We all rely on agriculture and farmlands for the different foods and products we consume and use every day. However, the agricultural land that we need to use for the creation of those foods and products is rapidly degrading in ecological health.
Generating three centimeters of healthy topsoil takes ~1,000 years, and if current rates of degradation continue all of the world’s usable topsoil could be gone within 60 years, a senior UN official said (UN, 2017).
Unusable because the nutrients in the soil are so little they cannot support the growth of life. The reason our farmlands have degraded so much is a result of the lack of our knowledge and willingness to change old ‘bad’ farming habits. Rather than taking care of the land and using it in cycles such as the First Nations had, we have simply adopted a system of moving to a new piece of land when one is undernourished.
Our farmlands increasingly becoming more and more overused and worked past the point of revival, we put our whole way of life and sourcing of food at a huge risk. As the UN stated once topsoil is ruined it may take up to ~1000 years for that land to be used for producing crops again. Personally, I don’t deny that humans could solve this food issue with some drink from a lab, but that’s, not the food I want to be eating because we were too lazy to take care of our lands. Further, I am reminded by the many people who claim to be saving the world by only eating plants and I applaud them in taking action against climate change in an individually impactful way, but why are you not doing more to protect the lands you need to sustain your dietary choice.
If people should only eat plants, what plants will we all be able to eat when the all the farmable land we have is so nutrient deficient we cannot grow those plants for food anymore? Ship highly perishable plants from places far around the world to maintain a no meat diet? It doesn’t make sense to me why we can be so angry against people who eat meat yet not be freaking out about our rapidly approaching inability to grow the food all of us need currently.
Interesting video on how people are taking steps to help regenerate damaged topsoil.
Texas Ranch Dirt Sustainability
Resources:
Arsenault, C. (n.d.). Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues. Retrieved March 9, 2019, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-farming-left-if-soil-degradation-continues/
(2019, March 07). Retrieved March 10, 2019, from https://youtu.be/EAO1A6EdVVA
Roam Ranch. (n.d.). Retrieved March 9, 2019, from http://roamranch.com/
