Soil

Will there one day be a time when the food demands of billions of people is greater than the available farmlands to grow crops? In the midst of consumerism, will a concerned world recognize the need to keep our land healthy for food and drink?

How long has it been since you have held a clump of rich black soil in your hand How long since you have felt the soft warm earth squishing between your toes? Or walked barefooted in the sand and felt the freedom it brings? When did we decide that it was unhealthy for kids to play in the dirt and get a little under their fingernails?

The heart of earth – ‘tis a magnet, a tug, a fragrance when a breath of fresh air touches your face… Sense its hunger to heal…its beauty…if it stirs your imagination, let it…
The planet Earth and its constant turning relationship with the sun sustains mankind with water, air and soil. Air to breathe, water to quench thirst for all living things and soil to provide sustenance and dwelling space. One third of the earth’s surface consists of a land mass which accommodates billions of humans and countless species of animal life. Free-flowing saltwater oceans and seas cover the larger area of the planet.

A century of industrial growth brought dramatic changes to the world’s habitation space in the 1900’s. Cities, railways, super highways, airports, agribusinesses, amusement parks, major league sports complexes, factories, pipelines and housing developments covered the lands. Prosperity brought a new style of living to the average households with modern conveniences. Concrete driveways and sidewalks brought a separation from daily contact with the heart of earth – the soil beneath our feet.

Yet, the relentless growth of sprawling cities, ribbons of highways that crisscross nations and concrete-covered lands continues. Will there one day be a time when the food demands of billions of people is greater than the available farmlands to grow crops? In the midst of consumerism, will a concerned world recognize the need to keep our land healthy for food and drink?

Healthy soil is without doubt an invaluable commodity of this global sphere, as necessary to life as the air we breathe and the water we drink. We could not exist without it. And, so, who will ensure protection of these resources so freely available to all?

Those questions are being addressed worldwide by a host of environmentalists, farmers biologists, researchers, conservationists, concerned young people and persons of every age, color and nationality. Advocates of soil care, healthy crops and healthy foods have fostered a promising new wave of action and awareness in agriculture today; an awareness that encompasses tillers of the soil from world leaders to Mom’s backyard flower bed. Those pebbles of sand were once a part of rock formations. They contain minerals present in solid rock; minerals that promote plant growth. Decaying natural waste provides other necessary elements needed for feeding the roots of each plant. Nature’s wonderful (natural) interaction provides and blends each component exactly as designed to produce the whole product. The soil is its own little factory of blended components and performs in its natural function of nurturing each seed embedded within its womb.

Each member of this mass of humanity we call earthlings affects a day, a space, a decision. We affect persons we touch, the care of possessions. We are individually and corporately bound in the throes of life. We create positive or contribute to lesser. We give or take from the universe daily. No one escapes their moment in time. We share a planet.

Photo by Gabriel Jimenez on Unsplash