How the world’s ‘Worst Word Ever: moist’ could be saving the planet

By Agata Rigo Saitta

Why we should learn to love the ground

I was fascinated to learn that my natural playground growing up actually had the potential to store 2,500 gigatons of carbon dioxide, three times more carbon than the amount currently circulating within our atmosphere. I found myself wondering why the potential of soil, the second-biggest natural carbon capture mechanism, was rarely featured in policy-oriented climate solutions discussions. Given that the current mass agricultural system contributed $1.264 trillion to the US gross domestic product in 2021, I realized that transitioning to a system favouring soil sequestration would require an enormous shift from entrenched mass agriculture to smaller-scale regenerative agriculture.

I later discovered that the agent responsible for the soils’ ability to sequester carbon was the world’s most hated word: moisture. Despite its unpopularity, moisture has turned out to be the crucial element that determines the efficiency of carbon sequestration through organic soil. Yet, through continuous industrial agriculture equipment use, like mechanical tillage, an increasing percent of the globe’s soil has suffered from erosion, and is now left vulnerable to drought and warming global temperatures. As soil becomes more and more eroded, its aridity increases, and its ability to retain moisture decreases, which in turn affects its capacity to store carbon. A recent study showed the intimate connections between humid soil and the regulation of the global carbon cycle, given the “excess moisture leads to deeper and more prolonged periods of wetness” (Heckman et al. 2023). On the contrary, a disconnect is created in this cycle in more arid or eroded soil (Heckman et al. 2023).

This encouraged me to reflect on the impact of our agricultural human activity on the moisture contained within soil. However, I soon realized that this one way-framework – humans impacting nature – was not entirely representative. As a matter of fact, the reality was more akin to a two-way system with mutually reinforcing elements, given we, as humans, are not the only agents who impact the soil’s moisture levels. Soil itself is not a stationary agent. It is composed of soil microorganisms: active nonhuman agents that maintain moisture stability through selfregulating resiliency and resistance methods (Griffiths and Philippot 2013). This reciprocal relationship between human and non-human agents in the maintenance of moisture levels in soil relates to the idea of environmental determinism, and the nature/culture divide.

Environmental Determinism: does nature determine us, or do we determine nature?

Environmental determinism is the idea that society is determined by our physical environment, or in my words, nature determines culture. This framework claims that human and societal factors, such as culture, mental and physical attributes, are all shaped by environmental conditions, like geography, and the climate (Keighren 2015). According to Keighren (2015), this concept traditionally originated in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, modern China, and later, in Greek and Roman scholarly thought “as a philosophy of natural law”. Classical scholars claimed that a causal relationship existed between one’s physical and geographic environment and individual factors such as temperament, physiognomy and intelligence (Keighren 2015). For instance, one of the first treaties on disease titled ‘On airs, water, and places’ hypothesized that personal health could be classified and determined by the geographic area each individual was located in (Hippocrates, trans. Adams). This document separated areas of the earth according to the four elements (earth, fire, air, and water) and matched these to characteristics within the human body (cold, dry, hot, and wet) (Hippocrates, trans. Adams). Therefore, a person’s status within society was justified by the supposed natural “mental characteristics” they gained from the physical environment they lived in (Keighren 2015). Given that environmental determinism attributed a population’s perceived character and success to environmental factors, it was subsequently used as a scientific rationale for imposing power structures. This interpretation of the way nature and society relate helped legitimize racial hierarchies by depicting social, political, and legal inequalities as natural consequences of environmental conditions. Even if this interpretation has evolved over time, reductionist beliefs that condense complex phenomena to a single oversimplified cause still appeared in anthropological studies conducted in the 20th century.

Environmental determinist thinkers in the 1900s still often explained social and cultural differences through environmental conditions. For instance, the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel argued that climate shaped human development and social structures (Smith 1980). He characterized inhabitants of tropical regions as less industrious given that they lived in a warmer environment (Smith 1980). By treating inequality as a natural consequence of geography rather than part of history or politics, such arguments reinforced racialised and hierarchical understandings of human difference.

“Notwithstanding the significance to, and validity of, environmental explanations in archaeology, paleontology, and allied disciplines, recent attempts by journalists and popular science writers to reappraise the significance of geographical and climatic influences on human societies have been subject to robust censure by scholars in the humanities and social sciences who regard such work as pseudoscientific at best, and racist at worst.”

Innes M. Keighren

Although racist and reductionist narratives of environmental determinism persist in contemporary movements like eugenics, the theory that selective breeding of certain populations can improve the human race, many scholars in the social and natural sciences have been moving away from this discourse. An opposite school of thought proposes that we have entered a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is an era defined by the dominant impact of humans on the planet’s climate and ecosystems; it illustrates how human activity has shaped and determined its surrounding physical environment instead.

Given that the notions of environmental determinism (nature determines culture) and the Anthropocene (culture determines nature) directly contradict each other, I began to wonder how contrasting nature-culture interpretations could coexist. How could this binary be applied to my initial considerations about moisture’s role in soil carbon capture cycles? Were human agents the only ones determining soil’s moisture composition and its ability to capture carbon? How was soil also contributing to regulating its own composition through its non-human agents?

How we determine soil, and soil determines us

I realized that those in charge of agricultural practices should start considering soil as an active agent, not simply as a means to the end of growing crops. Whilst investigating strategies that emphasized this reciprocal relationship between nature and culture, between humans and soil, I learned more about regenerative agriculture practices. This farming method prioritizes soil health through less invasive cultivation tools that restore soil health and prevent further erosion and loss in soil moisture. Whilst this seems to be an incredibly promising emerging solution, I was surprised to learn that the ancient origins of these practices were often not brought to light. Regenerative agriculture practices are actually incredibly old methods that have been passed down amongst Indigenous peoples for decades.

“When you take into account that the few remaining Indigenous lands are home to 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity, while modern industrial agriculture is responsible for 80 percent of global deforestation, it’s clear that Western society still desperately needs to learn what Indigenous people have known for millennia: that human beings must live in a reciprocal relationship with the Earth.”

Rainforest Alliance

An ethnographic study conducted in Tropical Forests in Mexico emphasized the reductionist ways in which scientists discredited Indigenous practices regarding land and soil management, in favor of agronomic-centered approaches (Toledo et al. 2003). With a rise in regenerative agriculture as a buzzword, traditional Indigenous practices like ‘resource management strategy’, ‘subsistence pattern’, and ‘agro-forestry system’ are increasingly gaining traction in the farming industry (Toledo et al. 2003). Although this places an ideal symbiotic relationship between nature and culture at the forefront, it does raise issues too. These farming practices belong to the Indigenous people and are often part of sacred rituals which have been passed down intergenerationally. They are not for anyone else to simply take. Ojibwe agriculturalists Jerry Jondreau and Katy Bresette emphasise that regenerative agriculture should be grounded in an Indigenous world view — one that nourishes proactive relationships with landscapes, water, and soil, reminding us that even the world’s worst word ever, moisture, has a role to play.

“It’s not just the practices themselves that matter, it’s the overall approach rooted in place, developed in accordance with traditions and methodologies that took shape over millennia.”

Jerry Jondreau

Bibliography

Griffiths, Bryan S., and Laurent Philippot. “Insights into the Resistance and Resilience of the Soil Microbial Community.” FEMS Microbiology Reviews 37, no. 2 (March 2013): 112–29. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1574-6976.2012.00343.x.

Heckman, Katherine A., Angela R. Possinger, Brian D. Badgley, Maggie M. Bowman, Adrian C. Gallo, Jeff A. Hatten, Lucas E. Nave, et al. “Moisture-Driven Divergence in Mineral-Associated Soil Carbon Persistence.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120, no. 7 (February 14, 2023): e2210044120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2210044120.

Keighren, Innes M. “Environmental Determinism.” In International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 720–25. Elsevier, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.72016-2.

Lundeberg. “Moisture the Key to Soils’ Ability to Sequester Carbon, Oregon State Research Shows.” Oregon State University, February 13, 2023. https://today.oregonstate.edu/news/moisture-key-soils-ability-sequester-carbon-oregon-state-research-shows.

Toledo, Víctor M., Benjamín Ortiz-Espejel, Leni Cortés, Patricia Moguel, and María de Jesús Ordoñez. “The Multiple Use of Tropical Forests by Indigenous Peoples in Mexico.” Conservation Ecology 7, no. 3 (2003). http://www.jstor.org/stable/26271970.