Dirt! The Movie explores the vital importance of soil and why we must do everything possible to preserve and protect it
Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Narrated by actress Jamie Lee Curtis, Dirt! offers insight into the environmental, economic, social, and political impact that soil has around the world. Packed with countless billions of microscopic organisms, soil ultimately provides life and fertility to plants, animals, and humans. It also purifies and heals the very systems that sustain us, without which nothing could survive.
Many modern interventions, including industrialized and pesticide-based farming methods, have all but depleted the health of much of the world's soil. One expert in the film explains that one-third of the world's topsoil has been depleted just within the past century. Topsoil, of course, is the outermost layer of soil that contains the highest concentration of organic matter, including the microorganisms that convert waste and replenish vital nutrients. Without it, life could not be sustained.
Far from just a dire tale of the way things are, Dirt! provides a lens through which to view the situation as an opportunity to reverse it and restore proper soil health to much of the world. By starting to replant and bio-diversify agriculture now, the system can be largely repaired within ten years, says one film expert. And by bringing back the organic agricultural methods that utilize natural systems of soil regeneration from year to year, the world's soils can be raised from dead to life.
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March 5, 2011