Book Review: Dirt to Soil

Dirt to Soil: One Family’s Journey Into Regenerative Agriculture by Gabe Brown


I bought this book because it was recommended as a good foray into the world of restorative agriculture. So much of what most people believe about growing plants, including what many farmers are taught, isn’t actually accurate. I was taught that plants need nutrients to survive, and that they don’t care where these nutrients come from. I was told that tilling the soil is what every good gardener does to improve friability and make it easier for roots to get into the soil. But what’s aboveground is only half of the story. Plants don’t exist in a vacuum; they are part of an ecology of fungi and bacteria that live within the soil, and disrupting that ecology destroys soil quality.

It’s more a memoir than a how-to novel, as the author talks about how he came into regenerative agriculture not because of environmentalism but because a series of bad weather events left him broke and desperate to try something new. This was one of the most enlightening things about the concept of “don’t till and work with nature.” The author is an old-school kind of guy, conservative and in line with “traditional” American values of hard work, making money, and using ingenuity to achieve prosperity. If even a conservative farmer can become an ecologist, there’s hope for all of us.

This book has given me a lot to think about, though I think it’s only the beginning of my journey because most of what he says is only relevant to farmers. Most suburban gardeners don’t have the option of increasing herd size to control grazing. And while the narrator said “hairy vetch” more times than I cared to hear, I didn’t actually learn a lot of practical advice on how to use a combination of plants to improve soil quality. My main takeaway is “grow a lot of different plants, don’t use artificial fertilizers (let the fungi do that), don’t till, and try not to ruin things because nature knows what she’s doing.”


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