• 30% of the world’s cropland has been abandoned in the last 40 years due to soil decline. 

• Over the last seventy years, the level of every nutrient in almost every kind of food has fallen between 10 and 100%. An individual today would need to consume twice as much meat, three times as much fruit and four to five times as many vegetables to obtain the same amount of minerals and trace elements as available in those same foods in 1940.

•  Zinc deficiency alone afflicts more than a billion people.

1st sentence: Dr. Christine Jones (2021 [1hour video] Healthy Soil’s Impact on Carbon Pathways & Microbial Diversity by Dr. Christine Jones   2. sentence: Christine Jones, (2018): Light Farming: Restoring carbon, organic nitrogen and biodiversity to agricultural soils  3. sentence: George Monbiot (The Guardian weekly, 13 May 2022): Salt of the earth

 

Feeding the world without destroying the planet. According to Monbiot 2022:

“

We face what could be the greatest predicament humankind has ever encountered: feeding the world without devouring the planet. Already, farming is the world’s greatest cause of habitat destruction, the greatest cause of the global loss of wildlife and the greatest cause of the global extinction crisis. It’s responsible for about 80% of the deforestation that’s happened this century. Unless something changes, all this is likely to get worse – much worse.

In principle, there is plenty of food, even for a rising population. But roughly half the calories farmers grow are now fed to livestock, and the demand for animal products is rising fast. Without a radical change in the way we eat, by 2050 the world will need to grow around 50% more grain. How could we do it without wiping out much of the rest of life on Earth? ..Only when livestock are extremely sparse is animal farming compatible with rich, functional ecosystems [proponents of Holistic Planned Grazing may disagree].

 ..The anticipated growth in crop yields would require 146% more fresh water than is used today. Just one problem: that water doesn’t exist. ..And all this is before we come to the soil, the thin cushion between rock and air on which human life depends, which we treat like dirt.  

Soil degradation is bad enough in rich nations, where the ground is often left bare and exposed to winter rain, compacted and wrecked by overfertilisation and pesticides that rip through its foodwebs. But it tends to be even worse in poorer nations, partly because extreme rainfall, cyclones and hurricanes can tear bare earth from the land, and partly because hungry people are often driven to cultivate steep slopes. In some countries, mostly in Central America, tropical Africa and south-east Asia, more than 70% of the arable land is now suffering severe erosion, gravely threatening future production.

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                                                                                                        George Monbiot (The Guardian weekly, 13 May 2022): Salt of the earth

Emissions and Climate change. Globally, approximately one third of greenhouse g gas emissions stems from food production (Ole Mathismoen Aftenposten 8. august 2019). « Climate breakdown is likely, on the whole, to make wet places wetter and dry places drier [So] Just as farming is trashing crucial Earth systems, their destruction threatens our food supply. Sustaining even current levels of production might prove impossible »  Monbiot ibid.

 

Restoring soil and human health. We now know that soil quality and food-quality are but two sides of the same coin. That means, the basis of your own health begins with how the food is produced.

 

Restoring farmers economy and livelihood. An illustration is provided by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.  FAO referred, already in 2016, to the consequences of the neo-liberalization of the Indian economy: