How to Prevent Soil Degradation for Farms and Gardens

What is the Soil Food Web? Why are earthworms good for the garden? How to improve gardens soil naturally?

Updated on December 19, 2023

The art of lovingly producing food, flowers, and materials from the earth is an act of resistance. Whether you refer to yourself as a gardener or a farmer, or maybe you’re learning how to become one of the two, you’ll participate in an heirloom act that has been passed down for over 10,000 years and through nearly 500 generations of human life. We are stewards of the earth, and as such, having compassion for our planet’s natural resources will see us through to successful and productive farms and gardens.

Since the Industrial Revolution, agriculture has changed dramatically in a very short length of human history. In this post, we will explore how “big agriculture” contributes to soil degradation and climate disruption (climate change), and how we, as small earth tenders, can usurp that system by compassionately caring for our own pieces of land.

The opportunity for us to restore land back to its fertile origination lies in our own lawns and gardens, and sharing with others how we do it.

In Part 2 of this blog series, I will present a 5 step plan for you to build a healthy, balanced, fertile garden by understanding and harnessing our Soil Food Web.

how big Agriculture causes Soil Degradation

“Big Agriculture” refers to extra-large farms that replace human labor with extra-large equipment. Most often, these XL farming operations are also in contract with extra-large seed and chemical companies that require the farms to only use their products (or else).

An example of Big Ag would be a farm that grows only one type of crop (in the United States this would most likely be corn, soybeans or wheat and is referred to as a “monocrop”) on 100+ acres using tractors and other mechanical equipment to till the soil; spray and lay chemicals to control weeds, insects and diseases; plant seeds (more often than not, genetically modified seeds) in the ground in extra-long, straight rows; and finally, harvest and finish the crop for either storage or sale (this, of course, is a simplified explanation of what an extra-large monocropped farm might look like).

A concise account you can read about soil degradation and big agriculture is this book here: Organic Manifesto: How Organic Farming Can Heal the Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe by Maria Rodale. I suggest reading that for anyone who struggles to make a strong point when arguing for organic food, or for anyone who really wishes to understand the many complicated problems of Big Agriculture.

my first farming experience with degraded soils

I have first-hand experience with the effects of soil degradation due to Big Ag.

In the summer of 2012, I worked for a non-profit food pantry where I helped grow food on nine plots of land throughout Metro Detroit (it was the most gratifiying, amazing job I’ve ever had besides running my own farm now). There was one small rural farm that I worked on, 40 miles north of Downtown Detroit, that was a part of a Big Ag system. The plot we tended was a very small 1-acre rectangle that abutted the edge of a huge conventional cornfield. It was immediately apparent that conventional agricultural practices had seriously degraded the soil on this farm.

The plot of land was fully open to the sun and other elements, and was hotter and drier than any land I’ve ever worked (to this day, over a decade later, as I write this). The hard baked clay soil surface, not unlike a battered cement parking lot, had long spider cracks in it that stretched from one end of the field to the other. Moisture was devoid in the top four inches, except when it rained – that field had an impressive ability to hold a lake’s worth of standing water. The soil structure was so compacted that I had to use all my weight plus force just to dig a spade halfway down into the earth.

Where vegetable seedlings suffered in this field, thistle grew rampant (twelve years later as I write this, I find this fact fascinating, now knowing that weeds show up where they are needed, and that the thistle was helping to break apart that insufferable, hardened clay). Insect infestations were so bad that for days at a time I would meticulously squish cucumber beetle and squash bug eggs with my fingers, to no avail. Everything that did grow, donned foliage in a yellowy shade of green, stems and root systems stunted by a lack of nutrients and lack of porosity and water penetration in the soil.

This plot of land was my first experience with serious soil degradation caused by modern agriculture, and boy, was it rough.

What happened to this land is eventually what happens on every monocropped conventional farm that uses chemicals and oversized tilling machines for decades in repetition – the soil becomes so overworked and so doused with chemicals that it simply dies. When soil life is completely dead, a myriad of other problems occur.

The Dirtiest Part of Farming Isn’t the Dirt

Utilizing machines to till soil is very common practice, even on organic farms. Tilling is quick – far quicker than human labor – and for a farmer that has continuously degraded their soil by tilling year after year, it may seem like the only way to aerate in the new season.

What is misunderstood by many though, is that tilling actually causes the entire soil structure to break apart into individual particles that are very fine in texture. The particles settle and compact. When it rains, the soil compacts even more, to the point where the particles are so tight together that they don’t allow water to drain, much like concrete. This is what is called hardpan soil, and fascinatingly, is the reason why we have major flooding events during massive rainstorms. Soil that is overly compacted cannot suck up excess water, so it runs right off and carries tons of soil particles along with it.

Read here to learn Why Tilling is Bad for Garden Soil.

Why do cornfields flood?

Have you ever noticed a flooded soybean field or cornfield while driving through freeways of farmland? (of course you have). Even in the dead of summer, huge agricultural fields will flood in the low spots, sometimes so much that it looks like a whole new lake has formed. All of the crops in those sections will be either dead, or yellowy and stunted.

Wouldn’t it make sense for all this excess water to just drain down back into the earth? That is one function of the earth’s crust after all, right, to suck up excess water and deliver it back down to the water table. In a field with healthy soil, water would be allowed to penetrate the earth’s surface and drain back down; however, in an unhealthy farming system, soil particles are so compacted that even water cannot penetrate the surface. Due to over tilling, and the use of harmful pesticides and herbicides, the soil turns as tough as concrete and the water has nowhere to go but runoff into ditches, roads and rivers, or sit there and eventually be evaporated by the heat of the sun.

mechanical soil disruption causes microbial genocide

Meanwhile, another complex problem occurs while the soil structure is broken with excessive force by machinery (tilling). By turning the soil over and exposing it to air, much of the living microorganisms in the soil become oxidized and die. Miles of fungal hyphae are ripped apart. Earthworms are shredded. Habitats of other beneficial bugs are ruined. So all of the living creatures that created the soil structure in the first place no longer exist. These creatures are the same ones that provide all of the nutrients for our plants – so if they are extinct from our fields, how do plants get the nutrition they need to grow, and how do we get the nutrition we need from our food?

All plants, whether you’re growing food or not, need nutrients from the soil to grow properly. Plants that are denied nutrient intake have weak immune systems and are incredibly susceptible to insect infestation and diseases. The relationship plants have with the soil is not unlike our own relationship we have with food – if our food is devoid of nutrients, so too will we be.

The soil food web provides all the nutrition our plants need

In healthy, fertile, organic soil, all of the plants’ nutrients are naturally provided by living soil microbes, known to make up the invisible part of the Soil Food Web. When the Soil Food Web and nutrient profiles are balanced, there is no need for you to use fertilizers… how amazing is that! We will talk more about the Soil Food Web and all of its benefits in a few paragraphs.

why are pesticides bad?

Then there’s pesticides (and herbicides, and fungicides, and all the -icides). We all “know they’re bad,” but most people only understand the reasons that are directly related to our human bodies, when we eat food with pesticide residues on it. We know residual pesticides may be on our fruits and vegetables, so food should be scrubbed (or you could commit to only buying organic food, if and when it’s accessible and affordable for you and your family).

By now, most of us understand that pesticides have required the formulation of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). GM food is grown from seeds that contain a bit of pesticide in them (the most famous example is Bt corn). The pesticide in the seed acts similarly as a vaccine does in a human — by injecting a tiny strain of the pesticide into the seed, the seed/plant won’t die when that specific chemical is applied to the garden or farm. The GM plants are effectively resistant to the chemical that is present inside them.

The thing is, when you eat the GM food, you eat the pesticide (or herbicide, fungicide, or whatever element was added into the seed).

are pesticides/herbicides at all helpful in the garden?

Sure, pesticides effectively kill bugs, and herbicides effectively kill weeds. BUT…

What we, as gardeners, need to understand about pesticides and herbicides is that they kill soil microbial life, degrade soils, and are responsible for significant losses in insect biodiversity across the entire world. Pesticides claim to be specifically formulated to kill harmful bugs and pathogenic bacteria, when in fact, they kill everything. They kill soil structure-building earthworms, spiders, centipedes and beetles; pesticides suppress the immune and central nervous systems of honeybees, contributing heavily to Colony Collapse Disorder; and both pesticides and herbicides massacre every invisible microorganism in the soil that provides all of the plants’ nutrients.

Pesticides also contribute heavily to water pollution. As fields flood due to lack of porosity (mainly caused by mechanical over tilling), the water that runs off into streams, lakes and oceans is laden with residual chemicals from the soil. The chemical residues runoff, reaching lakes and oceans, causing algae blooms that harm natural aquatic life, among many other disastrous effects.

The combination of tillage and pesticide usage is a vicious system that breeds weak plants. Tons of synthetic fertilizers must be applied just for the plants to receive enough nitrogen to survive, but this is a lame way of providing nutrition to plants and further hinders the natural, biological processes of healthy, well balanced soils.

When fertilizer is added to the soil from an outside source, there is no need for the natural, symbiotic relationships to form between plant roots and mycorrhizal fungi, nor is there a need for bacterial colonies to hold nitrogen naturally in their bodies/cellular forms.

Nitrates in fertilizers irritate earthworms’ skin, so they leave. Meanwhile, harmful insects and soil pathogens quickly evolve because there are no beneficial microorganisms to keep them in check. This requires new, stronger formulas of fertilizers and pesticides. It’s truly the most ridiculous, destructive cycle we’ve gotten ourselves into.

Organic gardeners have so much to learn from the mistakes made by big agriculture. We might not be farming thousands of acres at a time, but I know people that unnecessarily use thousand-dollar rototillers in their tiny backyard gardens. So many people use chemical fertilizers and weed killers on their lawns, oblivious to the destruction they are causing. There are easier, completely natural, more mindful ways of dealing with our gardens that save us time, effort, money, and have the ability to prolong life on our planet.

We must be enlightened by the fact that our soil is the living, breathing part of our gardens where all life is born. In most cases, the soil actually requires our help to restore its natural fertility.

what is the Soil Food Web? diving into Nature’s Perfect, Natural System of life and decomposition

All forms of life begin with, or are nurtured by, soil. I was astonished to learn that there are more living creatures in one mere tablespoon of healthy soil than there are people on our planet – over 8 billion! They include invisible microorganisms and our more familiar, bigger bugs, and altogether as a system, make up the Soil Food Web. Soil microbes are responsible for all of the nutrients in our soil and the exchange of those nutrients to our plants. They are fragile, and require humans to be aware and conscious of their presence and needs, if we are to coexist in the modern world. The Soil Food Web is a perfect, natural system of microorganisms – and any part of it that has been disrupted with machines and chemicals can be restored.

why are earthworms good for the garden?

Soil microbes, along with other Soil Food Web participants like earthworms, create soil structure while decomposing organic matter in the soil. They do so to provide nutrients in useable form for our plants.

Take our beloved, approachable earthworm, for example. Happiest in soil filled with bacteria, the earthworm slithers through layers of earth, leaving behind a tunnel of air and water. The earthworm glides to the soil surface to munch on a layer of brown, decaying tree leaves – shredding them to bits and allowing what’s left behind to be decomposed by bacteria, which will happen much quicker with the added surface area the worm has provided. The bacteria in the earthworm’s digestive tract, paired with gritty sand in her gut, break the leaves down into vermicastings rich in phosphate, nitrogen, calcium and magnesium – nutrients that were otherwise unavailable to plants before the earthworm made her route.

what does mycorrhizal fungi do for the garden?

There are hundreds of thousands of different varieties of algae, bacteria, protozoa, fungi and macro- and microarthropods that are constantly working to decompose organic matter in the soil, and to keep the “bad” pathogenic and insect populations in check. Most of this primary decomposition occurs in the rhizosphere, so nutrients are readily available for plants right at their roots.

Mycorrhizal fungi are a beneficial fungi that grow on roots of plants and extend themselves in long strands of hyphae (in old growth forests, uninterrupted hyphae strands have been found to span up to 40 miles! – yes, you read that right). Just like in forest soils, mycorrhizal hyphae grow laterally to new areas of our gardens to mine nutrients where plant roots can’t physically reach on their own. When the hyphae die, nutrients that were tied up in the strands become available for all plants, and the strands create amazing structure by leaving behind long tunnels of air in the soil.

You can add mycorrhizal fungi to your garden with Myco Bliss (among other products available). You can simply dip the root balls of your plants into the mycorrhizal inoculant and the fungi will work itself through your garden soil, helping to provide water and nutrients directly to the roots of your plants.

what is beneficial bacteria in the garden?

Meanwhile, bacteria in the soil stick together and form colonies, secreting a sticky carbohydrate slime that glues particles of soil together as they move. And get this: A biodiverse system of bacteria, one that has 20-30,000 species, is the only defense mechanism needed against pathogens in the soil. While beneficial bacteria are eating and secreting the bad guys, the bacteria hold nutrients in their cell membranes which become available to surrounding plants when the bacteria die. While granulated fertilizers just wash away, bacteria hold nitrogen in their bodies – and these nutrients will never go away as long as the bacteria are present. Talk about fertilizing for the long haul!

While fungi and bacteria are two very important primary decomposers, these two make up only a fraction of the Soil Food Web. To learn more about the Soil Food Web and all of its fascinating intracacies, I highly recommend reading Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to Building a Healthy Soil Food Web by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis.

Summarized Benefits of the Soil Food Web, For Every Farm and Garden

Soil organisms have many functions in the garden and their benefits are innumerable.

All plants, not just vegetables, depend on the soil food web for nutrition and healthy growth.
As microbes decompose organic matter in the soil, nutrients are stored in their bodies until they die. Nutrients are then made available for plant absorption, negating the need for you to use fertilizers.
As microbes move through the soil, they create porosity for root growth, and increase soil water holding capacity, reducing the need to aerate and water as frequently. Increased water holding capacity also prevents excessive storm water runoff and chemical leaching.
Some bacteria, particularly those that form on the roots of legumes, have the ability to fix nitrogen from the air and make it available for plants straight at their roots.
A system of diverse microbes will keep pathogenic diseases and predatory insects in check, completely negating the need for pesticides and lessening the need for organic pest management.

The point is that for millions of years nature had it all figured out. There is no need for excessive tillage, fertilizing, or the use of chemicals on our farms and in our gardens, but because Big Ag is so normalized, we’ve been forced into this system.

By growing our own food in our own healthy soils, we move in the other direction — toward small, beautiful, healthy soil and garden/farm systems.

I’ll end with one of my favorite quotes

“And the scientists, no matter how much they investigate nature, no matter how far they research, they only come to realize in the end how perfect and mysterious nature really is. To believe that by research and invention humanity can create something better than nature is an illusion.” – Masanobu Fukuoka in The One-Straw Revolution.

In the second half of this soil food web discussion, I outline a 5 step plan for you to build your own healthy soil by restoring your soil food web.