Back home in Texas, I enjoyed tending to a modestly expansive vegetable garden with my dad. I’m aware that our activity of gardening together regularly was born of my parents’ childhood growing up on rural farmland back in S. Korea, and as a result I appreciated the significance of what we were doing. And so the topic of last week’s Rose Cafe event drew my interest.

I was aware of the agricultural value of soil, but Dr. Solomon spoke more broadly about soil and its role, in geological, societal, environmental, etc. contexts. I had to leave the talk a bit early, but an interesting bit that stuck in my head was the fact that globally, soil is emitting significant amounts of CO2. So, it seems that deforestation is doubly harmful, as trees that process CO2 are removed as more soil that produces CO2 is exposed. I’m not sure if this is entirely accurate, and I should probably know this from high school biology, but it was interesting to learn (or relearn) this.