The Soil Beneath Us
The Forgotten Science That Will Determine Whether We Can Feed the WorldBy K Balachander
Length8h 28m
About this audiobook
Beneath your feet, right now, a civilization more ancient and complex than our own is keeping you alive.
A teaspoon of healthy topsoil holds more living organisms than all the humans who have ever walked the Earth. These bacteria, fungi, archaea, and nematodes form a chemical economy so intricate it still defies complete scientific description. For a century, industrial agriculture treated this world as little more than a growth medium — and we are only beginning to understand the cost.
Tracing the work of scientists, farmers, and policy-makers on four continents, this book follows the slow, urgent rediscovery that we cannot engineer our way past biology. From microscopy labs to windswept North Dakota fields to international climate negotiations, it reveals how a new generation of researchers is learning to read the soil as the primary text of our agricultural future.
Audiobook details
GenreScience and Nature
Length8 hrs 28 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateMay 16, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Dedication
2Acknowledgments
3Chapter 1: A Teaspoon of Earth
4Chapter 2: The Dust That Taught Us Nothing
5Chapter 3: The Green Revolution’s Hidden Ledger
Show all chaptersShow less
6Chapter 4: The Carbon Beneath Our Feet
7Chapter 5: The Wood Wide Web
8Chapter 6: Glomalin and the Glue of Things
9Chapter 7: Inside the Root: The Rhizosphere
10Chapter 8: Bacteria, Archaea, and the Nitrogen Cycle
11Chapter 9: Mycorrhizae and the Underground Economy
12Chapter 10: The Plow That Broke the Plains, Again
13Chapter 11: The Brown Revolution
14Chapter 12: Cover Crops and the Living Root
15Chapter 13: The Ranchers Who Read the Land
16Chapter 14: Carbon, Climate, and the Limits of Sequestration
17Chapter 15: Microbial Inoculants and the Biotech Pitch
18Chapter 16: Compost, Biochar, and the Old Knowledge
19Chapter 17: Pesticides, Glyphosate, and the Soil Question
20Chapter 18: Indigenous Soil Knowledge and the Long View
21Chapter 19: Urban Soils and the Recovery of Cities
22Chapter 20: The Policy Frontier
23Chapter 21: Farms of the Near Future
24Chapter 22: Diet, Land, and the Footprint of a Meal
25Chapter 23: Climate Whiplash and the Stress Test
26Chapter 24: What Lives Beneath Us
27Character Guide
28References & Bibliography
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