'Soiled' is hardly a flattering adjective. It suggests dirty ugliness. Soil, the root noun, however, is everything. Soil is soul as soil is the sole that begins and ends the very existence.
No, it is not the 'from dust to dust' fact of the life cycle. Actually, the very life cycle of everything living, from the earthworm to the giant elephant or of the evolved mankind, depends on soil. The entire food chain begins in the soil, the uterus of the seed that blooms in to a sturdy sapling, necessary for life to continue, whether of the herbivore or the carnivore variety. Soil, in brief, is all.
Hence the relevance of the WSD! The WSD stands for the 'world soil day', celebrated every December 5 under the aegis of the UNO. The WSD encourages the sustainable preservation of soil and its quality.
Many factors threaten the basic soil and its fundamental qualities. Let us mention a few here. First and foremost, it is deforestation. When forests are felled flat, the strong roots that would have held the soil together are lost, and soil is washed away, literally down the drain.
Such soil erosion is highly dangerous every which way. It clogs the river beds. If not treated, it leads to flash floods which can lead to artificial lakes, a huge threat to the entire ecology. Remember the tragedy of, and nearby, Chamoli district of the 'devbhoomi', Uttarakhand this monsoon? The tragedy should prove the need to respect the soil.
Instead humans flood it with chemical fertilizers that finish off the soil which otherwise is alive, almost like a beehive, as various ingredients are silently, subtly, sincerely re-generating it constantly.
In other words, soil and its health are literally the root cause of our very existence. Hence this WSD, this tribute to the soil that sustains us! Let our development not wipe out the soil beneath our feet! Let us think of sustainable alternatives. Let us per year leave certain fields fallow, let us insist on organic agricultural ways and modes, let us not mine mindlessly. Let us serve soil so that it can sustain us!
Pratima@ Soil is so essential to our lives that even spiritual metaphors refer to soil, such as the soil of goodness enriches the soul, for instance.
Quote of the day: "The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself." This awareness raising, sensitising quote is assigned to many a thinkers and statesmen, including Franklin D.Roosevelt. Hope all our "devrai" forests survive such senseless destruction. Long live "chipko" movements of all sorts.
Word of the day: desertification This term refers to fertile land growing futile due to (in)human excesses such as excessive deforestation, horrid intrusion of human habitat in to forest land, the mixing in of chemicals in to land mass due to fertilisers, industry waste, human slurry, and so on, the destruction, in brief, of land, of soil itself.
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