Agriculture Crisis - Soil: Secret Weapon

Restoring our soils through natural farming could be a potent weapon to stave off a catastrophic climate breakdown.

- Satya S. Tripathi

SOIL. MANY OF US pay little attention to it, especially when living in urban areas.

But soil is not just dirt, sand, or mud. To build a climate-resilient and sustainable planet, we must get reacquainted with the soil, a natural resource that is critical to the survival of millions of species, including humans. This precious resource is in danger, and we are to blame.

Globally, an area of soil about the size of Costa Rica is lost every year. In the past 40 years, 33 percent of the Earth’s soils have been lost due to erosion or pollution. In previous regional soil assessments, it was estimated that human-induced soil degradation in Asia accounted for 31 percent of arable land, the highest share of any of the global regions.

The degradation of soil health has largely occurred due to climate change, industrial agriculture, and deforestation. Climate change ushers in extreme drought and flooding, which washes away topsoils or makes soils dry, saline, and infertile. Industrial agriculture has led to the erosion of soil structures as well, with continuous ploughing of fields, crop planting, harvesting, and the use of chemical fertilisers preventing soils from recovering.

According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), deforestation has been identified as the most dominant cause of soil degradation in Asia: Trees help knit landscapes together, and the removal of such trees changes the soil’s structure and abilities, which is detrimental to its health.

Declining Fast