To protect the soil and feed the planet, the solution is agroecology

Among the sustainable development goals of Agenda 2030, we also read of the need to “combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil”. So, fully the soil enters the planet’s sustainability objectives unequivocally highlighting the need for a radical regeneration process. But we don’t see that widespread.

And yet, today the word sustainability always takes paths that are too diversified and very often far from respect for natural resources and for future generations. Just think of the current commitments towards an EU directive on the ‘sustainable’ use of pesticides, of the human presumption on the theme of varietal innovation through Nbt and GMOs with someone who argues their importance for a more ‘sustainable’ agriculture, up to, even, to those who continue to say that the use of glyphosate is a tool to strengthen ‘sustainability’. And these are just a few examples. We are very tired of all this short-sightedness, undoubtedly dictated by a subjection to an agricultural model that does not hold up and that it is clinging to any attempt to remain economically funded by global agricultural policies.

As we continue to discuss, the soils of the planet are progressively dying, arid and desertified. The latest international report on desertification shows that 75% of the world’s soils are affected by progressive degradation, evidently more thrust where agro-industry has found greater development. Industrial agricultural production, intensive zootechnics, immoderate use of synthetic chemistry, loss of control of ecosystem balances, are among the most significant reasons for the degradation that is rapidly proceeding towards true desertification. Many scientific works show that the use of pesticides, herbicides and mechanization contribute significantly to the alteration of the soil ecosystem. A study applied in many EU countries has shown how 80% of the soils analyzed contain pesticide residues, often with a high persistence. The tolerance thresholds of each pesticide, however, do not contemplate the combined effect of several residues, making everything less and less bearable.

Therefore, it is no longer enough to talk about the need to stop the consumption of soil caused by overbuilding, even if in Italy it is more urgent than ever. We must also look at agricultural soils devastated by years of production intensification without strategy, aimed only at maximizing profit. The soil is the first piece of the ecosystem to pay a very high price by breaking all the balances which define the extraordinary network underlying fertility and which play an incomparable but too often overlooked ecological role. Maybe because it’s all underground, we don’t see it and we think it doesn’t exist, that it’s not important, that it can be trampled on in every sense.

Indeed, the extraordinary ability of a polyphyte permanent lawn to sequester carbon is underlined even more today the importance that the soil can also have in terms of contrasting climate change. If we don’t convince ourselves, however, that we citizens must be the first to get involved in our daily lives, we will never be able to make a change just by exploiting the nature that we have already put in serious crisis. And instead we insist on thinking that we can continue to dominate every phenomenon. We also think that we can produce without soil, almost solving the problem of its widespread degradation which causes reduced agricultural functionality. We think that technology is enough to overcome the effects of our inertia, that our gardens can be moved into a shed with hydroponic systems or that we can continue to seasonally adjust many products by cultivating them without soil in greenhouses devastated by years of synthetic chemistry.

Globally, we have lost all vision and continue to look at our feet without knowing that soon we will no longer be able to take any constructive steps.

Ideas

The answer to water consumption for food production is agroecology

by Francesco Subtle*

March 21, 2022

We had an international scientist in Italy, Concetta Vazzanadisappeared a few days ago, who taught several generations of students, technicians, ordinary citizens, the value of the agroecological model, of doing agriculture while respecting natural resources and ecosystem balances. He did so with the belief that only the dissemination of this approach can give a future to our planet, starting with the conservation of the soil as a crucial ecosystem service for the survival of every living being, not just man.

Agroecology as a model of development and not of backwardness, as some would have you believe; togroecology as a tool for the growth of a functional and effective agricultural system to feed the eight billion inhabitants of the planet, with environmental balance and respect for resources that are not infinite. All starting from the soil which contains within itself the agricultural potential that we must know how to use harmoniously and without violence.

Therefore, World Soil Day cannot find themes so distant from the World Day on Desertification and Drought celebrated a few months ago, because any centimeter of soil today that continues to be lost would mean one centimeter more desert and one centimeter less resource for our life on the planet. If we don’t know how to do it for the balance of natural ecosystems, let’s try to do it for pure survival.

*Francesco Sottile, Slow Food