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The Compass: The Understory: Life in the Soil: LIfe in soil: The death of soil

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LIfe in soil: The death of soil

21/09/2022 GMT

The Understory: Life in the Soil

BBC World Service - The Compass, The Understory: Life in the Soil, LIfe in soil: The death of soil

Isabelle Legeron explores the thrilling complexity of Soil

Isabelle Legeron travels to Giessen in Germany, to the original laboratory of Justus Von Liebig the brilliant 19th century chemist whose work made way for the 20th century Haber and Bosch process. Liebig joined the spirit of the Industrial Revolution, where technical solutions were set to end starvation; he set out to make the soil more productive, echoed through the 20th century with the Green Revolution. But at what cost to the soil?

With Environmentalist, Tony Juniper and Soil Scientists: Margaret Glendining, Aislinn Pearson, Hans-Peter Schmidt, Wogmar Wolters, Gerd Hamscher, Jan Siemens, Christophe Muller and Richard Bardgett.

Presenter: Isabelle Legeron
Producer: Kate Bland and Anja Krieger
A Cast Iron Production for BBC World Service

(Photo: Dried, cracked soil in a maize field near Hajduszovat, Hungary. Credit: Zsolt Czegledi/EPA)

The Compass: The Understory: Life in the Soil

Isabelle Legeron explores the thrilling complexity of soil.

Passionate and knowledgeable, a soil expert and "terroir-ist", Isabelle Legeron brings the earth to life. Leaving stones unturned, she revels in the thrilling complexity of this seemingly static, crumbly mass beneath our feet. She maps the rise and fall of our understanding of soil to her own life, growing up on a farm in Cognac, at a time when nitrogen fertiliser promised food for the world. Today it's the challenge of our time with increasing tracts of dead soil across over cultivated regions of the planet. She considers soil on other planets, forest soils, rock soils, the character of soils and how this seemingly same earth gives each of us a powerful sense of our own identity.

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