The soils “are bare, hungry, and feverish,” Farmer says

Humans need soil to grow food and survive, but our soil is dying and we only have 60 crops left to save it, say the many contributors to a new book published in September.

Carol McKenna, the book’s editor and special advisor to the global CEO of Compassion in World Farming, said Newsweek: “The only thing we can be sure of is that a big change is coming, a change in the food system and the way we live our lives.

“The question is whether this change is voluntary because we adopt new ways, or whether it is forced upon us because we continue to do business as usual.”

McKenna said the United Nations has warned there are “only 60 crops left” to solve the soil crisis. It’s a number that emerged at a conference in 2015, but has been debated by experts ever since.

However, one of the many authors of this new book — titled Regenerative agriculture and sustainable diets—researcher and author Philip Lymbery, wrote: “The UN has rightly warned that if we continue as we are, we’ll only have 60 crops left on the world’s soil. No soil, no food. It’s game over.”

What is not in dispute is that soil is being degraded globally. McKenna said: “95% of the food we eat comes from soil, but 33% of the Earth’s soils are already degraded and 90% could be degraded by 2050.”

The book presented a wealth of potential solutions to help reverse the trend, from UN agreements to reproducing indigenous food systems and promoting plant-based diets among people and their pets.

But for farmer Seth Watkins, an important piece of the puzzle is regenerative agriculture: a farming method that focuses on cultivating microbial life in the soil.

He wrote chapter 17: Achieving a peaceful and green future: a farmer’s perspective– and he said Newsweek: “Agriculture has become an extractive industry focused on production, fueled by fossil fuels.

“The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way, and farmers are showing that we can farm with nature and regenerate the biodiversity we all need for a peaceful future.”

Regenerative agriculture includes a handful of practices that are encouraged to restore soil health, such as no-till, no use of strong chemical fertilizers and pesticides, crop and livestock rotation, leaving the land covered with plants at all times, and growing many different plants with each other.

As a movement, regenerative agriculture opposes the intensive methods of industrial agriculture, which many experts blame for reducing microbial life in the soil.

“Erosion and monoculture practices have reduced the organic matter that stores the carbon requirement (soils),” Watkins said. “Chemicals and cultivation have killed the microbes and bacteria that help them cycle nutrients, and the lack of living roots year-round has destroyed their porosity and their ability to hold water and nitrogen.

“Basically, (the floors) are bare, hungry and feverish.” But there are solutions, Watkins added.

“Forty years of farming has taught me how benevolent Mother Nature is,” he said. “Thousands of farmers are already seeing and demonstrating the real hope in farming with nature.”

He called for people to “demand clean water, healthy soils, good nutrition and restored biodiversity” from policymakers and to support indigenous farmers, whose methods appear to be most effective in preserving biodiversity and soil health.

Watkins also said that factory farming of animals was a major problem, but that animals had their place in a regenerative system.

“Containment is a moral hazard, a direct threat to public health from antibiotic resistance, a waste of finite resources, a threat to water resources and is not sustainable,” he said. “Alternatively, proper grazing is critical at this point to help rebuild our degraded soil.”

Manure is a key natural fertilizer used by regenerative farmers, and grazing animals aerate soils by walking on it.

But McKenna pointed to figures showing that farming practices are one of many changes that he said must occur to ensure humanity’s future survival.

“The purpose of a future-proof global food system should be to produce sufficient, accessible, affordable and nutritious food for people within planetary boundaries, while providing decent livelihoods for people and good lives for farm animals,” McKenna said. “That’s not happening! We have to make the changes to make it happen.”

He referred to some of the statistics in the book, including the fact that a third of the food produced is lost or wasted, while 780 million people go hungry and more than 3 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet.

“No more time for business as usual,” McKenna said. “Cooperation and collaboration are needed. We must choose regeneration over extinction.

“Our diets must be more plant-based and our farms, on land or in water, must be regenerated.”

Do you have a tip for a food story? Newsweek should i cover Are there any nutritional issues you are concerned about? Let us know via [email protected]. We can ask for expert advice and your story could be included Newsweek.

reference

D’Silva, J., McKenna, C. (ed.) (2024). Regenerative agriculture and sustainable diets: human, animal and planetary healthRoutledge (London), 2024. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781032684369