Humans need soil to grow food and survive, but our soil is dying and we only have 60 harvests left to save it, say the many contributors to a new book published in September.
Carol McKenna—the book's editor and the special adviser to Compassion in World Farming's global CEO—told Newsweek: "The only thing we can be sure of is that big change is coming, change in the food system and the way we live our lives.
"The question is whether that change is voluntary because we embrace new ways, or if it is forced upon us because we continue to do business as usual."
McKenna said that the United Nations has warned that there are "only 60 harvests left" to resolve the soil crisis. It's a number that cropped up at a conference in 2015, but it has been disputed by experts since.
However, one of the many authors of this new book—titled Regenerative Farming and Sustainable Diets—researcher and author Philip Lymbery, wrote: "The UN has rightly warned that if we carry on as we are, we have just 60 harvests left in the world's soil. No soil, no food. Game over."
What isn't debated is that soil is degrading globally. McKenna said: "95 percent of the food we eat comes from the soil, but 33 percent of the Earth's soils are already degraded, and 90 percent could become degraded by 2050."
The book presented a plethora of potential solutions to help reverse the trend, from UN agreements to replicating indigenous food systems and promoting plant-based diets among people and their pets.
But for farmer Seth Watkins, an important piece of the puzzle is regenerative agriculture: a method of farming that focuses on cultivating microbial life in the soil.
He wrote chapter 17: Achieving a Peaceful and Verdant Future: a Farmer's Perspective—and told Newsweek: "Agriculture has been turned into a production-focused, fossil fuel drive, extractive industry.
"The good news is that it does not have to be this way, and farmers are proving that we can farm with nature and regenerate the biodiversity we all need for a peaceful future."
Regenerative agriculture includes a handful of practices that are encouraged to restore soil health, including not tilling, not using strong chemical fertilizers and pesticides, rotating crops and livestock, leaving ground covered with plants at all times, and growing many different plants alongside each other.
As a movement, regenerative agriculture pits itself against the intensive methods of factory farming, which many experts blame for reducing microbial life in the soil.
"Erosion and monoculture farming practices have reduced the organic matter that stores the carbon [soils] need," said Watkins. "Chemicals and tillage have killed the microbes and bacteria that help them cycle nutrients, and the lack of living roots year around has destroyed their porosity and ability to retain water and nitrogen.
"Basically, [soils] are naked, hungry and have a fever." But there are solutions, Watkins added.
"Forty years of farming has taught me how benevolent Mother Nature is," he said. "Thousands of farmers are already seeing and proving the genuine hope in farming with nature."
He called for people to "demand clean water, healthy soil, good nutrition and restored biodiversity" from policymakers, and to support indigenous farmers—whose methods seem to be more effective at preserving biodiversity and soil health.
Watkins also said that the factory farming of animals was a major problem, but that animals had their place in a regenerative system.
"Confinement is a moral hazard, a direct threat to public health from antibiotic resistance, a waste of finite resources, a threat to water resources, and not sustainable," he said. "Alternatively, proper grazing is critical at this point to help rebuild our degraded soil."
Dung is a key natural fertilizer used by regenerative farmers, and grazing animals aerate the soils by walking on them.
But McKenna pointed to figures that showed farming practices to be one of many changes that, she said, need to happen to ensure the future survival of humanity.
"The purpose of a future-fit global food system should be to produce sufficient, accessible, affordable, nourishing food for people within planetary boundaries whilst providing decent livelihoods for people and good lives for farmed animals," said McKenna. "That isn't happening! We need to make the changes to achieve that."
She referred to some of the statistics in the book, including the fact that a third of food produced is lost or wasted, while 780 million people go hungry, and more than 3 billion people cannot afford healthy diets.
"There is no more time for business as usual," said McKenna. "Cooperation and collaboration is needed. We need to choose regeneration over extinction.
"Our diets must be more plant-based and our farms—on land or in water—must become regenerative."
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Reference
D'Silva, J., McKenna, C. (ed) (2024). Regenerative Farming and Sustainable Diets: Human, Animal and Planetary Health, Routledge (London), 2024. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781032684369
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