FOOD SECURITY: DIGGING UP THE DIRT – COULD SOIL CONTAIN THE ANSWER TO FOOD SHORTAGES?

“Data suggests that if we do not restore global soil health, it is highly likely the consequences within 10 years will be many, many millions facing food and water insecurity.”- John Crawford, a British soil expert

28 January 2020
THIN LEI WIN
Rome, Italy
Thomson Reuters Foundation
https://www.sightmagazine.com.au/features/14626-hunger-digging-up-the-dirt-could-soil-contain-the-answer-to-food-shortages

As water shortages, high temperatures and rising greenhouse gas emissions threaten food production, countries around the world are looking somewhere new for solutions – the soil.

For decades, farmers wanting to boost their yields have focused their attention on fertilisers, technology and new seed varieties. Instead, they should be looking under their feet, according to experts, who warn that years of erosion and degradation of the soil through intensive farming have created the conditions for a global food production crisis.

“Data suggests that if we do not restore global soil health, it is highly likely the consequences within 10 years will be many, many millions facing food and water insecurity,” British soil expert John Crawford told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. This could lead to “civil unrest, mass migration, radicalisation and violence on an unprecedented scale,” said Crawford, until recently a science director at the world’s oldest agricultural research institute, Rothamsted Research.

Much of the problem is caused by erosion, which strips away the highly fertile top layer of soil. An area of soil the size of a soccer pitch is eroded every five seconds, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

While soil erosion occurs naturally, human activities such as intensive agriculture, deforestation and urban sprawl have significantly increased the rate at which it is happening. Nearly a third of Earth’s soil is already degraded. At current rates, that will increase to 90 per cent by 2050, the FAO forecasts, warning that pollution from human activity such as mining and manufacturing as well as erosion are to blame.

There are signs the world is beginning to wake up to the issue, which Crawford said it had only about 10 to 15 years to sort out. Soil is “one of the most important regulators of global climate” because it stores more carbon than the planet’s atmosphere and vegetation combined, he said. “If you fix soil, you mitigate a whole bunch of other risks,” added Crawford, now professor of technology and strategy at the Adam Smith Business School in Glasgow.

(Continued)