Blog / After Us

Shit (Earth Primer #8)

December 1, 2023 - By Giacomo Sartori

(Dung: Photo from Pixabay.com)

(Earth Primer #7)

From its earliest days, one of the agriculture’s main problems has been giving back to the earth the organic matter that it steals from it. Harvesting seeds, tubers, and fruit (e.g., wheat grain, potatoes, and apples), we take organic matter away from the fields. And in one way or another, this substance must be restored to it, if one wants to maintain the agrosystem—and this is the technical term, given the extensive parallels with the ecosystem—in a sound and stable condition, and not deplete it further each year. The more vegetable matter...

Water (Earth Primer #7)

November 24, 2023 - By Giacomo Sartori

(RER Ambiente: Erosion on a hillside in Emilia-Romagna.)

(Earth Primer #6)

During rainstorms, soil gets soaked by water, which it then retains within its most minute pores, acting as a reservoir. To achieve their ends, which include bringing nutrients all the way up to the leaves, the roots of plants draw water out, little by little, from these small tubes. Because water from the earth contains the mineral sustenance that plants feed on—it provides the delivery service. So, that is its first function: storing a mineral-rich reserve of water in its capillaries, to make it...

Vocation (Earth Primer #6)

October 27, 2023 - By Giacomo Sartori

(Crete Senesi. Photo by Gunther Tschuch, 2008)

(Earth Primer #5)

I don’t know why I ended up with soil as my specialization. I could tell myself it was a matter of chance, since that rendezvous seems to have happened on its own, not as an act of will: I did nothing to bring myself in its direction. Within the ideological framework of my family members (from which, despite appearances, I still hadn’t entirely freed myself), it was definitely the most well-worn path, the least appealing, least appreciated. What really attracted me was writing, but I never believed I had the intellectual gifts needed. If...

Beyond Earth (Earth Primer #5)

September 29, 2023 - By Giacomo Sartori

(Red and Green Tomato Plants on Train Rail, photo by Markus Spiske)

(Earth Primer #4)

For some time now, tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers and strawberries and raspberries and other plants have been grown in tiny containers, often small plastic jars filled with peat, usually in plastic greenhouses that manage partially or fully to slip the snag of the seasons. Peat, used one time, then thrown out. Peat, little by little used up, because it took thousands of years to form. Peat comes from bogs, environments with an unusually diverse variety of lifeforms that are dug up and cut off, often leaving behind holes filled...

Erosion (Earth Primer #4)

September 15, 2023 - By Giacomo Sartori

(Countryside in Algeria, photo by Giacomo Sartori)

(Earth Primer #3)

Cultivated soil is very fragile—just a bit of water running over the surface is capable of stripping away its thin upper layers, which are the most rich and fertile. The soil is then deposited at the base of the slopes, where the water slows, or poured into creeks or rivers that will carry it to the sea. In either case (and both often happen simultaneously), it is a permanent loss. And if the water streams down violently, it tears away all the best soil, opening up rivulets and deep ravines, eating up a stunning amount of earth, annihilating the labor of thousands of years through which the soil had been formed from stone. Steep...