Saving the Earth’s Soil
Today, the United States is celebrating our 52nd Earth Day. In 1970, the inaugural Earth Day inspired 20 million people to take to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate against the environmental and human health impacts of 150 years of unchecked industrial development. Remarkably, that was 10% of the total population of the United States at the time.
Manhattan's Fifth Avenue on the first Earth Day—April 22, 1970
Earth Day traces its history to a senator from Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson, who was determined to make environmental protection part of our nation’s political agenda. He envisioned an environmental movement that combined the energy of student anti-war protests with the public’s emerging consciousness about air and water pollution. He chose April 22—a weekday that fell between spring break and final exams—to maximize student participation, and he and his team garnered support from many groups that had been working separately to raise awareness of various pressing issues, such as oil spills, pollution from factories and power plants, toxic dumps, pesticides, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife.
Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day
That first Earth Day led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, followed by the passage of many important environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. Although these laws are far from perfect, before they were enacted, industry was virtually unregulated and unaccountable.
Now, although Earth Day is a global movement celebrated by over 1 billion people in 192 countries, the situation on the planet we all share is more dire than ever before. According to the World Environmental Day website, we have less than ten years to make real change, so we all need to scale up our action.
I’m trying to make changes in my own life that reduce my substantial ecological footprint. Some decisions are big (like driving an electric car, planting trees with American Forests to neutralize my home’s carbon emissions, and backing politicians with strong environmental agendas) and some are smaller (like buying recycled paper products, shopping with reusable tote bags, and conserving water), but we need to believe that everything we do makes an impact, or we’ll get both despondent and complacent. As Joanna Macy said, “A powerful mental shift takes place when we stop telling ourselves why something can’t happen. When we can envision a hoped-for future, we strengthen our belief that it is possible.”
Championing the ambitious initiatives of the environmental superheroes among us, like Senator Nelson’s half a century ago, can make a big impact while keeping us motivated and optimistic. I recently discovered a passionate environmental crusader on an important mission to save the earth’s soil on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah—Sadhguru, an Indian spiritual teacher, prolific New York Times best-selling author, and one of India’s “50 most influential people,” with almost 8 million followers on Instagram. Through his Isha Foundation—a non-profit, volunteer-run organization operating in more than 300 centers and supported by over 11 million volunteers worldwide—Sadhguru has created numerous highly successful environmental campaigns, and his newest initiative is Save Soil.
I was shocked to learn that at least 52% of the world’s agricultural land is already degraded, which is why Sadhguru believes that the rapid loss of topsoil is the most severe crisis humanity is currently facing. According to the United Nations, the world’s remaining topsoil will be gone in sixty years if we don’t act quickly. Many scientists are warning that if current rates of soil degradation continue, life as we know it will soon come to an end.
Sadhguru embarking on his 100-day solo motorcycle ride, part of his Save Soil campaign
To help spread the word, 64-year-old Sadhguru is in the midst of a 100-day solo motorcycle ride from the UK to India, traveling 30,000 km through Europe and the Middle East. As he visits 26 countries, he’ll be bringing together environmental experts, global leaders and citizens from around the world to address this crisis. Sadhguru is asking all of us to stand up for soil health and lend our voices to help educate and motivate others, so here I go!
Why Our Soils Need Saving
Soil erosion is defined as the accelerated removal of fertile topsoil from the land’s surface. Since it takes 200 to 400 years for nature to form just 1 cm of topsoil, it is a finite resource that is not recoverable within a human lifespan. In the Daily show interview, Sadhguru spoke about how industrialized farming has led to organic matter disappearing from farms:
“We thought we could do everything with the machines. Machines can do the work that animals and human beings were doing, but organic content cannot come from the machine. It has to come from vegetative or animal waste. And that is not there. One must understand if you add organic content to sand, it becomes soil. If you take away organic content from soil, it becomes sand.”
Healthy soil high in organic matter compared to unhealthy soil striped of organic matter.
Soil erosion leads to dramatic reductions in agricultural productivity, declines in the nutritional value of the crops produced, and a diminished ability to store water. It causes desertification, amplifies the risk of landslides and flooding, and contributes to global warming, because soil rich in organic content traps and stores CO2, while degraded land releases CO2 into the atmosphere.
Sadhguru said that if soil erosion rates continue as they are, in less than 20 years, we will only be able to produce 60% of the food we are growing right now while our population will have grown to over 9 billion. “That’s not a world you want to live in. That’s not a world you want to leave your children. So we need to act now.”
In addition to the massive policy changes aimed at protecting and regenerating our planet’s topsoil that Sadhguru is pushing for, one of our most hopeful solutions is the rise of organic farming. Since organic farmers focus on continuously building the health of the soil to support healthy, disease-resistant plants, organic soil gets more productive over time. Choosing sustainably produced food is one of the most impactful things people can do every day.
For more information on our soil crisis, watch Sadhguru’s six-minute video. It includes messages from Jane Goodall and the Dalai Lama among many others.
As Jane Goodall reminded us recently, “There is still so much in the world worth fighting for, so much that is beautiful. There are so many wonderful people working to reverse the harm, to help relieve the suffering, so many young people dedicated to making this a better world, all conspiring to inspire us and to give us hope that it is not too late to turn things around if we all do our part.”
