There is a universe beneath our feet – billions of micro-organisms in a teaspoon full of healthy, organic soil. Fungi, earth worms, bacteria, nematodes, and other organisms, arranging themselves in a constantly changing world of death and live, dormantness and decay – all doing their part to make plants grow.

Scientists believe that there is more biological life in a shoe-box full of healthy soil than on the entire surface of the continental United States.

While this world that we call dirt could teach us amazing things, only a tiny fraction of these micro-organisms have been studied, much less their relationship to each other.

It’s beautiful to see how far we have come as a society, and that we are able to reach the moon, and even further – yet amazingly surprising that we don’t understand the very soil we are launching our truly brilliant technology from.

As a society, our well-being is dependant on our relationship to the earth, and any future must be grounded in a deeply rooted understanding of ecology. Soil – soil that one day we will turn back into – is a study of relationships that is missing in this society.

Relationships between us as a people, our natural environment, our food, and ultimately ourselves, all connected in the web of life. The carrot we eat is the result of billions of relationships underneath the surface, plus hundreds of relationships above it.

Life is the result of relationships, and soil teaches us about our interdependencies between one another, if we look closely enough.

A carrot seed is less than half a millimeter in diameter; a tiny speck of dirt, dust in the wind. And yet it contains millions of years of DNA, intelligence that, once put into soil with a bit of water, turns the seed into a big, orange, healthy, nutrient rich, delicious, bioflavonoid packed, eye disease preventing vegetable. And if this is not enough, halfway through the growing cycle, the seed knows to produce carrot tops – an exceptionally efficient solar power plant that supplies the carrot with energy converted straight from sunlight through photosynthesis. During the growth from seed to carrot, the carrot collects and stores the climate data, including all environmental nuances of the region, such as soil quality, duration of sunshine, etc., so that the next generation of seeds will be better equipped and adapted than the generations of carrots that have been eaten before. A carrot is a natural memory stick. What a miracle.