Chernozem, Moldova’s fertile black earth, has shaped the country’s agriculture and food culture. Through photographs and conversations with soil scientists and farmers, this book explores how drought, erosion, and intensive farming threaten the soil, and what people are doing to protect it.
While researching a photography trip to Moldova, I kept coming back to agriculture. At Chișinău’s Central Market, stalls overflowed with local fruit, vegetables, and nuts. I wanted to understand what made this abundance possible, and my research led me to chernozem, the fertile black earth that has helped shape Moldova’s agriculture and food culture.
To understand what was happening to the soil, I visited researchers in Chișinău and Bălți. In the lab, I saw how soil samples are studied. At a field crops institute, I learned about long-running experiments with crop rotation and fertilization. Drought, heavy rain, and intensive farming put pressure on the soil. Outside the institutes, I met people trying to protect it through permaculture, tree planting, and other ways of farming.
CHERNOZEM brings those encounters together in a photobook. It follows a question that began at the market: how do you protect the soil that makes all of this possible?