ABSTRACT
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The view of soils as principally support media for plants, rather than as complex systems
driven by life processes, dominates most thinking about temperate zone agriculture.
To a large extent, the success of the last century’s Green Revolution was based on new
technologies that provided, via inputs external to the system, certain ecological services
traditionally supplied by soil — nutrient supply and pest suppression in particular.
The result has been an agricultural enterprise that too often values soil largely as a porous
medium which supports plants and drains excess rainfall. Not well appreciated are
the crucial roles of soil for creating fertility and for buffering the environmental impacts of
agricultural production. Nor is enough credit given to the roles that soil systems play as
fundamental, interactive components within larger agricultural ecosystems. As a result,
the actual and potential contributions of soils to the productivity of intensively managed
systems, particularly in temperate regions which rely heavily on exogenous inputs,
are undervalued.
