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The Understory: Life in the Soil

Isabelle Legeron explores the thrilling complexity of soil.

Passionate and knowledgeable, a soil expert and "terroir-ist", Isabelle Legeron brings the earth to life. Leaving stones unturned, she revels in the thrilling complexity of this seemingly static, crumbly mass beneath our feet. She maps the rise and fall of our understanding of soil to her own life, growing up on a farm in Cognac, at a time when nitrogen fertiliser promised food for the world. Today it's the challenge of our time with increasing tracts of dead soil across over cultivated regions of the planet. She considers soil on other planets, forest soils, rock soils, the character of soils and how this seemingly same earth gives each of us a powerful sense of our own identity.