What is soil health?

Ocean plastic and air pollution are pressing issues, that's for sure. But what many are not yet aware of is the importance of soil health for humans.

The soil is precious ecosystem, which ideally contains a lot of humus and is home to numerous living beings. Around five percent of the organic matter contained in the soil are soil organisms: animals, plants, fungi and microorganisms ensure that the ecosystem works. They make nutrients available, improve water flow and ventilation, and break down dead organic material. The soil is not only an important basis for life for plants and animals, but also for us humans. More than 90 percent of the world's food production depends on the soil. Mankind cannot feed itself on air, love and marine animals alone. Healthy soil is also irreplaceable as a drinking water reservoir.

We destroy what we have - including soil health

But we are currently well on the way to destroying this valuable asset. The science journalist Florian Schwinn speaks of a "destruction campaign" on soil health and calls for a "humus offensive" in the Agriculture. Because industrial agriculture, the use of chemicals but also the building up of the soil are to blame for the fact that 23 percent of the earth's land area can no longer be used and species extinction is advancing.

For example, the EU research project Soil service with eleven participating European university and research institutes, it was already clearly established in 2012 that intensive agriculture leads to a loss of biodiversity in the soil, as it promotes humus shrinkage, compaction and erosion. But especially in times of climate catastrophe, soil health is an order of the day. Because only a healthy soil can floods and mudslides caused by the climate change appear more and more often, cope with and debilitate. So the soil must be protected.

In the Climate Summit 2015 the French Minister of Agriculture has started an initiative that aims to enrich the soil with four per thousand humus every year and is thus playing a pioneering role internationally. After all, according to the authors of the book “The Humus Revolution”, Ute Scheub and Stefan Schwarzer, a worldwide humus build-up of only one percentage point could remove 500 gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere, which would bring today's CO2 content in the air to a largely harmless level. Within 50 years it would allegedly be possible to bring CO2 emissions to pre-industrial levels - for better soil health.

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