Introducing Social Soil

A Game About Fungi, Food, and Community Exchange

We are excited to share Social Soil, a new educational game from Grassroots Economics.

Social Soil is a playful strategy game about growing food, building fungal networks, and discovering how communities can exchange value with each other. It is designed for young learners, classrooms, workshops, and anyone curious about how living systems work.

You can play it here.

A Garden Is A Network

In Social Soil, players begin with a simple garden. They plant crops, grow mycorrhizal fungi, harvest food, and slowly discover that nothing survives alone.

Plants need nutrients. Fungi help connect roots through the soil. Water, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and food all move through a living web.

As the game grows, the lesson becomes clear: health comes from connection.

From Soil Networks To Community Economies

Grassroots Economics works with communities to strengthen local exchange systems. In many places, people have skills, food, tools, care, and knowledge, but not always enough cash moving between them.

Commitment Pooling systems help neighbors trade what they already have. They make value visible and usable inside the community.

Social Soil turns this idea into play. The fungal network in the garden becomes a way to understand another kind of network: people exchanging resources, supporting each other, and building resilience together.

What Players Do

Players will:

• plant crops

• grow fungi

• connect plants into stronger networks

• harvest food

• help village members exchange resources

• respond to challenges like surplus, scarcity and hungry birds

• learn that cooperation can keep a system alive

The game is simple enough to begin quickly, but it invites deeper thinking as the network grows.

Made For Young Systems Thinkers

Social Soil is especially designed for ages 11 and up. It works well for learners who are beginning to ask bigger questions:

• Why do some systems survive stress?

• How do resources move?

• What happens when one part of a network is cut off?

• How can communities support each other when money is scarce?

The game does not answer these questions with a lecture. It lets players experiment.

Watch The Walkthrough

We recorded a playthrough and introduction to help new players understand the game and the ideas behind it.

Play Social Soil

You can play Social Soil in your browser here

We hope Social Soil becomes a useful tool for educators, youth groups, community organizers, and families. More than anything, we hope it helps people see that economies, like soils, are alive with relationships.

When those relationships are healthy, communities can grow.