Dirt… The Movie

“Of all the known planets in all of the galaxies in the universe only one has a living breathing skin called dirt.” So begins the incredible film, Dirt…The Movie. Based on William Bryant Logan's wonderful book, Dirt…The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, this film brings Logan's brilliant essays about soil to life.

A compilation of powerful images, poignant animations, profound science, history, and ecology, as well as interviews with renowned environmentalists and political activists the world over, Dirt… The Movie is a love story about soil. Exciting and inspiring, it communicates a message of hope about our future. But it is also a cautionary tale. The impact of humans on dirt has been and continues to be devastating. We take dirt for granted.

According to Wangari Maathai, Nobel Laureate and founder of the Green Belt Movement, “We think diamonds are very important, gold is very important, all these minerals are very important. We call them precious minerals but they are all forms of the soil. The part of these minerals that is on top, like it is the skin of the earth, that part is the most precious of all.”

The skin of the earth is just five centimeters deep, and yet, soil is the mother. The source of all fertility. The only quality food that we can produce is a byproduct of our relationship with soil. What happens above ground and below ground is totally connected, and we are not separate from it. Vandana Shiva, physicist, farmer, and activist, tells us, “We are made of the same five basic elements that the earth is made of.” We breathe the same air, drink the same water, we are in community with the soil.

Dirt is alive. It has in it all the kingdoms of life — bacteria, fungi, algae, microbes, and slime molds. In fact, when you look at the all the species existing in dirt, it just might be even fuller of vitality than we are. There are tens of billions of organisms living in the soil and they are all living together, in cooperation and in competition. They have fantastic strategies for getting along with each other, for getting rid of each other when necessary and for making their own space in the ground. These relationships are brilliant, primal, and the very foundation of keeping our biosphere healthy.

Deforestation, monoculture, pesticides, urban development, and the violent and devastating practice of strip mining are all wounding and suffocating our mother earth — killing dirt by destroying its root structure, altering its natural balance, and robbing it of the elements necessary to maintain its equilibrium. That's what happened in the dust bowl of the 1930s. Through monoculture we starved the dirt of the diversity it needed to survive. The wind came up and blew it all away. When dirt with no root structure is displaced by wind and water, we are left with rock. You can't do much with bare rock.

Soil does not scream like we do, “Ouch you are hurting me.” But it does cry out in its own way. Erosion is a sign of soil's pain. Paul Stamets, mycologist, suggests that we contemplate those billions of organisms in dirt and then ask ourselves, “What if they could form a united organization and each organism had a right to vote. Would we as humans be voted off the planet? We as humans reject viruses; what if the earth could reject us as if we are a virus? Where would we be then?” The truth is, our planet cannot survive without its ecstatic skin. Drought, crop failure, global warming, and starvation all begin with the decimation of our soil.

In a forest there is a natural and beautiful process of decomposition and renewal. The mycelium under a fallen log is the interface between the log and the soil — and these mycelium are very active. They are busy decomposing the log and building soil. If, when we cut trees down we left chips and logs behind to cover the ground, we would be helping to build the soil. We aren't doing that enough. Instead, we are creating more and more micro deserts, displacing farmers, and sentencing vast communities to a life of poverty and hunger.

Near the end of the Dirt, The Movie there is a beautifully animated story — The Story of The Hummingbird as told by Wangari Maathai. “One day there was a huge forest being consumed by a fire. All of the animals in the forest come out and they are transfixed as they watch the forest burning. They feel very overwhelmed and powerless. Except for this one little hummingbird who says, I am going to do something about this fire! So it flies to the nearest stream and gets a drop of water and puts it on the fire. Up and down and up and down it goes as fast as it can. In the meantime, the much bigger animals, like the elephants with their big trunks who could bring much more water, they are standing there helpless and they are saying to the hummingbird ‘What do you think you can do? This fire is too big. You are too little. Your wings are too little and your beak is so small you can only bring a tiny drop of water.' Without wasting any time the hummingbird bird turns to them and says, ‘I am doing the best that I can.”

This film reaches into our senses and teaches us that we can each do more to save our precious dirt. In our gardens, we can plant cover crops that will naturally feed, nourish, and support the health of our soil. We can compost. Mixing our waste and organic matter into our soil is the highest form of recycling, cleansing and healing the dirt. We must join the Global Worm movement, supporting and protecting our earthworms that work like little intestines, taking in nutrients and waste, processing it, and then excreting something renewed and productive. Darwin believed that at the end of times worms would be recognized as the most important species because they were the soil builders. Turning concrete playgrounds back into dirt playgrounds, creating inner city gardens, green roofs and developing organic and diverse commercial agriculture and preserving our parks and forests are all ways we can re-establish our relationship with dirt and heal it. It takes a village.

Dirt, The Movie is a love story about soil. It is a call to action and it inspires us to be like the hummingbird and do the best we can do. I've watched it over and over and I have to say, for anyone who loves the earth we live on, this film is a cherished gift!