississippi deposit alluvium, a spectacular aerial shot of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain follows,

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a flood of sunlit water gilding an expanse of green farmland with heavenly alchemy; next shot is the actual alluvial deposit, its harmonious design a grand universal tree of life magnifying the interrelation of everything, its roots deep in the earth and its branches scrolling celestialward, our soil is rooted deep in the earth and stratifies itself upward then branches outward to generate and maintain everything we need to exist; 70% of the world's soil is immigrant soil, its constituent parts carried across the earth by wind and water before finally settling into a marriage to birth soil

The next sequence is a visual metalpesis of soil taxonomy, accompanied by individual lively brassified musical themes representing each type of soil

The sequence is a visual stratification of layers of small frames/windows of insight displaying the bigger picture: the unseen, the unlit, the subsurface, the microscopic details, the matrix of textures and colours and form and variety and beauty; this metaphoric matrix of interframing mirrors the substrata structure of soil and the structure of human psyche: out of sight and out of mind but also omnipresent underfoot and underconsciously (subconsciously)

The small doors of below-the-ground soil images close back into the main frame, and the main frame is the above-the-ground landscape

taxomy from nutrient richest and most abundant to the least

- mollisol (prairie soil) - dark and base rich; appalachian spring of birds trilling
- alfisol (forest soil) - cappuccino; jazzy vibraphone and/or marimba (African reference, forest, jazz, etc)
- entisol (baby soil) - sandy quartz lacking horizon; quick trill of sweet baby brass footsteps
- inceptisol (young soil) - doughy shades; brassylines ribboned with a trill of foot-racing piano notes and a chime of silver wedding bells; the above-ground landscape is strophed with lighthued earthtoned shrubbery in need of nutrients

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- ultisol (old soil) - ruddy martian red for baking clay; brassy line delves into an old man tuba lament; the door closes into a spectacular visual landscape of deep-dyed autumnal-matured reds and oranges and yellows, vivid contrast to inceptisol's shrubbery
- oxisol (tropical soil) - wall of chili-coloured pueblo; Jupiter's jiving red spot; a salsa of maracas
- andisol (volcanic soil) - grapeblue chalkboard topped by white ridges; brassy eruptions with a hint of James Bond theme (Bond: explosions, action, etc)
- histosol (wetland soil) - dark coal; light piano notes and percussion create lapping acoustics
- vertisol (clay soil) - steelgray topped by a white clay jigsaw puzzle accompanied by reggae jamming, definitely a reggae hopscotch across that jigsawscape
- spodosol (cemented soil) - meso-american and aboriginal pigments; a set of brassy didgeridoo and/or native drum patterns feet-thumping the ground
- gelisol (permafrost soil) - a warm seagreen topped by cold permafrost; a single silvery soaring baroque note (like the aeolistic notes of Pachelbel's Canon) that flurries into a christmasy sound of church bells
- aridisol (desert soil) - desert coloured, with repeated pattern of rigid strings like a camel trudging through desert, bringing metalpesis to its end

Soil is 50% and 50% "empty"; it's porous, and the pores are filled with air, water vapour, and small amount of liquid water; it's in these spaces living organisms thrive, it's the processes within these porous capillaries that function the entire ecosystem

The next segment presents in microscopic footage and superb watercolour animation (accompanied by solo soprano) the key process: photosynthesis

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What we see is an exhilarating parallel between photosynthesis, cellular processes, galactic processes, and sperm-ova fertilization, and Dr. Elaine Ingham enthusiastically propounds on the specific process of food production consumption below soil, which mirrors the process of food production consumption above soil in the human sphere, and I love her "Times Square on New Year's Eve" analogy regarding what's going on in our soil, it's her eye-opening analogies that hit me hard and changed the way I view soil

Plants release mostly simple sugars, but also carbohydrates and proteins, into the soil around their roots; sugar, carbohydrates, and protein are the ingredients for cake and cookies; a second frame within the frame displays edible sugar stirred into lump (simple plant sugar), then an egg yolk (protein) poured onto the sugar, and flour (carbohydrates) whipped into the mix; this is an important cooking metaphor: human (and animal) food comes from soil and the process of photosynthesis cultivates a food production consumption infrastructure below our feet that exactly mirrors humanity's food production consumption process; cakes and cookies are pumped out and gobbled up by hardy partiers bacteria and fungi, but these cakes and cookies only provide jolts of empty energy, just like real cakes and cookies; it's a mineraless nutritionless diet, so the bacteria and fungi use their jolt of hyperenergy to swivel around and extract minerals from the mineral-rich composition of soil: sand grains, silt particles, clays, organic matter, etc, the excess of which are siphoned off and devoured by organisms (protozoa, nematodes, microarthropods, earthworms, insects, mites), and these organisms transform the excess of their own newly ingested nutrients into mineral-based cakes and cookies that plants slurp up their roots: life belowground mirrors life aboveground, the roles played in the soil biota are the same roles our food plays and we play;

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the soil biota is a tangled plot of activity directly mirroring our own plots, and their plots are more significant to humankind than our own, because without the earth, we're gone

And that right there, that life belowground mirroring life aboveground, hits the heart and stratifies another layer of meaning and motivation for living and promoting a lifestyle designed to save this planet: the very soil beneath us needs us to listen and learn and reform our lifestyles just as much as the air and water and land need us to do the very same

The watercolour animation ends with the yellow-coloured cyclemation cycling into a swirling yellow lollipop sun threaded with the green and purple colours of biological cycles

Dr. Ignacio Chapela [microbial ecologist] stands at the bottom of gargantuan tree roots of trees: he is the root of a tree (awesome shot because he's almost posed like the Vitruvian Man)

fungae produce a body: yeasty batter blooms into a loaf of mushroom; mushrooms bloom open like roses and tulips and vulva; in galactic blackness a swirling sugary snowfall of white soil coronates a saturnal lemon meringue crescent of mushroom, while in the kitchen crimini mushrooms are sautéed

Nitrogen is next and I love how the segment begins in a luscious green landscape running riot with purple lupine, because nitrogen is associated with the colour purple (lightening and aurora borealis)

The plant stems of legumes have root nodules (they look like tumours) created by bacteria, symbiotic nitrogen fixation occurs in the nodules, a nodule is sliced open and looks like a watermelon chunk, the reddish hue is leghaemoglobin, which is almost the same as haemoglobin (found in human and animal blood): most plants are their own natural nitrogen fertilizers

Lampeter, Wales

Patrick Holden [director of the Soil Association in the U.K., 1995-2010]

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agriculture is a dance with nature; farm with the rules of nature: organic farming to capitalize on soil's natural wealth; we need to systematically analyse the biology of the topsoil of foods naturally growing in the wild in order to learn about the biological system used so we can mimic that system to naturally and organically grow that food without using chemicals; this second part of the film is a history lesson of the change from organic farming to "conventional" chemical farming, the change from natural nitrogen to synthetic nitrogen; this change, coupled with the heavy mechanization of farming, resulted in heavily taxing the soil and vastly increasing the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and water and fossil fuels, spawning the "Green Revolution", which was the opposite of "Green", and that damage (depletion of nutrients, pest infestations, waterlogging, not to mention the health catastrophe brought on by chemicals in food) is what we are making every effort to reverse today; we need to feed the plant before the villager because without the plant there is no food

Throughout this segment, various farmers from across the globe relate one unified message: it is necessary to return nutrients back into the soil; by using synthetic fertilizers we bypass the plant production of their cakes and cookies for the bacteria and fungus which means the bacteria and fungus die and when they die that means no mineral-meal is made which the plants need; synthetic fertilizers kill the bacteria and fungi; by tilling and turning the soil incessantly for a weed-free zone we break up not only the houses where microorganisms live and grow but also the micro-organisms themselves; we constantly disrupt the system of communication and interconnectedness between plants and their microbiological soil communities; the answer is to rebuild our soil; we must give back to the soil, returning to it what we take out in the form of crops;

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this symbiotic cycle of renewal is referred to as the Law of Return, coined by Albert Howard; throughout this segment various methods of organic farming are explored

Mosaics and canvases of ancient Roman art proudly depict Rome's agricultural system, Roman art and literature heavily praised agriculture, farming, soil, etc, extensive literature on Roman agriculture survived, Pliny the Elder's Natural History contains much information relevant to agriculture, the philosopher Xenophon recognized that life started and ended in the soil, plowed from Virgil's Georgics:

Thus far the tilth of fields and stars of heaven;
Now will I sing thee, Bacchus, and, with thee,
The forest's young plantations and the fruit
Of slow-maturing olive...
Earth of herself, with hooked fang laid bare,
Yields moisture for the plants, and heavy fruit,
The ploughshare aiding; therewithal thou'lt rear
The olive's fatness well-beloved of Peace.

Roman land was heavily invested in, and it's pointed out that the Romans exploited their soil systems until there was nothing left, this soil depletion a contributor to the breakdown of the the Roman empire, ancient Rome's agricultural surplus sustained Rome for 207 years, soil providing 207 years of sustainability and resilience and continuity for human civilization; the soils of the Mediterranean Basin were a source of political power, economic wealth, and surplus food

A quick mention of the the Dust Bowl period of the United States, the Dust Bowl the result of soil exploitation

Note that churning up soil releases a significant amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, helping to warm the planet: anthropogenic global warming

The camera work in the farming segment lovingly caresses countless miles of fertile farm land, infinite biodiversity of soil and land and leaf and flower and tree; the camera worms its camera eye around the soil and leaves and sunlight,

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this symbiotic cycle of renewal is referred to as the Law of Return, coined by Albert Howard; throughout this segment various methods of organic farming are explored

Mosaics and canvases of ancient Roman art proudly depict Rome's agricultural system, Roman art and literature heavily praised agriculture, farming, soil, etc, extensive literature on Roman agriculture survived, Pliny the Elder's Natural History contains much information relevant to agriculture, the philosopher Xenophon recognized that life started and ended in the soil, plowed from Virgil's Georgics:

Thus far the tilth of fields and stars of heaven;
Now will I sing thee, Bacchus, and, with thee,
The forest's young plantations and the fruit
Of slow-maturing olive...
Earth of herself, with hooked fang laid bare,
Yields moisture for the plants, and heavy fruit,
The ploughshare aiding; therewithal thou'lt rear
The olive's fatness well-beloved of Peace.

Roman land was heavily invested in, and it's pointed out that the Romans exploited their soil systems until there was nothing left, this soil depletion a contributor to the breakdown of the the Roman empire, ancient Rome's agricultural surplus sustained Rome for 207 years, soil providing 207 years of sustainability and resilience and continuity for human civilization; the soils of the Mediterranean Basin were a source of political power, economic wealth, and surplus food

A quick mention of the the Dust Bowl period of the United States, the Dust Bowl the result of soil exploitation

Note that churning up soil releases a significant amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, helping to warm the planet: anthropogenic global warming

The camera work in the farming segment lovingly caresses countless miles of fertile farm land, infinite biodiversity of soil so close you can feel the warmth and smell the loaminess and hear the leaf flutterings,

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it makes you want to pick up a hoe and grab seeds and plow your fingers deep into the welcoming sponginess of the earth

A quick montage showing the beauty of decomposition and [wormy] organisms, there are many gorgeous (and heavily-metaphorical) time-lapse moments and archive footage and montages through the film

Punjab, India:

Jaspal Singh Chattha parades his impressive composting technique, he single-handedly nursed and regenerated his organic farm back to health using compost and biodynamic methods after his land was ravaged by the "Green Revolution" - a movement his father helped to pioneer; it's pathetic that the Green Revolution has a wikipedia entry and Jaspal does not; Jaspal is awesome and inspirational, this is a man who opened his mind and eyes to the devastation wrought by "conventional" farming and radically re-educated himself and engineered his own innovative techniques to give new life to his farm; his technique involves composting paddy straw and cow dung and green offal to create rich nutrient humus-abundant soil

Vacaville, California: Jepson Prairie Organics/Compost Company: a quick inside look into a large-scale foodscrap composting operation that provides nutritious meal for soils, meals abundant in nitrogen, phosphate, potash and organic material that help grow stronger plants, a million pounds of compost that plants are starving for

Various farmers talk about their composting techniques, and we are shown brief clips of them engaged in composting, notably Jaspal Singh Chattha operating his tea composting method; another method involves mimicking the process of soil creation, and includes a brewer that mimics the motion of a creek; the camera follows the flow of a rushing river and the next scene is of an irrigation system with sprinklers spuming funnels of water on green land, perhaps from the same flow;

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do you know where your water comes from, do you know all the processes involved in getting the water to you, the cause-and-effect set of shots (paralleling the film's opening shot, sun from space beaming down on glaciated region of blue marble planet, next shot a Norwegian glacier with sunglow above and melted glacier water streaming over rocks to form soil; cause and effect) emphasizes the hidden out-of-sight and out-of-mind aspect of vital essential micro-and-macroscopic processes that create everything (and oftentimes paradoxically destroy everything): from sperm and ova to human, dust to star, seed to tree, ore to computer chip, glacier to water tap, decaying biological material miles under the earth to the gas tank, petal to the perfume bottle, flax to clothing, etc, so many millions of processes are hidden altogether and with that ignorance the greater part of humankind has lost itself......

Depletion of fresh water resources and salination obviously ruining soil, film quickly reports on these two issues but these two issues have been prominently represented in the mainstream news media for decades; we all should know droughts are at the centre of natural resource wars throughout Africa, we all have experienced the effects of drought on our food production and food industries

The Rodale Institute engaged in three decades of research with organic soil and composting to formulate how to improve natural water usage, underwater irrigation combined with organic matter proved to successfully overcome drought, natural organic methods are the solution, harvesting nature's capital is the solution, not bioengineered plants, organic methods are proven to exponentially outproduce "conventional" farming

The Rodale Institute demonstrating organic no-tilling: layers of organic matter, placed on top of the soil, creating a type of blanket that is full of nutrients, replenishing soil nutrients

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Cannard farms: 50% of what is grown is for human consumption (potatoes), the other 50% is for soil consumption (a mixed crop of soil-improvement plants: weeds, mustards, vetches, clovers): we must feed nature as we feed humanity; no bug problems; he unearths an organic potato, good smells exuding from the earth, dark shower of roots and mould spun up, humus erupting a potato, ready to be baked and mashed, Cannard's dog concurs

100 million cattle grazing the land, 7 million sheep, 4 million horses, the USDA informs of a serious overgrazing problem

Organic grazing brings back the dung beetle who spread the fertilizer around, feeding the soil, and we see a clip of a dung beetle pushing a dung ball around; without the dung beetle the decomposition of manure feeds weeds which ruin land; grazing helps break down organic matter in a way that returns nutrients to soil

Nitrogen cycle presented in a watercolour animations, presentation includes negative effects of anthropogenic nitrogen fertilisation [nitrate leaching] - greenhouse gas, groundwater contamination, destruction of marine life, etc

Short segment with winemaker John Williams and his Frog's Leap Vineyards (organic grapes): organic matter not added back to soil and soil becomes dirt (hard, compacted, useless)

Segment on Star Route Farms, the first and oldest certified organic farm in California, cover crops and compost, endless rows of thick dark green spinach heads blooming out of darkly rich chocolate-chipped soil

Green waves of vegetable heads threatened by endless toxic chemical cocktails

Importance of developing dynamic relationships between agriculturalists, environmentalists, farmers, cooks: the spectrum of people directly involved in handling soil represent a worldbank of knowledge that when combined produce a synergy of shared stewardship invested in and dedicated to naturing and nurturing our natural capital stock of soil in the healthiest most sustainable way possible

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The Farmer and the Chef: compost recipe is as interesting and profound and important as chef's recipes

The documentary winds down to extemporize over the future ramifications of "conventional" chemical farming and the depletion of organic matter, and the future role soil will have to play in a world increasingly destabilized by increasing energy costs, depleting water resources, depleting land availably, unstable climates and severe weather events (anthropogenic global warming), the inability to keep up with feeding a growing global population, etc; we need to fundamentally change the way we produce our food; return to the fundamentals of the soil; organic regenerative methods; community waste composted to rejuvenate soil and build local farms and shared food hub that employ and feed community and revitalize local economy and bring people together, this integration of people to agriculture creates a whole new life-existence shattering the mechanized 9- to-5 Westernized "clockwork orange" existence

The camera strokes a life-size sunflower, nature's wheel, its central spirals phyllotaxing into an intricately and thickly hived buzz of browngold florets flaunting the Fibonacci fabuleme, its outer florets spreading out their fiery yellow sails to pay homage to the sun, teemingly producing a bounty of seeds as numerous as the stars in the heavens and as the sand on the shore of the sea, a harmonious nexus of life paralleling the integration of people to sustainable farming; one seed planted generates a thousand; perpetual reproduction; a look at individual seeds that are polycoloured; Vandana Shiva [physicist] stresses the importance of seeds

Agriculture At A Crossroads Report informs that sustainable small scale organic farming is the solution to agricultural problem

The future is wide open and this concept is visually related with an aerial shot of a distant plough quickly toying forward towards the viewer down an amply widespread kitkat candybar field,

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the field is row after row after row after row of identical kitkat barred tillaging; the field swallows the plow up as it speeds towards the viewer and disappears under the camera as the camera smoothingly roves forward away from the viewer high above and perfectly parallel to the field below, the forward motion over the field magnifying an ungraspable distance to the horizon line where farm and field and sky and future merge as a one; better living with biology, not chemistry

Dr. Daniel Hillel [major renowned soil scientist] commiserates on biblical adamization ('adamah' means soil, 'humus' of the soil is biblically versed as a pun on 'human': G-d fashioned the human, humus from the soil, 'eve' is from 'haway' which means life, soil and life, and his translation and interpretation is 100% accurate): life springs from the soil; serve and preserve earth;

Another gorgeous shot of forested trees backed by mountain ranges bathed in divine opalescent light, a glimpse of a Native American man engaged in a ritual reminds us of the ancient role of soil and earth in myth and ceremony and culture; a flashback to mollisol (prairie soil); concrete we walk on and the soil children playfully dig; soil cleanses all who have died from all manner of diseases, recycling their bodies into the material of life; children playing in the rich cloven earth are our future; the end credits feature elegiac images describing soil creation: rocky buttes cradling pristine freshwater signifies soil creation, flock of birds soaring over landscape signifies wind bringing clay and sand together to create soil, an image of the pastoral Palouse loess, celestial sunlight and rainbow cascade over forest to foster photosynthesis, a pillar of fire across an impending night sky luminates snow-streaked mountains and their freshwater basin (more soil formation), an orange-egg-yolk sun rising above an organic farm; an edenic farm from earlier in the film recall the importance of free-range grazing;

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panoramic soaring over rich green landscape dotted with grazing sheep; a misty glimpse of Indians walking through crops recalling how ravaged Indian farms that had been ravaged for 50/60 years were saved through seed sowing, composting, biodynamics; finishing with the rich soil bed of the Palouse Loess descending down millions of years, and the symphony continues on around us

The Soil Underfoot: Infinite Possibilities For A Finite Resource Hardcover
by G. Jock Churchman (Editor), Edward R. Landa (Editor)

http://tinyurl.com/pt4d6uf [amazon.com]

is a must-read fascinating scientific-type of textbook exploring in greater detail so many of the issues mentioned and referenced in the film. The book celebrates soil's role in our natural, national, religious, historical, cultural heritage

Symphony Of The Soil is enriching in every way imaginable, thank you Deborah Koons Garcia