Soil is the very keystone of our civilisation, says Anthony Woods. It is the source of 95% of our food and the one thing upon which life as we know it depends. The world’s soils are under extreme pressure and according to the United Nations around 40% of the world’s soil is already degraded, largely due to industrial farming techniques. But utilising food waste can help to reverse this.
The United Nations also estimates that 24 billion tons of fertile soil is lost each year. If this destruction is not reversed soon, the consequences for our civilisation will be grim. However, all is not lost, and the soil is remarkably resilient once we stop treating it like dirt.
It can also be used to reverse global warming and help our species restore harmony with nature. It is often said that it takes centuries to create soil however this is simply not accurate. Soil can be created quite quickly using a combination of sandy clay, fresh water, organic matter and a sprinkling of magical soil microbes. Let us examine each ingredient.
Microbes are able to break down virtually anything.
Sandy clay
The world has an absolute abundance of barren sandy clays. If you examine a picture of Earth from space you will notice the planet is parched and covered in dry barren land, rather than in rich fertile soils. However, we know there is no limit to human ingenuity, and it is well within our power to turn the planet green by wisely using the resources and technology at our disposal.
Throughout history, attempts were made to transform parched land by irrigating it with river water with mixed results. Ultimately a lack of a reliable water supply has been the main obstacle to transforming barren land around the world. But with the advancement of modern desalination plants, enormous quantities of seawater can now be transformed into fresh water extremely cheaply: 1,000 litres of freshwater can now be created for around €5, that’s less than half a cent per litre and the cost is falling.
Less than 0.5% of humanity’s water currently comes from desalination plants despite the fact that 97% of the world’s water is seawater. By investing in a network of global desalination plants there is a virtually-unlimited ability for humanity to transform enough seawater to freshwater to create a global freshwater abundance. Some of this water could be used to irrigate and enrich our parched planet. Once dry sadly clays have a supply of fresh water, organic matter is the final major piece of the soil jigsaw.
The world’s soils are under extreme pressure.
Food Waste: Organic matter
Organic matter is something that once lived. This could be food waste, plant cuttings, and even human sewage. All of whose building blocks originally came from the earth’s soil. They need to be returned to the earth, rather than sending them off to landfill or pumping them into the ocean.
A tiny percentage of food waste is composted and returned to the soil. The vast majority is sent to landfill. What a colossal waste of resources. When you consider the huge quantities of organic matter produced each year, it’s not hard to see that transforming this wasted resource into a carbon-rich fertiliser could quickly enrich millions of hectares of farmland.
Microbes
Microbes are able to break down virtually anything into buildings blocks (including so-called “forever chemicals”). They can be used to transform all types of waste into valuable resources. By using the power of microbes, food waste organic matter can be transformed into rich composts and fertilisers. When mixed with sandy clay and fresh water, it can create soil, even in the most challenging climates on earth.
Humanity certainly doesn’t lack the resources or intelligence to enrich the earth’s soil and reduce landfill pollution, just the will. Another often overlooked feature of the soil is its ability to permanently store huge quantities of carbon. This enriches the soil as it cools the planet. We often forget that carbon in the atmosphere is plant food and that by destroying the earth’s soil, we release huge quantities of carbon into the atmosphere. The opposite is also true.
The better we manage the Earth’s land the more carbon we can remove from the atmosphere. Unfortunately, industrial short-term chemical farming releases huge amounts of carbon, methane and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere — all of which are greenhouse gases that heat up the planet. Nitrous oxide, a byproduct of chemical fertilisers is particularly problematic. It is 300 times more potent than carbon at heating the planet. Regenerative farming is the opposite of industrial chemical farming — its purpose is to restore the long-term health of the soil. This, in turn, helps heal the planet.
We need to restore the long-term health of the soil.
Necromass and Food Waste
One hectare of regeneratively farmed land can draw down an incredible 10 tons of carbon per year. That’s the equivalent of planting 400 trees. This huge carbon drawdown is powered by soil microbes. They create an incredibly stable form of soil carbon called microbial necromass. This is the remains of dead microbes that can last in the soil for centuries.
When a human body is buried in the soil, its flesh decomposes quickly while the bones remain for many years. Similarly, microbial necromass can be understood as being like the microbes’ bones that remain long after their flesh has decomposed. Microbial necromass is an extremely stable form of carbon and makes up a huge proportion of the world’s soil carbon.
Regenerative Farming
Microbes live, reproduce and die in the space of just a few hours. Hence, the microbial soil carbon content can be rebuilt extremely quickly once there is a very active microbial community and ample organic matter. It’s estimated that if just 10% of the world’s farmland was farmed regeneratively, enough carbon would be removed from the atmosphere to completely reverse global warming. This could restore the atmospheric carbon levels to preindustrial levels.
Microbes live, reproduce and die in the space of just a
In order to explode the microbe population of the world’s soil, humanity simply needs to redirect organic matter from landfills (where it is wasted) to soil where it is needed. Our microbe friends can take care of the rest. It is no exaggeration to say that the future of our civilisation is tied to the health of the planet’s soil. If the soil goes away so does humanity. The world’s soil is our most precious asset yet we treat it like dirt in pursuit of unsustainable economic growth. Hopefully, our civilisation doesn’t learn the hard way that you can’t eat money.
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