The Spirit of the Soil challenges environmentalists to think more deeply about the ethical dimensions of agriculture's impact on the environment. Paul B. Thompson considers environmental problems in industrial agriculture such as the use of chemical pesticides and biotechnology. He compares the four "worldviews" which frame these issues-- productionism, economics, stewardship and holism--and examines potential responses to them according to different philosophical priorities.

Thompson concludes his analysis with an open-ended and necessarily incomplete formulation of sustainability as the key goal for recapturing the spirit of the soil. He discusses the work of Baird Callicott, Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson and Allan Savory, and reviews the potential of conventional environmental ethics and resource economics.