SOS: Save Our Soils
By Devin Quinn
“Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth—the soil and the worker”
Karl Marx, Capital
I have a memory from my childhood of digging a ‘sheugh’[1] with my father to improve the drainage in the field beside our house. Water was pooling in the field, which was hindering the grass from growing and making a mess for the animals and people travelling through it. The shovel itself was already too big for me to handle easily, and it became more difficult as it got heavier, with more ‘daub’[2] sticking to it every time I stuck it back into the ground. Whenever the daub outweighed what I was actually moving, my bemused father would take the shovel and give it a sharp shake that magically dislodged the sticky soil.
My father reminisced about digging “daub-buí” on the farm with his own father, an avid gardener and Gaeilgeoir. He recounted how they dug similar ditches growing up and the names of each field at the homeplace. He pointed to the thin fertile topsoil and the waterlogged subsoil, and emphasised the importance of digging the sheughs and lining the field with trees. These keep the fields dry enough for animals to graze and for tractors to run on the land.
Irish soils
This sticky wet soil is more formally known as ‘gley soil’, often called ‘yellow daub’ or ‘blue daub’ depending on the region in Ireland. The different soil colours come from the water-logged nature of the soil combined with the amount of oxidised iron present—turning subsoil bluish under anaerobic conditions (i.e. lacking oxygen), or yellowish when there’s adequate aeration for the oxygen to permeate.
The sticky wet soils are usually marked by the presence of thick thriving rushes, found mostly in places like Leitrim, Cavan, Clare, and North Kerry. In regions at higher altitudes, where it’s colder and wetter, it’s more common to see peat soils. These form the base for raised or blanket bogs, from which turf is extracted. This type of soil is not often used for animal agriculture, but it is where some of Ireland’s most distinct flora grows.[3]
In contrast, the soil type most likely to be found in the Midlands and in the east is fertile brown earth soil or grey-brown soil. This is a much more shallow variety, but it is rich and fertile, and generally on more stable ground. That makes it more desirable for industrial machinery use and agriculture. (See this interactive soil map to link)
Soils aren’t static - they are very much alive. They act as an organic base ecosystem from which plant life grows and house a vibrant collection of bacteria, worms, fungi, and other critters, which we often don’t see or appreciate. For example, we now understand better that plants don’t just interact and co-develop above ground, but also underneath it. In Finding the Mother Tree, Dr Suzanne Simard describes a vast network of fungi that links trees and other plants together through their root systems within the soil layers[4]. This fungal network transfers nutrients across species, linking soil minerals with above-ground growth like a metabolic system in itself.
Current issues
Or, at least, that’s how it should work. Unfortunately, there are multiple ways that capitalist production has endangered this system. As has been previously discussed in this magazine[5], we have crossed 6 of the 9 Planetary Boundaries that indicate the ‘safe operating space’ for humanity to continue to live on the planet.
While all planetary boundaries are interconnected, there are at least 4 that are intrinsically related to soil, and all have been crossed: biogeochemical flows, freshwater change, land system change, and biosphere integrity.
Planetary Boundaries
Modification of Biogeochemical Flows
This describes the disruption of the cycle of naturally occurring elements or nutrients essential for plant growth—nitrogen and phosphorus. Globally, we have currently exceeded the threshold by double the limit. In Ireland, fertiliser and slurry are spread to artificially increase nitrogen and phosphorus levels to improve agricultural growth and yield. We’re unfortunately all too familiar with the consequences of the run-off from this—the green algae sludge eradicating life in our rivers, lakes, and even in the ocean. The horrific scenes from Lough Neagh are unfortunately now commonplace across the country and will continue to worsen unless we change course.
Freshwater Change
Linked to the pollution of our lakes and rivers is the boundary of ‘freshwater change’—this includes both ‘blue water’ in our lakes and rivers and ‘green water,’ which is the level of moisture in our soil. Only three per cent of the world’s water is freshwater. Agriculture accounts for roughly 70% of freshwater withdrawals, followed by industry (just under 20%) and domestic (or municipal) uses (about 12%).[6] Blue and green water systems now exceed pre-industrial variability across large areas of the planet
Land system change
In Ireland, much of our wilderness has been transformed and deforested by agriculture or sprawling urbanisation. Ireland is an international outlier with only about 11% of our land being forested (compared to 39% in the EU generally). Over nine per cent of this is planted with non-native species like Sitka spruce, a fast-growing conifer which can be harvested after just 15 years.[7] With less than two per cent of the country covered with native broadleaf trees, the prioritisation of profit over nature is clear. Current government policies abandon what minimal biodiversity remains, incentivising farmers to strip hedgerows, fill ditches, and cut trees, to maximise the suitable field area for agriculture.[8] Additionally, there is the Arterial Drainage Act of 1945 that ‘reclaimed’ land from floodplains by straightening and deepening our rivers to make more productive farmland, altering what would be the natural paths of our rivers.[9] This increases the resulting damage from flooding, especially downriver, as well as pollution (of both land and water) and the washing of minerals.
Biosphere integrity
The biodiversity of the soil itself is also being decimated, both in terms of diversity of species and overall numbers of those species. In addition to eroding what little native forestry remains in Ireland, the monoculture Sitka spruce plantations are biodiversity dead zones. They are also sprayed with pesticides that leach into the soil. Many organisms are then sacrificed to ensure the safe growth of the closely-packed spruce trees, which are more susceptible to diseases or pine weevils.[10] Losing 73% of our wildlife (and their activities and waste byproducts) over the past 50 years undoubtedly has an effect on the health of our soil, further exacerbating the situation.
The ever-growing metabolic rift
We’ve known about the dangers of overexploiting soil for a long time now—Marx himself recognised this. As Molyneux and Spear explain,
“Capitalist production, wrote Marx, developed through robbing the two fundamental sources of wealth: the worker and the soil. The land was transformed from a source of food, clothing, and shelter, to a commodity itself and a source of raw materials to produce other commodities. Alongside that was imperialist expansion and the brutal destruction of indigenous peoples and their society-nature metabolisms. This continues today in the Amazon rainforest, in Africa, in Australia, everywhere there are minerals to mine or forests to clear that are occupied by people who have yet to be convinced of the superiority of capitalist production.”[11]
During the era of the Second Agricultural Revolution, the issue of waning soil fertility (specifically “soil exhaustion”) was a key concern for capitalist society, leading to a growth in the use of chemical fertilisers such as bone and guano (i.e. seabird or bat manure). In mainland Europe, Napoleonic battlefields and catacombs were raided for supplies and Britain monopolised the Peruvian guano supplies to ensure a steady supply of fertiliser.
In the US, the Guano Islands Act (1856) prompted "the imperial annexation of any islands thought to be rich in [guano]".[12] Even at that stage, the effects of more industrialised models of agriculture and the knock-on effects of continual nutrient extraction on the ecosystem were clear. This has continued to this day. Not only are we incredibly reliant on fertilisers, but demand for fertilisers will continue to rise under the current capitalist system as soil fertility continues to fall and animal agriculture expands and intensifies,[13] further jeopardising our fragile ecosystems.
Therefore, the application of chemical fertilisers can never resolve the “metabolic rift” opened by capitalism; it only widens the gap between materials extracted and materials consumed, ultimately destroying the soil.[14]
What is to be done?
We really are faced with the stark choice of (eco)socialism or barbarism. The level of urgency required for this crisis is partly unrealised due to people’s alienation from nature and our food system. Soil fertility continues to decrease, and so do crop yields as a consequence. This often results in even more demand for fertiliser to offset this effect. Rotating crops and allowing fields to go fallow for a year is not enough to offset the soil degradation.
Instead of seeing ourselves as separate from nature and nature as something to be subjugated for human development, we must develop as an integrated part of nature and the environment around us.
Many solutions are already available, at varying scales. For Ireland, rewilding, rewetting of bogs and peatland, reforesting our lost forests, and combating invasive species that threaten native wildlife can help to restore our biodiversity. In small ways, we can reconnect with our environment by integrating some of the solutions into our daily lives, such as composting, replanting hedgerows, or reintegrating tree coverage and nature into our towns and cities, but it must not end there.
Ultimately, to save our soils and produce food for ourselves, we must break from our current capitalist system of agricultural production. It is quite literally sacrificing the long-term fertility and life of our land for short-term production of profits. We need sustainable systems of food production that don't involve the complete destruction of our environment.
Agroecology
Cuba is a good case study of how things can be done differently, with their model of agroecology (albeit a case study at least partially forced by a US imperialist blockade and sanctions).[15] Small farmers help push Cuba towards full food sovereignty. Back in 2012, small Cuban farmers were producing 70–100% of the food needed for family consumption, while also producing surpluses for the market.[16] The formal widespread embrace of agroecology in Cuba seems to be the direction that we need to go in.[17]
Instead of our extractive monocultural model of agriculture, agroecology works with nature. It can overcome many of the harmful ‘necessities’ of our capitalist agriculture (pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers) by mimicking natural ecosystems that achieve pest management, nutrient cycling, erosion control, and carbon sequestration.[18]
Agroecology must be led from the bottom up, by communities working together; farmers, researchers, educators, etc., all have essential roles to play in working together to develop holistic food systems. Instead of continuing with an industrial agricultural model based on heavier and heavier machinery to minimise labourers, we must return to the ‘meitheal’ of the past, where communities work together for the benefit of all.
As another island nation, another important consideration must be food sovereignty. At the moment, Irish agriculture is primarily directed toward beef and dairy production for export. Meanwhile, we import over 80% of the fruit and vegetables that we consume.[19] Local, diverse food systems are an important part of the model of agroecology.
To save our soils (and ourselves), we must break from our current industrial animal agricultural model that exploits nature and embrace models that encompass biodiversity and sustainability. As Marx said “human beings live from nature, nature is our body, we must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if we are not to die. To say that our physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for we are a part of nature.” Life on land cannot exist without soil. Only by mending the metabolic rift can we begin to set ourselves on a different, ecosocialist path.
Notes
1. Ditch / Drain
2. Subsoil that gets sticky from being waterlogged.
3. Patrick Flynn, Saving Ireland’s ‘coral reef’, Rupture Issue 8, Autumn 2022.
4. Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, Suzanne Sizard
5. Connall McCallig, The Tipping Point: The Nine Ecological Crises of Capitalism. Rupture Issue 11, Winter 2023.
6. UN World Water Development Report, UNESCO, 26 February 2024. Available at: www.unesco.org/reports/wwdr/en/2024/s
7. R.S., The Tipping Point: If a tree grows, and no one is around, does it make a forest?, Rupture Issue 10, Spring 2023.
8. Joe Mag Raollaigh, Up to 6,000km hedgerows destroyed every year, committee hears, RTÉ, 10 February 2022.
9. Padraic Fogarty, Let our rivers run free, Irish Wildlife Trust, January 2025.
10. Anthea Lacchia, Thousands of litres of pesticides used on Irish roads and forests each year, The Journal (Noteworthy), 16 September 2022.
11. John Molyneux and Jess Spear, What is Ecosocialism? October 2020.
12. Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature, John Bellamy Foster
13. Ciaran Moran, Government backs off further fertiliser cuts after Teagasc says farms ‘at breaking point’, The Irish Independent, 4 November 2025.
14. Des Hennelly, Severed: the metabolic rift between humans and nature, Rupture Issue 2, Winter 2020
15. Leidy Casimiro et al., Bringing Cuban agroecology to the next level,Policies for Agroecology Issue 1, July 15, 2024.
16. Oxfam, Scaling sustainable Agriculture, January 2021, Available at: https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621118/cs-farmer-agroecology-moevement-cuba-140121-en.pdf
17. Slow Food, Cuba’s New Chapter in Agroecology, 6 November 2025.
18. Mario Reinaldo Machado & Margarita Fernandez, This Cuban Town Has A Sustainability Lesson to Share, Orion Magazine, 1 September 2022.
19. Joe McNamee, Can we fix our broken food chain?, Irish Examiner, 6 April 2024.