The Importance of Getting Down and Dirty

From the savannahs of Africa to the streets of Brooklyn, dirt is what connects us. It’s the planet’s living skin, as sensitive and vulnerable to damage as our own. Of all the planets, only ours has dirt. The film’s message is loud and clear as mud: When we lose our soil, we lose our vitality. Dirt! explores in detail the various ways we destroy dirt, including strip mining, deforestation, and poor agriculture practices. Perhaps most movingly, the film talks about the link between environmental decline and human misery, particularly in developing countries. Lack of natural resources pushes farmers toward a  loan economy: the emphasis on larger-scale farming using heavy machinery that they can ill afford. Farm failure in India alone has resulted in a haunting statistic: 200,000 farmers have committed suicide in the last decade. Often their method of suicide is gruesomely apt—they die by poisoning themselves with the pesticides they can no longer afford.

The film restores dirt to its full spiritual import: where we come from, what we return to, and what sustains us throughout. The very fabric of dirt itself implies relationships and diversity. The film shows how dirt offers the basis for our culture and even civilization—so much depends on the health of a handful of dust. Agricultural practices have an unimaginably widespread effect. For example, the runoff from the nitrogen-heavy fertilizers big farms use to boost depleted soil goes into rivers and oceans and suffocates marine life.  The altered oceanscape is one in which only jelly fish can thrive.