Healthy Soil Communities: Understanding the Biosocial Relations of Health through Soils, Stomachs and Society

This project examines the social and biological relations that shape soil and human health by placing the current agri-food transition in dialogue with changes in agriculture that took place in the mid-twentieth century. From the 1930s to 1960s, relationships between soils, plants, animals and people began to be reshaped on unprecedented scales through the widespread application of chemicals to farming systems. It is the consequences of these transformations, ranging from the molecular scales of soil and nutritional health to the planetary scales of climate breakdown, that today’s calls for an agri-food transition aim to address. Engaging shifting debates over ‘healthy soils’ and viable farming futures, food production and nutritional health, food security and national health, this research examines how different forms of health emerge and breakdown across these transitions. With an empirical focus on Southern England, ‘Healthy Soil Communities’ historicises the biosocial relations of soil and human health, while asking what versions of health and society ‘healthy soils’ may themselves inform and enable. By combining textual, data and ethnographic sources and research methods from the Humanities and Social Sciences, this project aims to understand and advance better health outcomes in today’s agri-food transition – across soils, stomachs and society.