ABSTRACT
Good health is essential to human welfare and to sustained economic and social development.
World Health Organization, 2011
Most people do not routinely discuss “soil,” yet the mention of “health” and/or “wealth” immediately captures people’s attention, whether it is a discussion between two individuals or an evaluation of a nation. Human health and wealth are global human rights, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1947 (United Nations, 2011). Yet, soil is often an underlying component to both, given human history of wars fought over access to land. Soil access continues to have direct application to even highly food-secure nations such as the United States. Demand for land in Africa, Asia, and possibly Latin America is projected to escalate such that the U.S. armed forces become involved (National Intelligence Council, 2008). Two activities exacerbating these tensions are the conversion of arable land from food crops to biofuel crops and the “global landgrabs” occurring as wealthy investors buy large tracts of farmland in Africa and beyond (Zoomers, 2010; Robertson and Pinstrup-Andersen, 2010). A less obvious but equally real concern is a growing perception that people are living on soil that is poisoning them (Weber et al., 2001).
