If you’re not a farmer or gardener, chances are you haven’t given a thought about soil today. In fact, chances are you haven’t thought about soil this year. Maybe you’ve never really thought about soil at all.
If you haven’t, now’s your chance. While we typically think of winter as a time when farms and gardens close up for the growing season, the fleet beneath our feet—the vibrant and diverse communities of soil microbes, bugs, and critters—are happily and actively munching away at fallen leaves, field remnants, and downed trees to regrow their populations before the next crop goes in the ground. And while you might not think about it often, remember that soils grow the food you eat, the flowers you received for your birthday, and the grass you play soccer on. What you might not know is that healthy soil also helps filter our air and water of toxins, can protect crops against certain pests and diseases, and even plays a role in mitigating climate change.
But globally, our soils are in trouble. Industrialized farming techniques can degrade soil health and leave soils susceptible to erosion. Soils around the world are eroding at a rate of 75 billion tons per year, primarily from agricultural lands; in the U.S. alone, annual costs of soil erosion are roughly $44 billion—that’s $70/person. Half of Iowa’s topsoil has been lost in the past century and a half alone. Scientists estimate that we have only 60 years of topsoil left if we keep farming at our current intensity. This is a big deal—loss of topsoil is causing land conflicts, displacing farmers, and causing the destruction of wild and conservation lands as farmers seek out new, fertile land.
One of the solutions to topsoil loss proposed by big agribusiness is to increase production per acre of land through intensive farming and technological fixes. These often include overuse of chemical fertilizers and certain pesticides, over-tillage, monoculture, and unplanted fallow fields, all which may boost yields in the short term, but ultimately degrade soil further. In fact, this industrial agriculture perpetuates a system in which these expensive and ecologically damaging inputs become necessary to maintain the system. What these “solutions” don’t address are the underlying causes of soil erosion or systems to prevent top soil loss in the first place.
Luckily, innovative farmers across the globe are addressing the problem of soil erosion by turning to agroecological solutions such as cover cropping, crop rotation, composting, and conservation tillage. Many of these solutions are tenants of organic farming and have been used by organic farmers to build and maintain soil health for generations. Healthy soils are important because they provide many human and environmental health benefits. Healthy soils sustain high crop yields over long periods of time, provide more diverse nutrients to crops so that you eat more nutritious food, and store more water to reduce drought susceptibility. By using these types of soil-building practices, we can restore the potential of our agricultural lands; grow safer, healthier food; and build resilience against an increasingly unpredictable climate. To find out more about how healthy soils can benefit you and benefit the planet, check out the new material on our website.
And it’s not just farmers that are taking action: Healthy soils are the subject of the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Soil Health Awareness campaign, which sponsors workshops on soil health and fosters farmer-to-farmer communication to share trials and errors in soil health practices. In recognition of “the importance of soil as a critical component of the natural system and as a vital contributor to human wellbeing,” the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations declared December 5th the annual World Soil Day. This year, World Soil Day is kicking off a full year of celebration as 2015 has been declared the “ International Year of the Soils.”
To celebrate World Soil Day, and in appreciation of the importance of soil health in healthy food, healthy environments, and healthy communities, Center for Food Safety is launching an initiative to help educate consumers and policymakers on the critical importance of soil health and conservation in creating a secure food, water and climate future. We recognize a tremendous opportunity to solve so many of our most pressing domestic and global problems by studying and implementing agroecological soil health practices. It’s high time we start connecting the central role that healthy soils play in our lives and make protecting and regenerating soil one of the most important duties of our generation."‹
