"Man, despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication and his many accomplishments, owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains"
Anonymous
My doctor craned his neck to get a look at what I was reading on my last visit to his office. It has become a bit of a ritual, and has led to some great discussions about Steve Jobs, Lawrence of Arabia, plagues or whatever else I happen to be reading about.
"Dirt", he said. End of discussion.
In fairness to him, he knew as much about dirt as I would about performing a frontal lobotomy.
The book is indeed called "Dirt", by David Montgomery and despite its less than riveting title, it is a fascinating read. The overarching theme is that soil is our most important and essential natural resource. It is also our least appreciated and least valued. While we all know the price of gas or heating oil, we tend to forget that soil is a vitally important strategic resource as well.
This is not news to most farmers. I went to a day long "Soilsmart" conference in Kitchener last winter that was well attended, with speakers from all over North America.
This would have been a huge event in 1931, when one in three Canadians lived on a farm, However, this is 2015, and the number is one in forty six. A number that will continue to dwindle.
What this means is that, like my doctor, most people don't have the foggiest notion of why soil is so important. We treat it as a cheap industrial commodity that is available in limitless supply.
Sadly, this is not the case, and Mr. Montgomery provides many examples of why soil degradation has taken down countries and empires, including Iraq, Greece, China, Haiti, Iceland, The Roman Empire and others. It's a long list.
He states "...world soil erosion now exceeds new soil production by as much as 23 billion tons per year. At this pace the world would literally run out of topsoil in little more than a century. It's like a bank account from which one spends and spends, but never deposits."
This steady bleed has caused many farmers around the world to dramatically change how they treat their land. I have written another blog ( "Is your farm organic?") and I will write more in the future that I hope you will read to further your understanding and appreciation of what many farmers, including me, are doing to arrest and reverse this decline.
We have seen our soil organic matter levels increase over the past 30 years, due to cover cropping, long rotations, no-till planting, composting and other practices. These have provided tremendous advantages to us by increasing the water holding capacity of our soil, increasing microbial activity; even helping plants fight off disease.
But the bottom line is what these practices provide to you and to society as a whole, and I will continue to hammer this point home over the years to come:
Healthy Soil = Healthy Food = Healthy People
Your local soil zealot,
Guy
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