BONUS: World Soil Day

Bread. How did something so basic, so fundamental, get so complicated – and even start making us ill? This is the question that underpins ‘Cereal’, an investigative series from our friends at Farmerama Radio that uncovers the polarised world of bread, and its connection to seeds, soil, our health and food systems.

Humans can’t create soils on our own, but we can create the conditions for life underground to flourish. In our final episode, we look at existing mechanisms to scale practices that support the restoration of degraded soils - like improving soil testing, research, carbon farming and natural capital frameworks. We feed chickens with kids and hear about government schemes to rewild daycares, and we speak to tech and data experts who are recording the sounds of the underground to restore soil health. Finally, we hear an important call to bring the natural world back into our songs, art and culture, to be guided by First Nations knowledge, and to connect with, restore and protect the life beneath our feet.

We cannot survive without the intricate network of life in soils that underlies 95% of the food humans consume. In this episode, we trace global food supply chains, visit an independent butcher and meet farmers and eaters doing things differently. We hear the challenges facing small food business and abattoirs in Australia to small-scale farmers in India, and learn of inspiring alternatives, like community supported agriculture (CSAs), holistic policy approaches, and education programs supporting the transition to nutritious and secure food systems.

We’ve already started to feel the brunt of anthropogenic climate change, and our relationship with soil may be crucial to our way through. In this episode, we’ll hear how soil stores carbon and fresh water, how it’s connected to droughts, dust storms and deserts, and why a dusty or concrete landscape is hotter than one covered in trees. We unpack the science behind the small water cycle and sensible heat coming off the land. And we’ll hear stories of farmers working together to rehydrate and regenerate the land, and others banding together to change policies and systems.

Beneath our feet lies a hidden world of fungi, bacteria, animals and plant roots that has been explored less than outer space. In Part 3, we’re going underground to explore fungal superhighways and the microscopic interactions around the rhizosphere that support all life above ground. We’ll hear how chemical fertilisers disrupt ancient fungal symbioses and human health, how nitrogen run off from agriculture is connected to fish kills and algal blooms, and how, by building life in the soil, we can drastically increase the levels of nutrients in the food we eat.