~Soil

Soil is one of Gaia’s great recyclers and restorers of planetary health and yet much maligned, little thought of and mostly abused. We need to change that. 2015 is designated to be the international year of the soil. Why are soils so important? How much thought do we actually give them? What are they? How are they made? Most of us give soil very little thought, yet we all owe our very existence to the soils, that have taken millions of years to form’ to feed us. Yet we tend to view soil as merely a medium which plants anchor themselves in, whilst we feed them with chemical fertilisers and chemical sprays to stop pests and weeds. Soil scientists are now classifying more and more soil in the UK as ‘dead’. It’s projected that the earth has only 60 years of topsoil left, and some 70% of
the world’s topsoils are already seriously degraded.  This process globally has only been happening significantly in the last 60 – 70 years, which makes it all the more shocking. Soil is not just broken down rock, sand or clay, the underlying rock will give the soil certain characteristics but it is a living ecosystem, the ‘ecstatic soil of the Earth’ as Bill Logan subtitles his book ‘Dirt’. See a review of ‘Dirt, the movie’ in this issue. It’s not all doom and gloom though and there are so many great stories in the film about what is happening to rebuild soils through a whole range of techniques Healthy soils, which have not been over ploughed excessively for monoculture  and smothered in chemical fertilisers and pesticides, have an astonishing amount of life representing every kingdom of life on the planet. A teaspoon full of healthy soil can have literally billions of microorganisms, bacteria, yards even kilometres of fungal hyphae, algae, protozoa, nematodes, mites and much more.  (see www.soilfoodweb.com) Soils sequester carbon, methagenic organisms trap methane and convert to food before it can escape into the atmosphere, but through digging and ploughing we release it into the atmosphere. There are plenty of great stories out there too though, check out John D. Liu at www.whatifwechange. org for some truly inspiring large scale projects which are tackling the root causes of soil degradation.
~Nicky Scott