Thank you to NetGalley and Storey Publishing for sending me a free ARC in exchange for an honest review. 

 

Soil is an issue that should concern everyone: it’s the foundation to every aspect of our lives, whether you are consciously aware of it or not. Our current farming practices (whether you are looking at a local, national, or global scale), are overall not sustainable in the long-term and changes need to be made. Restoration of our soils is vitally important to our future, and not just because an overwhelming amount of our food security depends on agricultural land. 

 

This book seems to have two main focuses: describing the elements that make the ideal soil (for farming, anyway), and convincing the reader that no-till and rotational grazing are the way forward. It does feel as if the intended audience is large-scale farmers in the Corn Belt, but there are some examples feasible for smaller farms or home gardens and a section on small-scale (less than 10 acres) no-till farming in Ghana. 

 

There are so many aspects of this book that should have made this a 5-star read for me, and the author and I agree on a lot, but unfortunately most of this book just didn’t work for me. I have a degree in Natural Resources and Rangeland Ecology, and several soil science courses were a requirement of that. While I don’t have a ‘traditional’ range science job, my knowledge is put to use on my family homestead and large home garden. I do not claim to be an expert in soils (or necessarily up-to-date with cutting-edge research), but I do at least have a background and a bit of experience with managing some soils. 

 

Let’s begin, though, with my favorite parts. The strongest parts of this text, I felt, were the informational side bars. They were engaging and interesting and I wish each had been given more space to be expanded on. Two of my favorite side bars were the role of the water cycle in climate change and the best crops to begin no-till farming. 

 

The hands-down, best part of this book was the section on the author’s dream silvopasture farm (part of Chapter 12). I LOVED getting to see exactly how the information covered in the book would be adapted and put to practical use. The author did mention that this is his dream future farm, so I would have appreciated a quick note of why this is a “future” farm instead of a current one (and, if parts of the silvopasture farm are currently in practice on the current farm, it would be nice to know). If the whole book had been structured around the dream silvopasture farm (ie. use an example from the dream farm and then explain why it was the right solution for a particular problem, and why it would work), I think the book as a whole would have been much more engaging and effective. 

 

Now, unfortunately, for the parts that didn’t work for me. 

 

My primary issue with this text is the lack of basic information on soil identification. This is the first soil book I’ve read that hasn’t insisted on digging a soil pit and figuring out your local soil profile. In fact, soil profiles (and soil taxonomy in general) aren’t even mentioned. While the entire second section of the book (and 5 of the 13 chapters) was devoted to what makes an “ideal” soil, at no point was it mentioned how to do a soil test, determine soil texture, or even identify what kind of soil you have. Do you need to be able to classify each soil horizon in order to have a productive soil? No. But how can you make restoration decisions if you can’t recognize what your soil needs? Being able to identify your soil can give you an incredible amount of information on soil history and management strategies so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The chapters that make up Part II: What Is The Ideal Soil? in this text provide valuable information…but only after you know how your soil compares. 

 

Second, whether it was intended or not, this text implies several things: the largest being the overwhelming assumption that your soils may be degraded now, but at one point in the past they were excellent, productive soils (or at a very minimum decent productivity). My local soil is the series “Windygap” which belongs to the Xeric Haplohumults in the Utisols order and is characterized by red clay. My soils have never been - and never will be - the fertile “black gold” Mollisols you think of when you hear the of “great” or “productive" soil. Management styles might have some crossover between soil orders, but they are not identical. 

 

Another difficulty I had with this text was the changes in tone: it seems to alternate at will between college professor (niche academic, where the ‘speaker’ is not part of the reader’s audience) and conversational neighbor (where the ‘speaker’ is part of the reader’s audience and with common terms such as ‘drought’ explained)…without successfully integrating the two. 

 

Finally, I do feel the title is misleading. While I know authors sometimes don’t get to choose their titles, the introduction of this text mentions it is not intended as a comprehensive overview and rather a starting point for soil restoration. With that said, the reader should at least feel everything has been satisfactorily covered, and I felt there were missing sections (such as how to adapt management for different factors, like drought conditions, and how this text wants to be the first book on soil restoration, but then doesn’t cover how to determine if - or how much - your soils need to be restored). 

 

Overall, this text does have a lot of valuable information in it and raises some good questions, but without covering the basics of soil identification, general assumptions and changes in tone (whether intended or not), and the feel of a misleading title, I don’t think it’s nearly as effective as it could be. Although I did not enjoy this book as much as I wish I had, thank you again to NetGalley and Storey Publishing for the privilege of reviewing an ARC.