Posted
on December 5, 2014
Soil
is pretty important! Soil is, as the World Soil Day website
points out, “where food begins.”
Almost all of our fruits and vegetables are grown in soil, and the
feed for animals we raise is almost entirely grown in soil. Even the
natural fibers we make into clothing are made from plants grown in
soil or from animals who eat plants grown in soil.
Along with water
and sun, soil is one of the most important components of agriculture.
And
yet some of the things people do cause valuable mineral-rich soil to
erode away, to run off into rivers and the ocean. It's not lost
forever—the tiny rocks minerals and the organic matter that make up
rich soil may be broken down, eaten or absorbed, melted, pressed into
new rock, reused in some way by natural cycles—but the soil is lost
to us humans, and to the uses we have for it!
People's
actions can also poison soil. That generally happens when we try to
“get rid” of toxic chemicals by burying them. But simple burial
just puts those toxins into the soil that we build on, into the soil
that we grow food in, into the underground water that we often wash
with and drink. The horrible example of Love's Canal, in Niagara
Falls, New York, tells us a lot about this environmental no-no.
 |
| I said that "almost all" of our food is grown in soil. But some food is grown through hydroponics, in which air and nutrients are pumped into water, to be accessed by the roots of growing plants. It's farming without soil! |
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