Yes, and soil can be such a rich place for life to exist and carry on. Hydroponics is cool and useful, and I’m going to keep converting my previously-grass yard into meadow, woodland, and no-till farm because I love the feeling of being surrounded by so much life, above and below. Soil is also a carbon-sink. At the Bell Museum in the Twin Cities there are examples of prairie grasses whose roots went down about six feet (maybe more; trying to be conservative here). I live in a graveyard of massive, long-dead tree-stumps, new trees around my age. What it used to be I like to imagine and to help bring about again, for its own sake.