Topic
The physical, chemical and biological condition of agricultural soil, tracked through indicators such as erosion, water infiltration and organic matter content.
FAO's Status of the World's Soil Resources 2026 ranks erosion among the most serious threats to soils, saying soil can be lost far faster than it regenerates. The best-measured case behind that warning is the US Corn Belt, where eroded farmland is already costing yield and money.
Reality
Rosa Boone pumped air from 18 grassland soils and found 16 of 75 captured odors tracked how intensively each field was farmed. It supports her case for an 'electronic nose' to monitor soil microbes, though that device is still some steps from development.
Reality
Volunteers buried more than 2,000 pairs at about 1,000 Swiss sites and dug them up two months later, and land use predicted how much fabric vanished better than most of the soil chemistry measured. That makes cotton a usable, if coarse, field assay.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishersReality
The Interreg North Sea project's final report draws on 16 pilot regions in six countries and recommends changing land use, improving soil health and diversifying water sources, with each region left to work out its own version.
Reality
An environmental anthropologist's essay, prompted by news of Wendell Berry's death, sets out what his writing meant to Christian family farmers in the rural South and Midwest who had abandoned conventional practice.
Reality