Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Soil 306: Aged

Soil, like a fine wine, should improve with age. Conventional agricultural soils are aged beyond their years due to our poor farming practices. Our soils are aging, when they should be "youthing", to borrow a term from the health and wellness industry.

Did you know that the North African crest of the Sahara desert was the once the bread basket of the Greek and Roma Empires. What happened to reduce these once fertile soils to one of the largest deserts on the planet.

They cut the trees and didn't repatriate the fertility. The trees are critical to the water cycle in any ecology.The crops were distributed all over the known world to feed the Roma armies and no fertility was returned to the soil. Eventually a thriving agricultural region became one of the biggest deserts in the world.

Are North American soils on this same path? They could be if we don't reverse current trends.




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