When most people conjure an image of what soil looks like, they usually see various shades of brown. That’s not the case for Zoelie Rivera-Ocasio, a Ph.D. student studying soil science at Pennsylvania State University. She studies many different types of soils and knows they produce an abundance of colors.
To promote this, Rivera-Ocasio has established Zoils & Pigments, a company focused on producing paint pigments derived from soil.
Rivera-Ocasio first became interested in soil science during the tail end of her undergraduate studies in her native Puerto Rico. Inspired by an agronomy class that focused on soils, she began pursuing research dedicated to soil diversity.
During her master’s degree program, she began teaching an introduction to soils course and encouraged her students to bring samples of soils from different regions to class.
To foster her students’ curiosity, Rivera-Ocasio often would use soil color as a hook to teach, asking, “Why was this soil red and this one was yellow?”
That got her thinking more deeply about soil pigments and color. Seeing the diverse spread in soil types, she was inspired to co-host an event educating about soils where people face painted.
From there, Rivera-Ocasio established a small business producing paint pigments for artists using soil that she collected from various regions in Puerto Rico. After deciding to pursue a doctoral degree at Penn State, Rivera-Ocasio pitched her small business to startup assistant Happy Valley Launchbox and earned capital to officially launch her business under an LLC, with her husband, Eric Appeldoorn-Sanders, as co-founder. Since they launched it together, they decided to name their business “AgMar,” a blend of their respective fields of agriculture and marine sciences, with Zoils & Pigments as a subsidiary.
Currently, Zoils & Pigments sells its wares online, and ships within the United States.
Zoils & Pigments “blends ancestral techniques with modern science, combining traditional methods of creating pigments with contemporary knowledge and practices” and offers a variety of products ranging from watercolors to crayons, all with a story behind the soil used to create them.
For example, Rivera-Ocasio is working on a Happy Valley collection (which will launch July 20), where soils sourced from regions in Pennsylvania are used to create a palette of colors. Each color is named after its soil source. One color in the palette, named Hagerstown, is a vibrant orange, because the soil it’s sourced from contains iron oxides. Another color, called Calvin, is a red ochre with purplish undertones, sourced from moderately deep, well drained soils containing siltstone, sandstone, and red shale.
Soil, like animals or plants, have a sophisticated taxonomy and nomenclature, and Rivera-Ocasio hopes to educate others about this system through her business. By understanding different types of soil, she and her team can source materials rich in different pigments to create her product.
Rivera-Ocasio is adopting some plant-based solutions for certain colors. For example, blue is a difficult color to source from soils, so she plans on using an indigo plant blended with clay to derive the blue color.
Rivera-Ocasio believes it is important to source ethically and sustainably, so she and her team make it a point to always collect their soil samples from areas where they have permission to do so, and to collect a small enough quantity that will not erode or ruin the natural landscape.
While striving to grow her business, Rivera-Ocasio also has high hopes for her related nonprofit endeavor, Arte-Suelo-Ser (“Art”-“Soil”-“Being”), which was established in 2020 in Puerto Rico. Its goal is to integrate “soil sciences within the arts, humanities, social and natural sciences [by] nurturing a connection between soils and humans.” Currently, Rivera-Ocasio and a team of 13 are working to develop a soil museum in the Caribbean, in collaboration with the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Juggling a research-based Ph.D., a blossoming business, and developing a nonprofit — not to mention motherhood on the horizon — are challenging missions that Rivera-Ocasio has taken on, with each component demanding significant time, effort, and hard work. To add to her many roles, Rivera-Ocasio is also a new mother, adding on the dedication and devotion of raising a child to her list of responsibilities. Rivera-Ocasio credits her great team, including Appeldoorn-Sanders, as well as Heer S. Patel, who helps to run operations and logistics. To keep herself organized, Rivera-Ocasio focuses on being goal-oriented, and diligently keeps a calendar.
“Always having a team and trusting in my team members, as well as trust and good communication with my advisor” is how she manages to stay on top of several demanding projects.
Rivera-Ocasio hopes her nonprofit will one day be able to host and promote more outreach activities, such as the Soil Heritage Project, an education campaign toward domestic tourism promoting soil diversity.
By hosting events like this and promoting a connection between humans and soil, Rivera-Ocasio aims to “nurture creativity and foster an environment appealing to inquiry, empathy, social justice, and community, [while imparting] the importance of soils to the human well-being and ecosystem services.”
Liza Thuy Nguyen serves as the 2023 American Farmland Trust Agriculture Communications Intern at AGDAILY, with a focus on helping to amplify diversity and minority voices in agriculture. Liza is originally from Anaheim, California, and attended the University of California, Davis, as a first-generation college student. She received a bachelor’s degree in genetics and genomics and went on to earn a master’s in horticulture from Penn State.
