NPR

A Grass-Roots Movement For Healthy Soil Spreads Among Farmers

America's farmers are digging soil like never before. A movement for "regenerative agriculture" is dedicated to building healthier soil and could even lead to a new eco-label on food.
Deb Gangwish inspects soil on her farm near Shelton, Neb.

In American farm country, a grass-roots movement is spreading, a movement to keep more roots in the soil. (Not just grass roots, of course; roots of all kinds.) Its goal: Promoting healthy soil that's full of life.

I met three different farmers recently who are part of this movement in one way or another. Each of them took me to a field, dug up some dirt, and showed it off like a kind of hidden treasure.

"You can see how beautiful that soil [is]," said Deb Gangwish, in Shelton, Neb. "I'm not a soil scientist, but I love soil!"

"You can pick it up and it smells like dirt," Bryce Irlbeck told me, as we stood in a field near Manning, Iowa. "You can go on a lot

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