Earth Matters: Do you care about the topsoil?

The Island Now
Dr. Hildur Palsdottir

Soil health is the foundation for food security. Geomorphologist David R. Montgomery warns that 24 billion tons of topsoil are lost every year. In his book, “Dirt,” he links the collapse of all major civilizations to the erosion of topsoil.

In the history of agriculture that spans many thousands of years, a common theme includes overharvesting, deforestation, and desertification leading to the inability to farm the land and feed the people.

With fossil-fuel driven industrialization and mass production of mono-crops, we’ve become disconnected from the land. At the supermarket, we buy produce wrapped in plastic that lasts forever. The importance of healthy topsoil is lost on many.

Intensive agriculture and conventional farming disrupt the topsoil with tilling in a process that releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the world gets hotter, and the land is further degraded and subject to drought and erosion. Meanwhile, suburban monocultures of chemically maintained grass lawns are stripping the soil of its vitality.

The UN predicts we have about 60 harvests left if we don’t change our ways.

“What we do to the land, the land does to us” claims farmer and earth activist Wendell Berry. “For the true measure of agriculture is not the sophistication of its equipment, the size of its income, or even the statistics of its productivity, but the good health of the land.”

A handful of healthy topsoil contains more microorganisms than the number of people living on Earth. These microscopic beings help with decomposition and accretion of soil. Invertebrates such as earthworms, springtails, and woodlice also build soil, as do sophisticated Mycorrhizal fungal networks that bind the soil into aggregates that store carbon.

For a sense of bio-geologic time scale, The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that natural formation of an inch of topsoil takes about five hundred years. Conventional farming rips through an inch of soil much faster than Earth can restore soil health naturally.

Colonial extraction mentality disrupts million-year-old sediments in a matter of a few days with fracking and mountaintops are removed within months. Stepping on the gas while accelerating our cars we burn through hundreds of millions of years of fossilized plant materials in a split second in a process that’s non-renewable.

Regenerative agriculture, permaculture, and organic land management practices increase soil fertility and encourage carbon storage. Relying on renewable technologies, communities must grow organic vegetables locally to minimize emissions from food transport.

A great way to support regeneration of soil is to return nutrients to the ground through composting. The norm for American households is for plastic-bagged leaves and food waste to rot in landfills, or worse, end up in incinerators, adding to greenhouse gas emissions that warm the planet. We must change that. Until the establishment of community compost facilities here on Long Island, we must individually take responsibility and compost organic waste and food scraps at home. It’s encouraging how quickly you can make healthy soil in your very own home.

We must insist on a sustainable relationship with the land, or the land stops supporting us. Long Island is a coastal community prone to flooding and erosion. With climate change, we must prepare for superstorms and rising sea levels by planting deep-rooted native growth. We must think of private and public land as opportunities to bind the soil with native plants, shrubs, and trees that assist with soil regeneration.

On the South Shore, the Shinnecock Nation has thoughtfully rebuilt its shoreline with native seagrass plantings. Save the Great South Bay is restoring native habitats along the creeks and encouraging homeowners to follow suit.

On the North Shore, Rewild Long Island is dedicated to “getting rid of the lawn” and instead encourages the view of the yard as a wildlife habitat that supports pollinators, birds and soil health with climate-conscious best practices.

In summary, here is how we can help replenish the topsoil:
Plant natives (trees, shrubs, perennials) to bind the soil.
Farm the lawn, grow your own vegetables.
Compost organic waste.
Avoid bare soil: leave the leaves, leave grass clippings, mulch.
Stop the use of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides.
Support regenerative agriculture, organic farms: no-till farming, crop rotation, cover crops.
Join a Community Supported Agriculture program.

“Earth-friendly practices are our birth-right. We are completely part of the web of life, never on top of the food chain, but rather deeply embedded in a highly interdependent and responsive network of living beings. Taking care of the earth we live on brings us back to what matters.”

Dr. Hildur Palsdottir
Rewild Long Island
https://www.rewildlongisland.org

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