Save Your Unborn Children | Lets Replenish

Lets save the Soil for the Unborn Children

Magic Of Soil

“The Only Magic Material that Turns Death into Life.”

– SADHGURU

The Save Soil movement is about bringing humanity together to keep the magic of soil alive.

Magic Of Soil

Most of us are familiar with words and concepts such as Climate Change, Carbon Emissions, Air Pollution and Water Scarcity, but very few have focused attention on Soil. For millennia, life on earth has been sustained by a thin layer of fertile soil on the earth's crust.

But...
What exactly is soil and what does it do?

Living soil: Basis for our life

”The soil is the poor man’s tropical rain forest”

These words by the Scottish biologist M.B. Usher are spot on: one does not have to travel far to discover a wide diversity of life forms on a small area. Instead, a look under one’s feet may surpass the stoutest expectations, as soils are teeming with life. Apart from the occasional earthworm or woodlouse, one normally will see little of all that: many soil animals are just a few millimetres in size, the majority is even much smaller. To observe micro-organisms, one needs a microscope. A handful of fertile soil however contains thousands of species, billions of bacteria and meters of fungal hyphae. Nowadays, the above quote is even more relevant than when it was written around 1980, since soils have been deteriorating rapidly worldwide. This threatens the quality of our lives and livelihood by posing global challenges to food safety, climate change and adaptability, water quality and soil biodiversity.

Soil Biodiversity and Function

What community of organisms lives beneath our feet and why is it necessary to know more about these organisms? The biomass of all the organisms in a hectare of topsoil from a fertile arable field is comparable with that of sixty sheep or five cows; and often his biomass is even higher in grassland and forest. All this life together forms the soil system: a complex of mutually-connected organisms in a dynamic environment, connected through interactions such as predator-prey relationships and the conversion of energy and elements.

Each organism in the soil system has a function and a place in the food web (Figure 1). Large groups of organisms have specialised in the decomposition and dispersal of dead organic matter. The primary decomposers are bacteria and fungi. Other groups of organisms feed on bacteria (bacterial-feeders), fungi (fungal-feeders), plant roots (micro-herbivores) or animals (predators and top predators). Some organisms are very selective and feed only on a few other species, whilst others, the omnivores, exploit various food sources. All these trophic interactions and biological activity drive carbon and nutrient cycles, soil structure formation, disease suppression, and ultimately soil ecosystem services.

The Planet is in Crisis

FOOD CRISIS

FOOD CRISIS

The Planet is in Crisis

FOOD CRISIS

WATER SCARCITY

LOSS OF BIO-DIVERSITY

CLIMATE CHANGE

LOSS OF LIVELIHOOD

CONFLICT AND MIGRATION

Soil: A holistic solution

Almost every major ecological crisis is, to some degree or form, a consequence or symptom of the degradation of soil. Similarly, almost every environmental or environment-related pain point can be addressed by creating healthy soil.

It is, in fact, a fallacy to think we can address any one aspect of our environment without addressing the whole, because no aspect of the ecosystem functions in isolation. No solution is complete until we become conscious that life is one single complex phenomenon, all of which is happening in unison. In many ways, Soil is the underlying platform upon which life springs forth. If we fix soil, we have the best chance of fixing the whole.

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