Elaine Ingham, Who Taught That Soil Is Alive, Dies at 73

Elaine Ingham, a soil scientist who got growers to see the earth beneath their feet as a web of life teeming with biological activity, not simply as dirt, influencing farmers and gardeners to sow and protect crops without chemicals, died on Feb. 16 in Fort Mill, S.C. She was 73.

Her death, in a memory care residence, followed a diagnosis of dementia last year, her daughter, Jenna Noel, said.

Dr. Ingham, a leader in the organic gardening and farming movement, popularized the concept of the “soil food web,” an understanding that soil is a complex realm of microscopic organisms.