Abstract: After “earth-bound China”, “soil-bound China” has become the core issue in the field of agricultural cultivation and food safety. This paper first discusses the multiple factors affecting soil amelioration, and then examines the ignored connection between natural and technical agricultural planting on the one hand and farmers' belief ethics and ethical implication of farming methods on the other, including the nature of human beings and human conduct, and the tie between people and soil. With the change of the structural conditions of agricultural planting, an ecological farmer has totally become an individualist in soil improvement due to the special natural terroir of the farm, the personal perception, and the knowledge and ethical principles constructed by farming methods. Compared with Leopold's land ethics of negative symbiosis, the “soil ethics” of ecological farmers establishes the positive nature of their cognition and action in the obvious autonomic moral setting, which is different from the Chinese individualism of “an individual short of public virtues”.

Key words: soil amelioration, ethics, ecological agriculture, individualism