60 Years of Farmable Soil Left Excerpt from a Scientific American Article:
Image: How GROW BIOINTENSIVE can help stop soil loss. December 5, 2014 ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Generating three centimeters of top soil takes 1,000 years, and if current rates of degradation continue all of the world's top soil could be gone within 60 years, a senior UN official said. About a third of the world's soil has already been degraded, Maria-Helena Semedo of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) told a forum marking World Soil Day. The causes of soil destruction include chemical-dependent farming techniques, deforestation that increases erosion, and global warming. Policymakers too often ignore the earth under our feet, experts said. "Soils are the basis of life," said Semedo, FAO's deputy director general of natural resources. "Ninety five percent of our food comes from the soil." Unless we adopt new approaches, it is estimated the global amount of arable and productive land per person in 2050 will be only a quarter of the level in 1960, Semedo continued, due to growing populations and soil degradation. Soils play a key role in absorbing carbon and filtering water. Soil destruction creates a vicious cycle, in which, as less carbon is stored, the world gets hotter, and the land is further degraded. "We are losing the area of 30 soccer fields of soil every minute, mostly due to intensive farming," Volkert Engelsman, an activist with the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements told the forum at the FAO's headquarters in Rome. "Organic (farming) may not be the only solution but it's the single best (option) I can think of." Generating three centimeters of top soil takes 1,000 years, and if current rates of degradation continue all of the world's top soil could be gone within 60 years, a senior UN official said.
top | Newsletter Home | Article Index | Archive
|
