On March 16, 2012, Ben R. Cohen delivered a lecture entitled "Notes from the Ground: Science, Soil, and Society in the American Countryside." This lecture was session two of "From the Earth: The Environment in Virginia's Past and Future," a free day-long conference on the historical relationship between Virginia's environment and its people. The conference is made possible by a generous grant from the Virginia Environmental Endowment. (Introduction by Andrew Talkov)