3 Causes and 4 Effects of Soil Degradation

“If you go into a forest and pick up soil, it is full of life. That is how soil is supposed to be. If the soil strength weakens, our bodies will weaken–not just in terms of nourishment, but in a very fundamental way.”

—Sadhguru

Since we started a very mechanized and industrialized kind of agriculture, the organic content in the world’s soil has gone down significantly. For any soil to be agriculturally potent, it must have a minimum organic content of 3 to 6%, but in many parts of the world, it is well below 1%. 62% of India’s soil has less than 0.5% of organic content. Why has this happened?

When we grow one ton of crop, it means that we have removed one ton of topsoil. What are the means to put it back? We were putting it back naturally when there were animals and trees on the farm because green litter from the trees and animal waste are the only ways to put back organic content into soil. People think that a tractor will do the job. A tractor will plow the soil, but it will not enrich the soil as animals and trees would.

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