Soils as Archives

Bibliographic Data

ID8157643
AuthorsCody Miller (corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume97
Issue4
Pages649-655
Publication date2023-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAgricultural History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-1482 • E-ISSN: 1533-8290
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00021482-10795955
OpenAlexW4389980094
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited8

Now part of the Blue Ridge Parkway and the National Park Service, Moses Cone Park of Watauga County, North Carolina, was once a working estate with considerable apple orchards. Many Appalachian State University students visit the park because it is a popular hiking destination, yet few have probably given much thought to signs along the trails that warn visitors of contaminated soils. They soon learn that like other sizable agricultural operations in the early twentieth century, the orchards at Moses Cone were sprayed heavily with lead arsenate to reduce pests, most notably the codling moth. Unfortunately, these chemicals had a residual effect, and over one hundred years later, Moses Cone soils are still affected. The legacy effect of the contaminated soils on the park's surrounding areas is still unknown, yet this story illustrates soils' ability to preserve histories of human interactions with the landscape, both good and bad.1Hiking in Moses Cone Park or engagement with any other landscape we visit teaches us that soil is a historical archive that both agricultural historians and soil scientists should take very seriously. By pairing the methodologies of both the historian and the soil scientist, students can better grasp the deeply personal relationships between humanity and soils throughout time and space to bring soils “to life.” As soil scientists Daniel Richter and Daniel Markewitz note, “A historical perspective is essential for understanding soils.”2 Through interdisciplinary approaches to soils that integrate field experiences with historical research, students gain an enhanced toolkit to understand Appalachian agriculture and the dynamic pedagogy of teaching agricultural history.3 Perhaps, quite literally, soils can help students think from the bottom up and understand the inextricable place of agrarianism in southern Appalachian history and broader southern history. By learning that just a handful of soil is a living entity with thousands of microbes, students can hopefully learn more about the profound relationships between land and people in Appalachia.Drawing from twentieth-century Appalachian soil history, I am currently developing a field day experience that takes place at the Sustainable Development Teaching and Research Farm (SD Farm) at Appalachian State University. The farm is located within the Fleetwood community of Ashe County, North Carolina, on the historic “homeplace” property of Beulah Blackburn and Reeves Vannoy. This tract is 157 acres, including 35 acres of pasture, meadows, gardens, and other arable land, but most of it is woodland. On the farm, students take courses to learn diversified fruit and vegetable production as well as small-scale poultry and livestock production, integrated pest management, and regenerative forestry. The aim of the field day experience, however, is to position agriculture and soil within broader conversations about sense of place, which helps students frame agricultural spaces in holistic contexts, understand the cultural ecology of a given farm or garden, and think more critically about the community practice of sustainable development. Ultimately, the SD Farm serves as a place to explore soil-human entanglements in the twentieth-century mountain South.4We begin our field day by thinking critically about issues of community representation in soil science. To help students understand how agroecological knowledge is coproduced between farmers and scientists, we analyze correspondence from the Soil Conservation Service.5 Writing in 1952, Soil Conservation Service agent J. T. McLaurin strategized how to better present his conservation tactics to the community and brought visual aids into the field with him. Realizing that traditional outreach methods for conservation education were ineffective, McLaurin invited farmers to walk with him to his pickup truck, where he would lay pictures of strip farming conservation on the top of a metal box containing surveying equipment. The agent argued visual aids were as important as any piece of soil conservation equipment he had at his disposal and explained how his methods attracted crowds and conservation applications when parked in downtown West Jefferson, North Carolina.6 Sitting in the north pasture together, I encourage students to imagine this scene that took place less than ten miles away from us some seventy years ago. McLaurin's experience in Appalachia helps us form critical conversations about community-oriented outreach and development that inherently rests upon building trust and relationships. Such approaches continue to be essential in western North Carolina, which, like the rest of Appalachia, has a fraught history with federal conservation programs.7Photographs of soil erosion are also integral to students' understanding of soils as culture and political economy. During lunch, we analyze early to mid-twentieth-century erosion photos that feature severe gullies and sheet erosion in Appalachia. At first glance and after initial discussion, students learn that in some cases, the frequent changes in farm ownership led to severe land mismanagement and erosion. Before passing judgment on a farmer's soil mismanagement, it is crucial to understand the historical context of a particular piece of farmland. Students read that when one farmer purchased land in Buncombe County, North Carolina, in 1938, it had already changed hands six times since 1925. The previous owners were primarily concerned with producing the most profit possible with the least amount of management. One owner was said to have plowed fields without ever putting the land into crop production, so when it rained heavily, serious erosion in the form of “nude sore spots” occurred. The erosion became worse on the steeper areas of the farm, and the practice of monoculture coupled with constant crop harvesting meant considerable soil infertility.8Turning to photographs from 1930s north Georgia, we view deforested hillsides with severe erosion. With one photograph, soil conservation agents complained of a “noncooperative” farmer who felled a significant portion of his timber and then attempted to use it to check vast erosion gullies on sloped land. The agents were astonished to find tree stumps in the gullies.9 Many of our students are interested in pursuing agrarian development as a career both regionally and internationally, so further analysis of soil conservation literature allows them to track both economic and landscape change. The photographs help students understand farmers' decisions in light of extraordinary historical circumstances. Similarly to the Buncombe County example, students are encouraged to offer analysis within a holistic context that asks critical questions beyond soil mismanagement. We discuss the complexity of placing blame on farmers for clearing the forest, because like other areas of Appalachia during the Great Depression era, wage labor opportunities and access to prime farmland at lower elevations might have been nonexistent by that time.10To further showcase farmer agency and agroecological knowledge production, students then read a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) document that demonstrates how a failed soil fertility test (tricalcium phosphate fertilizer was accidentally labeled as a soil sample) further severed local trust of federal conservation programs in the larger context of external pressure to adopt commercial fertilizers.11 Juxtaposing the TVA document with the oral history of Mollie Combs of western North Carolina, we then learn about Appalachian families' experiences with commercial fertilizers. Recalling her memories of rural life in the first half of the twentieth century, Combs explained, “Yeah, and got the fertilizer you know, and it got too expensive and it didn't pay.”12 Through these soil stories, students learn about the political ecology of fertilizer programs and farmers' agroecological knowledge of soil fertility that, in the case of Combs, alternatively drew from crop rotations and cover crops to maintain fertility. Contrary to popular stereotypes, Appalachian farmers understood nutrient cycling, soil conservation, and farming in fragile agroecosystems before conservation officials came to the region.13Following our morning analysis of soil conservation documents and our discussion of erosion photographs over lunch, we return to the field to learn more about soil health and the ethnoagroecology of mountain agriculture through sowing buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) as a cover crop.14 We also discuss how students' sowing of buckwheat has just shaped the rhizosphere—the zone where plants and soil interact—to gain a stronger understanding of soil change and human-soil relationships in our region.15 Now that we have entered the rhizosphere, we take some soil samples and learn introductory methods to identify soil texture and classification. Students take turns using augers to pull samples, and it is wonderful to witness the looks on their faces when they view and touch the waterlogged, dark brown and black Tusquitee series with thick A horizons after just sampling the deep Evard series with little organic material some twenty yards away. We do not need to walk far to explore different soils with unique characteristics. Beyond lessons in carbon sequestration and soil classification, perhaps ending the day with this activity serves as great symbolism for the overarching lesson of this field day: just as the contours of the land influence soil structure, the contours of culture, political ecology and economy, and community have dynamic impacts on Appalachian agroecosystems.To close our day, students learn the concept of ethnopedology, which documents and understands the local approaches to soil perception, classification, appraisal, use, and management.16 We engage in one last act of human-soil entanglement to begin understanding ethnopedology by collectively reciting Irene Mathieu's poem “Soil,” which prompts students to reflect on lines such as “the way you say soil, sounds like soul . . . the way you say soil you make a poem out of every speck of dirt.”17 Mathieu's poem reminds us to explore the inextricable links between sense of place, community, and soil to cultivate a new worldview that reconsiders the world under our feet. Maybe students will now understand their role in the rhizosphere during a future hike in Moses Cone Park or visit to the SD Farm. On the bus ride back to Boone from Ashe County, I hope students reflect on what the mountain poet Thomas Rain Crowe explains is “the work that puts blisters and then smooth calluses on the hands and mind.”18 While they look out the window and reflect on soil erosion, community applications for soil conservation, mixed methods for soil science, and historical photographs, I also hope they imagine infinite poems and complex histories hidden in the soil. I am inspired by these students who are using place-based learning to tell new kinds of soil stories about our region. Perhaps these stories are not so hidden after all

Archaeology · Geography · Soil water · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · Environmental Science · Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Agriculture · Soil Science

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