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Soil...
it’s one the most underrated,
and little-understood,
wonders on our fragile planet.
Here’s why…
Far from being lifeless dirt,
it’s estimated that
in a single gram of soil,
there could be
as many as 50,000 species
of microscopic organisms,
or microorganisms.
And in one teaspoon of soil,
there are more microorganisms
than there are people on the Earth.
But much of what lies beneath,
in this hidden and deep universe,
is still alien to us.
Despite being literally
under our feet,
humans have so far
only identified a tiny fraction
of the extraordinary life
teeming underground.
But these animals and microorganisms
provide an invaluable role.
Millions of years
of evolutionary competition
have led the microorganisms
to produce antibiotic compounds
to fight their neighbours.
And these compounds form the basis
of many of the antibiotics
used by us humans.
We literally make medicine
from our soil.
No-one knows how many new treatments
could be lying under our feet,
waiting to be discovered.
One of the most special creatures
living in soil is the earthworm.
Darwin was fascinated
by them and said:
"It may be doubted if there
are any other animals
which have played
such an important part
in the history of the world,"
due to their importance
in making and sustaining soil.
Earthworms journey down and around,
creating breathing holes,
like lungs in the soil.
This creates space for plant roots
to grow and keeps soil alive.
Under the soil, there are also vast
and intricate webs of fungal threads.
Plants and fungi need each other
to thrive, and so they do a deal.
Fungi can’t capture carbon dioxide
to grow like plants can,
but they’re better than plants
at mining the soil for nutrients,
so they trade.
Plants give fungi carbon to grow,
and fungi give plants nutrients,
like nitrogen and phosphorus.
It’s a mutually beneficial
relationship.
And just one example of the
interconnected ecosystem
we’re all part of.
Plant matter decays
and provides food for microbes.
They provide food for worms.
Worms are food for birds and so on…
Soil provides us humans
with almost everything we eat.
But it’s not just about
what soils can do for us.
It’s important we value, appreciate -
and crucially protect - soil for
a whole load of other reasons too.
Think about this for a moment.
It takes more than 100 years
to build just 5 millimetres -
half a centimetre - of soil.
But just moments to destroy,
through chemical contamination,
urbanisation,
landslides, erosion and more.
Some soil is really ancient - dating
back millions and millions of years.
The oldest soil on Earth
is thought to be in South Africa
and dates back three billion years.
In the UK,
our soil is around 15,000 years old,
and it formed after the last ice age.
Soil is also a really valuable
carbon store -
capturing carbon
and locking it away in stable forms
deep underground.
It stores three times as much carbon
as all the plants on Earth combined,
including trees.
But because it grows so slowly,
we need to protect what we have.
We are not succeeding.
We know many of the problems.
Intensive farming is one of them.
It releases carbon from our soils
and we’re losing soil 50 to 100 times
faster than it’s able to re-build.
In Europe, 60-70% of soils
are thought to be unhealthy.
And in croplands in the UK,
in less than 30 years
from the end of the 1970s,
we lost more than 10% of the carbon
the soil had stored for us.
And since then?
Well, we just don’t know,
because in many countries
there’s little data on soil.
It’s poorly protected and regulated.
We grow on it, build on it,
build from it.
It filters and cleans our waters,
reduces flooding,
and regulates our atmosphere.
It’s one of the most biodiverse
habitats on Earth
and a vital part of the nitrogen
and carbon cycle on our planet.
But the sad truth is,
right now, soil hasn’t enough
champions fighting for it.
We literally treat it like dirt.
And yet there is so much
untapped potential,
so much wonder, and so many secrets,
just waiting to be discovered
in the ground beneath our feet.
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