Soil was, has and will be most important part of any living organism. All living things starting from trees, birds to micro-organisms need soil to survive. Eighty-seven percent of life forms on this planet – microbes, worms, insects, birds, animals, human beings, plants, trees and every other vegetation on the planet is sustained by an average of thirty-nine inches of topsoil. And that is in serious danger right now. In the last forty years, forty percent of the world’s topsoil has been lost.
Soil and its current scenario
The United Nations says we have soil left only for approximately eighty to hundred harvests, which means another forty-five to sixty years of agriculture. After that, we will not have the soil to produce food. You can imagine the suffering that we will unfold in the world. Two-thirds of India’s soil has almost become a desert. That means nothing can be cultivated there. So, protecting the soil for the future generations of this land is the most important thing.
Now let’s see why does soil matter.
Why soil matters and what we can do to save it?
Soil is degrading across the world. In every five seconds a soccer pitch of soil is eroded, and it’s estimated that by 2050 around 90 percent of the Earth’s soils could be degraded.
We might imagine soil as endless and indestructible or unlimited: it is neither. Only about 7.5 percent of the earth’s surface provides the soil we rely on for agriculture, and it is remarkably fragile. Topsoil is used to grow 95 percent of our food, and it is disappearing ten times faster than it is being replaced: America’s corn belt has already lost much of its topsoil, threatening livelihoods and communities as well as food supply. The reality is that it takes thousands of years to create an inch of fertile topsoil, but it can be destroyed in minutes.
Air pollution can be fixed in a short time if we are willing to sacrifice our economic exuberance a little. But if you want to fix the soil that you have destroyed, it will take 15-25 years if you go at it aggressively. If you do it without much interest, it will take 40-50 years before you can get the soil to a certain level. If the soil is in a bad condition for that long, that means two to three generations will go through terrible states of life.
All about Indian soil
The health of India’s soils is at risk and there will be grave consequences of this unless immediate and concerted action is not taken, experts have said at the ongoing Anil Agarwal Dialogue 2025 in Nimli, Rajasthan.
“Indian soil is one of the most vulnerable soils; average soil erosion in India is 20 tons per hectare per year against the global average of 2.4 tons per hectare per year.”
The health of India’s soils is at risk and there will be grave consequences of this unless immediate and concerted action is not taken, experts have said at the ongoing Anil Agarwal Dialogue 2025 in Nimli, Rajasthan.
“Indian soil is one of the most vulnerable soils; average soil erosion in India is 20 tons per hectare per year against the global average of 2.4 tons per hectare per year.”
Our soil is losing its natural resilience — degraded lands can’t bounce back. It’s time for immediate, soil-centric action that empowers local governance and forges strong partnerships.
There is a clear link between soil and human health, scientific research shows. As soil degrades, nutrients present in it vanish, leading to malnutrition among people.
In August 2023, researchers in the US published a study in the journal Scientific Reports, which for the first time conducts a large-scale evaluation of the relationship between the availability of micronutrients in the soil and nutritional status of people in India.
They found that districts where soil zinc availability was low had significantly higher rates of stunting (when a child has low height for their age) and underweight conditions (low weight per age).
Final Thoughts
We all love soil, knowingly or unknowingly. Soil has provided us humans everything we ever needed to survive. It was soil that made living possible in this planet. We are fully responsible for soil and its condition because we are the reason soil is degrading.
We can be aware of our surroundings and do these simple things to help:
- Plant more trees and crops
- Use sustainable farming like organic composting, crop rotation.
- Avoid pollution by not dumping chemicals or waste on the ground.
- Compost and reduce waste, composting food scraps returns nutrients to the soil.
- Avoiding harsh chemicals that harm organisms like earthworms and microbes.
Sradhaj
Ayushic