Save suffering soil!

 Soil is dying. Most of you would agree with me that this can be the understatement of the decade. Multiple are the causes. The huge urbanisation and the madly consumerist lifestyle that metros and big cities peddle is one of the prime causes. How? Well, every city produces mountains of dry waste, not to forget the digital waste. Wet waste can be composted, may even be recycled, though it is true that such landfills, too, are a cause of the death of the soil. 

Yet another reason is the soil erosion due to deforestation. Sure there should be development, but it has to be sustainable. When an acre of the Amazonian forest, to give an example, is cut down, centuries of the evolutionary process are wiped out. Nature does heal itself. Yet the process of its resilient  resurgence can hardly match the mad human greed.

The death of the soil is due to air pollution, too. The air pollutants mix in to the soil due to rains even when they are not artificial. Much worse is the case of agriculture. Farmers hardly go for natural manure such as the cow dung or the sheep manure. Instead they blast the poor soil through the excessive use of chemical fertilizers which make the soil arid by destroying and disabling the pH factor of the soil, its micronutrients, and so on. They would rather burn the old stalks instead of digging organic manure pits.

Such is the sad situation that already there is a talk of and experimentation with vertical agricultural production. Beyond such artificiality, are there any other concrete and tangible solutions? There should be compulsory rain water harvesting to begin with as the process would improve the water table. Thus would there be reduction in borewells. 

Similarly, there has to be a lot of reuse of all materials, not merely plastic which can be used for carpeting one layer of the new roads. Similarly, the debris from the real estate industry must somehow be re-cycled.

Most importantly, huge plantation of trees of the local variety is necessary. Farmers should be encouraged for syndicated farming so that more economic and concentrated efforts at organic manure and pesticides would be possible.

When a small time farmer has just an acre or two of possibly arable land, such efforts might be costly for an individual who would hence prefer the easy and comparatively cost effective alternative of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Huge awareness programmes of such variety are the need of the hour. 

Let us not kill the soil. Killing the soil is like the uterine removal operation which rejects a woman her basic reproduction rights. Hope farmers, policy makers and common citizens realise the need for such awareness.

Pratima@Help the soil to help us!