Friday Oct. 16 is World Food Day, a moment for people around the world to come together and reaffirm their commitment to eradicating global food insecurity.

2015 is also the year of the soil, an initiative launched by the United Nations to raise awareness about the importance of soil in maintaining food production and ecosystem interactions. Soil is an often-overlooked aspect of nature, especially in today’s society where many of us don’t get to see how food gets from the farm to our plates.

On its “The Power and Beauty of Dirt” Your Shot gallery, National Geographic gathered stunning photos from around the world that capture the many different ways in which we interact with soil in our daily lives, from retrieving clean water from soil in cyclone-ridden Bangladesh, to making tea vessels in India, to tilling the soil for rice production in Madagascar.

Take a look at the jaw-dropping photos below: