Soil health principles for 2026

Minimize disturbance. Tillage and compaction are harmful to healthy soils.

Tillage breaks up soil aggregates and kills soil life.
They are breaking up families and communities.
We are all soil life.
Our raw edges are exposed to the air and light, hastening decomposition.

Compaction stomps out space for oxygen and water, collapses soil pores.
They are trying to force us inward.
We are afraid to go outside.

Resist tillage, individualism, compaction, and oppression through aggregation.
Build community and solidarity. Aggregate.


Maximize soil cover. Maintain a physical layer of protection through plants and mulch to prevent erosion and build soil health.

Limit the impact of erosion by providing protection.
The systems we thought would protect us are breaking down.
We must provide our own cover. Protect the most vulnerable from the impacts of wind, rain, and ice through mutual aid.

Keep the soil covered year-round.
Practice community in all seasons. This prevents a hard, apathetic crust from forming on the soil surface - the soul surface.

Keep each other safe. Act.


Maximize continuous living roots. Living plant roots feed and support a robust soil food web. Roots exude, slough, and decompose.

Roots can exude 10-40% of sugars made during photosynthesis.
Be generous. Embrace abundance over scarcity. There is enough for each of us.

Plants and soil microbes are symbiotic.
Build a web. Let your roots entwine and weave with others.

As parts of them die, plant roots shed and slough, creating food for microbes.
Share the load of grieving. Grief can become compost and feed new life.

Find partnerships with other life giving forces. You do not have to carry this heavy life alone. Thrive.


Maximize biodiversity. Diversity makes systems more resilient, improves yields and soil functions.

Monocropping is more susceptible to insect and disease pressure.
Homogeneity never wins. Break down hierarchical ideologies that separate us from what is real - from the soil - from our souls.

Rotating, intercropping, planting buffer strips all increase diversity.
Experiment. There are as many ways of being as there are beings.

Imagine, shape, and practice new futures. Cultivate and celebrate diversity.

We are all soil life.