By R.J.B Feb., 2022, Zama, Japan.
A recent cosmic realization is that our survival depends entirely upon topsoil the loss of which is increasingly rapid & essentially irreversible in millennial terms as has been condensed into www.consciousplanet.org ’s: “SAVE SOIL”. This too is the essence of my message for >40 yrs; in fact I laid it all out as my hopeful plans last year – https://vermecology.wordpress.com/2021/03/30/soil-nexus/.
They reasonably claim: “The United Nations states we will run out of cultivable soil in 60 years. 52% of the world’s agricultural soils are degraded, and at this rate, a catastrophic global food crisis is inevitable in the near future.”
Conscious Planet’s brief: “Launching in March [2022], Conscious Planet is a global movement to activate the support of over 3 billion people (60% of the world’s electorate), to drive policy change in all democratic nations, towards revitalising soil by raising the organic content of soil..” Again, entirely reasonable aims.
They further state: “The planet is in crisis. If current rates of soil degradation continue, this would be the end of life as we know it.. Soil degradation is the most pressing ecological challenge of our time.” I wholeheartedly agree and condone these fact-based statements.
Some fact-based support information provided is that soil erosion is 75 Gt/yr (or 2,000 tonnes per second). This we already know of, at least since Pimental & Burgess (2013) (see – www.mdpi.com/2571-8789/2/4/64/htm).Other baseline information from 28th Dec., 2021 seems mostly accurate, as summarized below (https://web.archive.org/web/20220111125630/https://isha.sadhguru.org/us/en/wisdom/article/soil-degradation-causes-effects ):
They say we get 95% of human food is from agriculture, which may be factual. But from soils (including informal foraging, etc.?) we seemingly get 99.3% of human food (just ~0.3 from all marine fisheries and another ~0.3% from aquaculture that relies mainly on grains farmed from land). This data is all readily available from Pimental & Burgess (2013), from FAO or from the fisheries industries themselves as summarized in postscript here – https://vermecology.wordpress.com/2021/12/31/lterrestris-in-japan/ .
Their other push concerns “Meat [Over-]Consumption and Cattle Grazing.” Again I concur.
They say: “Right now, fifty-one million square kilometers of land is being farmed in the world. Out of this, forty million square kilometers are used for raising animals and their feed, which is 75%. If you bring down your meat consumption by 50%, twenty million square kilometers of land will become available for regenerating the soil..” This seems reasonable, with a data source:
The term “Regeneration” as applied to soil now has a somewhat contrived interpretation from its original form (as described by Wikipedia) due to the inclusion of agrichemicals & GMOs in several of the captured, coerced or commercial applications (e.g. as promoted by Regeneration Int. or Conservation Ag. whereby most “reduced tillage” implies massive annual applications of toxic and carcinogenic glyphosate/Roundup with synthetic N-P-K nutrients on GMO staple monocultures often for sick CAFO operations that use excess antibiotics and other drugs). Use of such poisons and patented corporate entities (GMOs) are unacceptable in the 100% organic practices sanctioned by principles of Agroecology and Permaculture.
A seemingly reasonable summary is provided in a 2019 Civil Eats Report that says “One of the reasons herbicide is rarely discussed in the context of regenerative agriculture is because regenerative practices have been largely adopted by conventional, chemical–dependent operations. According to the latest Census of Agriculture, cover cropping and reduced tillage have experienced a boom in recent years. By 2017, no-till and reduced till accounted for about two-thirds of America’s cropland” and, tellingly: “And yet, today, the vast majority of conventional farmers who use regenerative methods continue to use pesticides, according to a survey by No-Till Farmer, a leading magazine for the regen crowd. Some 92 percent of respondents planned to use glyphosate for weed control, and the majority said they would plant crops that had been engineered to withstand its use“.
If >90% of “Regeneration” farmers use chemicals they can not claim to be wholly organic nor soil savers. A recent 2021 Summary Report on “Regen” is – www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8023280/ .
Soil is incredible in its beneficial microbial and faunal abundance and biomass (often more than that above ground), hence these agrichemical poisons are not at all sensible to promote when there are many alternatives for smart people to use:
File:Topsoil organisms bar graph.jpg From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Topsoil_organisms_bar_graph.jpg. Note that a global rate of extinction, when these soil microbes are included in calculations, may be as high as >23 species lost per second (estimated by https://vermecology.wordpress.com/2021/06/20/tol/) as our most urgent and time critical crisis. Extinctions are irreversible and have dire consequences.
Some of their other arguments are:
“#3 Too Much of Fertilizers” With this there is no issue. Synthetic N-P-K fertilizer use needs to end and (vermi-)composting restored.
“#2 The Organic Matter in Soil Decreases 87% of the planet’s life [*], including you, me, and a multitude of microbes, worms, birds, animals, and trees are living on approximately 39 inches of topsoil. That is the average topsoil that you have on the planet. But the level of degradation that has happened in the last 70 years is scary. The amount of biomass in the soil has come down by around 80% in the last 50 years. This is really death of life! If we continue like this, it is expected that by the end of this century, 80% of insect and worm life will be gone [**]. ‘Okay, what is the problem if the worms die? We do not like insects anyway.’ This is the attitude of the urban populations. If all the insects die, all life on this planet will end in a few years. If all the worms die, you have just a few months before everything ends.” I agree so I added the bolding!
* This data does not quite comply within realm of my calculations of 99% of biomass and 98% biodiversity on and below ground (compared to about 0.2% biomass and 2% marine/aquatic biodiversity):
From – https://vermecology.wordpress.com/2020/05/27/realms-of-the-soil/ .** www.mdpi.com/2571-8789/2/2/33/htm indeed shows >83% decline earthworms and about the same rate for insects & birds or mammals, etc. in the last few decades, as I mentioned, which is our major issue.
Some of their other info is a bit skewed as they link to a S.O.S. video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2gSTcy7Mdc&ab_channel=DJNicke screen capture below) claiming that soil has 1,000 times more Carbon than the atmosphere (since the atmosphere has 860 Gt C this would be 860,000 Gt C which may be close to the inorganic carbon content of some rocks but, as for soil itself, my reasoned and referenced estimates are of around 10,000-12,000 Gt Soil Organic Carbon, or SOC, globally much of this living). (Refs.: www.preprints.org/manuscript/202006.0151/v1 ; https://veop.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/veop-4-5.pdf).
They also claim, truly, that earthworms process via topsoil and litter all atmospheric carbon each 4 years. This was also reasoned from my 2018 calculations: initially “all atmospheric carbon is theoretically processed via leaf-litter through the intestines of earthworms in ~12-year cycles” (www.mdpi.com/2571-8789/2/4/64/htm) and subsequently updates, in 2020, as: “Revisiting Darwin’s work a Century later, Lee (1985: tabs. 18, 21)[30] has mean earthworm surface casts dry mass of 105 t/ha/yr and about equal subsoil casting gives 210 t/ha/yr. With a 26 Gha topsoil mantle this is 5,460 Gt/yr humus processing. At an average cast carbon content of ~4% gives 218.4 Gt C/yr or about the entire annual NPP, as to be expected for balanced Nature” giving turnover time of all 860 Gt C in atmospheric CO2 of ~4 years. (Refs.: www.preprints.org/manuscript/202006.0151/v1 ; https://veop.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/veop-4-5.pdf).
Thus I concur that earthworms may indeed reasonably process all atmospheric CO2 every 4 yrs and that when plant respiration is included, CO2 turnover time is in the order of ~1–4 years.
Their solutions? Mostly absent or advocating some vague Regeneration Agriculture which, as noted above, is problematical when agrichemical toxins, glyphosate & GMOs and red meat excess are still used.
A slight (or major) issue is they have support from World Economic Forum’s dubious Dr Klaus Schwab. What does Economy know about Ecology? Apart from being beholden and subordinate, not much! See – https://vermecology.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/economy-is-ecology-s-bitch-2.pdf and https://vermecology.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/at-random.pdf.
Their support to Savory Inst., which is all about meat eating (viz. https://savory.global/this-man-wants-you-to-eat-more-meat/), is also concerning as it is contrary to earlier advocacy for less meat, which is entirely appropriate for proper ecological and spiritual restoration. The leader, Sadhguru san, is adamant that excessive meat eating is bad. Personally, I agree (having eaten no red meat for ~40 yrs; veggies, fish, eggs and cheese do well enough for my ethics & enviro impact). Having lived and worked on dairy farms, for me, pastured dairy is an acceptable compromise (although it requires cows to be regularly impregnated and then have their calves taken away and I have heard them baying all night when that happens).
They also link (https://www.consciousplanet.org/what-science-says/) and are supported by 4p1000.org who promote false and contradictory information, e.g. that soil has only “two to three times as much carbon as the atmosphere“:
As atmospheric CO2 comprises 860 Gt C, then x 2-3 = 1,720-2,580 Gt C total SOC. Whereas, in reality, soil SOC is in the realm of 8,580-12,000 Gt C, or about 10-15 times that in the atmosphere (Ref., Ref., Ref.).
Rather, immediate and readily available soil remedies for each and every person are to recycle all organic matter via (vermi-)compost and – if not home grown – to demand 100% organic foods. At the same time, everyone should learn and try some principals and practices of Permaculture Design in their daily lives.
Pressed for another remedy, in my view, there should be at least one dedicated SOIL ECOLOGY INSTITUTE (independent of chemical franchises!) on each continent & in each country. Currently there is not a single one that I know of anywhere on Earth, hence our global predicament of eroded soils & dying worms…
The slogan “SAVE SOIL” we may simplify as “SAVE WORMS”… allowing them to Save our Soils.
Overall, my “fact check” of their soil data is good, but their solutions are as yet not fully formulated.
This is yet another slap in the face to the Marine Mob who are invited to attack this fact-based movement. So too the many self-proclaimed “soil experts” who seem ignorant of these urgent issues and unable to promote viable options that do not upset their agrichemical overlords.
Proper Science is rightly skeptical about information and its verified sources; if anyone wishes to use Science to support their arguments they must accept such rigor. In this regards, I have emailed info@consciousplanet.org with my considered advice and support, e.g. for an Attenborough style “Brown Planet” Netflix docco reversing his earlier false information about the ocean’s importance over land’s; let’s see how that email reply transpires (to be continued…).
VermEcology 
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