The hidden half of our biosphere is beneath our feet. When organisms die, the nutrients they had curated throughout their lives are trapped in the organism until detrivores along with root and mycorrhizal networks bring them back into circulation. In the same way that our breath which generates CO2 has a reciprocal process in plants that take that CO2 and turn it to O2, thus returning it to its original state, the action of the soil ecosystem returns all the other elements essential to life to circulation.
As a civilization, we make the most impact on soil via agriculture and land use changes, and things haven’t been going well. The green revolution, while solving food shortages of its day, also catapulted us into an input heavy approach to agriculture which effectively shut down the soil food web. Under normal conditions, green plants in the ground create plant sugars from photosynthesis which they shuttle down to their roots to exchange with the soil ecosystem for essential nutrients. When plants are heavily fertilized, they stop this function, effectively cutting off the major food source of the soil ecosystem. We further the damage via tilling our fields, breaking up mycelial networks, the core of communication and nutrient exchange.
In much of North American agriculture we are down to our last ¼-1/2 inch of topsoil, having started 200 years ago with a continent that averaged 6-9 feet of topsoil. We are nearly at the end of time for our current ways of growing. We can’t continue because we have nearly used up our soil wealth.
Fortunately, the same industry that burned through our topsoil reserves has the power to restore those reserves – via regenerative agriculture and lower impact methods of growing. Healthy soils are also foundational to healthy hydrology, and biodiversity. The more we invest in it, the larger and more multifaceted the returns.
