By
FRANK CARINI/ecoRI.org News staff
It
goes by many names — soil, dirt, earth, topsoil and land, to name a few. But no
matter what it may be called, this thin covering of material, a perfect blend
of eroded rock, minerals, rotting organic matter, water, air and
microorganisms, sustains life.
Despite
its grand importance, it’s often treated no better than an alcoholic’s liver.
Soil controls the distribution of rain water and helps prevent flooding, but
it’s paved over and built upon incessantly.
Jose
Amador, a professor in the University of Rhode Island’s College of the
Environment and Life Sciences, refers to this reality as “growing houses
instead of corn.”
“Soil
provides a lot of ecosystem services,” Amador said. “You hear a lot about
saving wetlands, but not so much about saving the uplands. There are good
reasons to save both.”
Soil
is a living thing — there are more microorganisms in a handful of soil than the
number of people who have ever lived on Earth — but advocating for its
protection isn’t sexy, so we continue to take from it without giving nearly
enough back — i.e. the food scrap we continue to bury in the Central Landfill.
“It’s
a very finite resource, but soil health and protection are not really addressed
until it impacts our backyard,” said Jesse Rodrigues Jr., general manager of
Rhode Island Nurseries in Middletown. “It has been associated with wealth for so
long. Good land is worth a lot of money.”
Long in the making
Much of Rhode Island’s soil was created about 15,000 years ago by glacial outwash, according to Amador, whose research specialty is soil science and microbial ecology. “The soil we have here is really good,” he said. “It’s good farmland.”
Since
1945, however, Rhode Island has lost 80 percent of its good farmland to
development. Potato farms have been turned into subdivisions. Asphalt spreads
across land that once grew vegetables or sustained wildlife. Pollution from
industrial manufacturing has turned acres of land into brownfields and
Superfund sites.
Less
than 7 percent of the state’s land remains in agricultural production, according
to the Department of Environmental Management’s Division of Agriculture. DEM’s
Office of Waste Management oversees the investigation and remediation of some
1,800 contaminated sites.
This
longstanding neglect of Rhode Island’s earth begs the question: Is the Ocean
State in danger of running out of soil?
Unlikely,
in terms of having nothing besides asphalt and concrete underfoot, but there is
only so much land in Rhode Island suitable for agriculture. Also, contamination
and decades of poor land management have vandalized many other acres.
“There
is only so much land, and in Rhode Island there is only so much land that can
be used for agriculture,” wrote URI professor Mark Stolt in an e-mail response
to the aforementioned question. “There are a lot of rocks which make many soils
difficult to farm. People gave up on farming much of our land because it was
not easy. The ideal places that remained in agriculture (at least those in
areas like South County), much of that land reverted to turfgrass production,
which is not sustainable under current practices.”
Stolt
has studied the industry. He, Amador and David Millar, of The Scripps Research
Institute, authored a 2010 paper titled “Quantification and Implications of
Soil Losses from Commercial Sod Production.”
Commercial sod production is an
emerging agricultural industry worldwide — a result of rising affluence in
developed and developing countries, according to the six-page paper.
In
the United States, sod is produced in all 50 states, with about 400,000 acres
dedicated to sod production. Rhode Island sod is world famous. The soccer field
at the 2004 summer Olympics in Athens was made from Ocean State turf, and it's
used on golf courses around the world.
Turfgrass
provides environmental services that include amelioration of erosion, glare,
noise and air pollution, according to the paper. Although these benefits may be
experienced at both sod farms and in areas where sod is planted, the mining of
soil comes with a cost, the authors concluded.
In
commercial sod production, conventional harvesting — by sod cutting — involves removing
a layer of soil just below the thatch layer of the turfgrass, which can result
in the permanent depletion of soil resources, according to the paper’s authors.
Also, since soil associated with sod harvest is often transported to
nonagricultural areas, there is a net loss of agriculturally productive soil
from the local landscape.
“The
problem is that by harvesting sod a layer of soil is removed,” Amador said.
“Businesses try to minimize that loss — it helps keep shipping costs down — but
it does have an impact on soil depletion. And turfgrass isn’t the only business
that is unintentionally removing soil. Nursery trees are sold in a ball of
soil.”
This
fact isn’t lost on Rodrigues and most others who manage Rhode Island sod farms
and nurseries. “We ship a lot of dirt with our soil,” he said. “We do take soil
away and need to replace it.”
To
combat that recognized problem, Rhode Island Nurseries for years added cow
manure to its soil. Now that the cows are gone, the nursery does a lot of
composting of yard waste to help mitigate the loss of local soil.
“Soil
is just like water. It’s in shorter supply every year,” Rodrigues said. “This
important resource has been squandered. There’s less of it available.”
Poor decisions
There are numerous reasons why, as Rodrigues noted, there is less soil available in Rhode Island. For one, soil lost isn’t easily replaced. “When it’s gone, it isn’t coming back,” Amador said.
Why?
The 4 to 5 feet of soil Rhode Island has took about 18,000 years to be created.
“It takes hundreds to thousands of years for soil to develop,” he said. “We
need to protect what we have.”
Amador
doesn’t have to venture far from his URI office in Kingston to see that Rhode
Island needs to make better land-use decisions. The land-grant institution
where he has worked for 20 years decided last year to tear up a significant
portion of prime
agricultural land,
at Flagg and Plains roads, to make way for more campus parking and a less-curvy
road.
It’s
taxing for Rhode Island’s land — and therefore its environment — to recover
from these kinds of decisions. Michael Sullivan, a professor of agronomy at the
URI College of the Environment and Life Sciences, has blamed the university for
relying heavily on short-term fiscal analysis rather than on sound
environmental management.
URI,
however, is hardly the only institution to sacrifice land for convenience
and/or profit.
Because
of various poor farming practices, such as tillage, removing stubble and
over-grazing, that strip soil of carbon and make it less robust and nutrient
weaker, worldwide earth is being lost at between 10 and 40 times the rate at
which it can be naturally replenished, according to University of Sydney
professor John Crawford in a story published last year in Time magazine.
Nationwide,
14 million acres — about the size of West Virginia — of prime U.S. farmland
were developed between 1982 and 2007. Locally, from 1961 to 1995, Rhode Island
went building crazy, developing more land for residential, commercial and
industrial purposes than in the previous 200-plus years combined.
This
34-year building explosion covered, polluted or impaired nearly 65,000 acres,
including some important environmental lands. This additional expanse of
impervious surface inhibited the recharge of groundwater, prevented the natural
processing of pollutants, provided a surface for the accumulation of pollutants
and created an express route for pollutants to access waterways.
Some
12 percent of Rhode Island is now covered by impervious surfaces such as
asphalt, cement and roofing. A thousand square feet of impervious cover
generates 28,000 gallons of runoff annually.
“Building
houses and parking lots on prime agricultural land is not taking care of it,”
Stolt, a professor of pedology and soil environmental science, wrote in his
March 1 e-mail.
Rhode
Island’s building boom has slowed considerably since this peak period of growth
ended nearly two decades ago. The slowing had to do more with economic
downturns than an emerging discussion of soil’s importance, but at least earth
is now part of Rhode Island’s land-use conversation.
“We
need to start thinking about what are the impacts of our land-use options,”
Amador said. “We need to consider those decisions more seriously.”
Smart growth
Since the mid-1970s, Rhode Island has been working to lessen the impact of shortsighted land-use decisions. Land-use plans created in 1975 and in 1989 both tried to get a better handle on development, but neither slowed the sprawl. In fact, since the ’89 study was published, about 30 percent of the land then identified as undeveloped has been covered by impervious surfaces, according to the state’s most recent land-use study, 2006‘s Land Use 2025.
Rhode
Island’s careless three-decade march toward strip malls and parking lots came
at a price, and the loss of farmland was only one of the consequences. Health,
safety and pollution problems were created by the failure to consider the
capabilities and limitations of soils during the planning and design stages of
development, according to a 1988 study (pdf) researched by William Wright and
Edward Sautter titled “Soils of Rhode Island Landscapes.”
Problems
caused by failing to properly manage land use include malfunctioning septic
systems, surface and groundwater pollution, increased flooding, decreased
woodland protection, foundation failures, erosion, and stream and lake
sedimentation.
All
these environmental impacts could be lessened if we had more respect for soil
quality, Sullivan said.
The
harms associated with poorly planned land use don’t just impact the
environment. They also effect Rhode Island's economy and public health. “You
need good soil no matter what,” Rodrigues said. “Once you lose it, it takes a
long time to build the soil profile back up.”
To
help keep Rhode Island from squandering this valuable recourse, smart-growth
practices outlined in the Land Use 2025 study include mixing land uses,
creating pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods, and preserving open space and
farmland in critical environmental areas.
It
also means investing in small-scale farming that caters to the growing local
food movement. “Buying local is one of the best ways to keep good farm soil
from going away,” said Sullivan, who was head of DEM from 2005-2010. “Soil
condition is the greatest assist for a farmer. To protect our land, we need an
economically viable agricultural sector.”
Buy right
During the past decade government and local land trusts have taken significant steps to conserve Rhode Island lands. The DEM acquired development rights to 30-acre Pezza Farm in Johnston, bringing the total number of farmland acres protected in the “farm loop” of western Cranston, Johnston and Scituate to 570. DEM, in partnership with The Nature Conservancy, permanently protected 245 acres of forestland in Richmond.
The
Agricultural Land Preservation Commission acquired the development rights to
the 18-acre Clifford Farm in North Smithfield. A 1,100-acre stretch of
forestland — known as the Shepard property — in Coventry and West Greenwich was
protected as a $3 million Forest Legacy Project. A hundred acres at Bald Hill
Nursery in North Kingstown are now permanently preserved as a working farm.
In
2011, the DEM split a $4.3 million grant between 16 organizations to protect
900 acres of sensitive wildlife areas, recreational trails and farmland, from
Block Island to Westerly.
Buying
development rights — a process that takes time, resources, money and patience —
to preserve family farms and other important tracts of land is one way of
better protecting Rhode Island’s soil. This practice, however, isn’t the sole
remedy to what ails the state's land.
For
one, it’s an expensive approach. At $12,000 an acre, the value of agricultural
land in Rhode Island is the second highest in the country, according to Grow Smart Rhode Island, making it nearly impossible for new farmers
to acquire land or for current farm operations to expand. That’s when the lure
of selling farmland to developers starts to creep into the minds of families
who are worried about retirement and/or their children’s financial future.
“Is
there enough money to buy all the development rights in Rhode Island? Not even
close,” Sullivan said.
And
while soil can be a deciding factor in the purchasing of development rights,
often times location and size are more important, according to Stolt.
Protecting views and open space, and not the use of the soil, frequently are
the trump cards.
“It’s
a complicated issue. What is the best use of land?” Rodrigues said. “When
development rights are bought is the long-term plan to protect the soil? If you
take land out of production for too long it becomes more difficult to farm. We
need to protect the health of the soil because the land might be needed again
to grow food.”
The
importance of keeping local farms in operation isn’t lost on Rhode Island’s
40-plus land trusts. Since the mid-1990s, for example, the Aquidneck Land Trust
has bought development rights to 22 farms to help make sure they stay in active
production.
“Soil
plays a huge part in making sure we have enough to support ourselves and our
future generations,” Rodrigues said. “Healthy soil and clean water support all
aspects of life.”