Day 1: Soil is NOT Dirt

Did you know that in the state of Kansas, agriculture provides around 127,000 jobs and represents $46 billion worth of economic activity?  Dr. Gary Pierzynski, one of the opening program speakers, introduced those attending opening day to the idea that soil is worth money.  A lot of money, actually.  $5 million is lost with every ton of soil that becomes degraded.  This stems from the idea that soil is the heart of all living things.  What exactly would the earth look like without soil?

The benefits that we obtain from nature, or ecosystem services, are divided into four different categories:

1. Provisioning
• This means that nature provides us with food and natural resources from which we can alter or build 
2. Supporting
• The idea that cycles are in place that constantly shift nutrients in and out of different forms, such as the carbon and nitrogen cycle
3. Regulating
• This role limits itself to water, in any of its forms as part of the water cycle (For example, flooding or acting as part of the atmosphere)
4. Cultural
• These would be recreational activities or the aesthetic value that we get from nature

One note that stood out to me is this idea that soil is part of a synergistic interplay in which the total is greater than the sum of its parts.  

The next speaker, Dr. Charles Rice, is a professor of agronomy at K-State.  He's a member of the Soil Society of America, and talked about the Global Soil Partnership as well as the different relationships between soil health, nutrition and food production.  Basically, as we continue to dedicate land to food production, the soil health becomes depleted and its the workers on those farms who are most likely to be malnourished.  How depressing, right?  To think that you could be a starving farmer...

The following are factors that contribute to soil degradation:

• Erosion
• Decreasing organic matter
• Contamination (either from a specific source or diffused through the air)
• Paving
• Compaction
• Loss of biodiversity
• Salinization
• Floods and landslides

Something worth mentioning here is the difference between time spans of degradation.  In tropical regions, the health of the ecosystem lies mainly on top of the soil.  It's only the top few inches or so that are very health, but underneath that, there isn't much to work with.  Soils like these can completely degrade in as little as five years.  However, for soils such as we have in the Midwest, it takes around fifty years to lose the organic matter.  This could be why we've been able to produce as much as we have without seeing any major, traumatic changes in yield.

I thought it was pretty funny when Dr. Charles Rice mentioned that in New Zealand, about ten years ago, they were having serious issues with landslides and floods, and it was thought to have correlated with the cut in funding to soil scientists.  :)  They have since renewed funding for such positions.

But back to GSP, or the Global Soils Partnership, whose aim is sustainable management of global soil resources.  Five pillars guide their work:

1. Promote sustainable management of soil resources
2. Encourage investment, technical cooperation, policy, education awareness and extension in soil
3. Promote targeted soil research and development focusing on identified gaps and priorities and synergies with related productive, environmental and social development actions
4. Enhance the quantity and quality of soil data and information: data collection (generation), analysis, validation, reporting, monitoring and integration with other disciplines
5. Harmonization of methods, measurements and indicators for the sustainable management and protection of soil resources   

After looking at all of that information, it makes me wonder--what exactly does this company/organization do?  I hate it when people are vague like this.  I want concrete examples of your accomplishments...photos of your activities on the ground! But oh well.  You can only ask so much when time is limited.

The next speaker, from Australia, Ravi Naidu, overwhelmed me with the amount of information he presented on his slides.  He had some excellent quotes, though, a few of which I felt were worth sharing:

"The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself" --Teddy Roosevelt

"To forget how to dig the earth and to tent to the soil is to forget ourselves" --Ghandi

"Let's stop treating our soil like dirt" (Anonymous)

Which brings me to the title of this post...It seems as though the saying of the day was "Soil is not dirt".  It's so much more, filled with dynamic interactions of living organisms, inorganic and organic matter, and is potentially the most valuable non-renewable resource on earth.  Naidu emphasized that what lives in the soil doesn't rely on territorial demarcations, which is something I think humans could learn from.  Why do we have to be so anal about our boundaries and fences?  When did flexibility get thrown out the window?  And when did sharing become a law-suit waiting to happen?  I rant thinking about what the next speaker, Dr. John Floros, presented in his speech.

Floros, originally from Greece, teaches food science at K-State.  I found his topic to be the most interesting, especially after having listened to Ricardo Salvador speak at JCCC just two days ago.  Food systems have been coming up a lot lately in my life, and I felt as though this just strengthened my belief that it's the sector in which I should work.

Population growth.  This was the third time the problem (or trend) was mentioned.  Everyone's stats varied a little, but about 9 billion by 2050 was the average.  Did you know that in 1950 the global population was only 2.5 billion?  That's a lot of people in a very short amount of time.  Two graphs placed next to each other, one of global population growth, and the other of arable land, were presented in two different presentations.  I found that quite interesting as well.  I'm sure you can guess that in the first graph, the line showed exponential growth, and in the second, the line nosedived toward the x-axis, proving that our current trajectory is a bit alarming.  Will we allow ourselves to get to the point where the two have to work each other out on their own, by natural devices of famine or war?  

Also contributing to this issue is the rise of the middle class on a global scale.  I'm not just talking about the United States.  In fact, the greatest increases in wealth have, and will continue to grow, in Asia and Africa.  It's been estimated that the middle class will double by 2025, which mean a much greater demand for "healthier" foods; namely, protein.  I believe it is the Western tradition to infiltrate the foreign minds with the idea that whatever the U.S. has is "better".  If we eat more meat, then by golly others will eat just as much if not more to keep up with us.  If we have a flat-screen television in every bedroom, then why not throw one in the bathroom?  I sincerely hope that some major disturbance (I'm talking economic disturbance, from innovation) will shatter the current path that Americans are on and show developing countries that our lifestyle isn't as glamorous as they imagined.

Floros' next point, about food loss and food waste, hit hard.  Something in the very core of my being just cringes when I think of food waste.  It feels like a crime to me, and to now know that anywhere between 30 and 50 percent of the food produced in the world is never consumed makes it even harder to wrap my head around.  In the United States alone, 356 billion dollars worth of food was lost in 1995.  Unfortunately this is the most recent record we have of national food loss.  I was surprised by that and wondered why no one has taken up that task more recently.  The main difference between food loss in developing versus developed countries is that in developing countries, the loss is due to poor storage systems.  The food gets contaminated or goes bad because they don't have the means to safely store it.  Picture coming home from the grocery store and putting your food into a refrigerator that doesn't work.  Wouldn't that be depressing?  And speaking of food waste at home, the average person throws away one pound of food per day.  For a family of four, the average is 120 lbs. per month.  Mom, if you're reading this, please understand why I get so angry when we spend our Sunday afternoons cleaning out the fridge and throwing the leftovers in the garbage disposal.  :)

 Next, Floros talked about the fact that we have become incredibly efficient in obtaining milk from cows over the years.  We've actually been able to decrease the number of cows used in production for milk because we can more from a single cow than we could before.  He said that the challenge now is to apply the same kind of progress on sustainability as we move forward.

Lastly, Floros discussed issues surrounding consumer behavior and the dichotomies that exist within the food system.  For example, local vs. global, large-scale vs. craft style, traditional vs. new.  We love to be able to make the choice of what we consume, and often times the ingredient we require come from all over the world, but at what point should we step back and re-evaluate our decisions?  Is the system too far gone for us to suddenly refuse importing soy sauce.  How, as consumers, can we most effective and efficient in demanding local foods?

Food miles were mentioned, but I think that most of you readers are probably already familiar with that issue, so I will just leave it at that.

To round out the night, there was a panel discussion which was quite awful.  The microphones kept cutting out, and no one who spoke without a microphone would talk loud enough for others to hear, so here are my brief takeaways:

• Cadmium (Cd) is an issue for Spinach and Rice in that inordinate amounts make their way from the soils into the foods and then humans consume them.
• No one has modeled the impact of biomagnification of these chemicals (Cadmium, zinc, potassium, etc.) on wildlife across the globe.
• If the consumer doesn't buy it, you can't sell it.  Good words of advice. :)
• Humans are fact-resistant (Umm..climate change?)
• If you're trying to remediate the levels of Cd in spinach, you need to add zinc and limestone together; if you just add zinc, you will acidify your soil
• Cover crops need to become popular again/part of mainstream agriculture
• The laws governing cover crop usage are currently extremely inflexible and don't provide farmers with incentives to use them at all; a farmer can only kill their cover crop at prescribed times according to regulation, regardless of the weather patterns or any other influential factors
• When it comes to soil, we must be looking at long-term solutions, extending our horizons much farther than we have traditionally; to do this, we must also have support from a neutral place in which there are no vested interests, such as government.  However, some companies can (and are) leading the way in the right direction.

I had no clue there was that much to write about, so for those of you who made it this far, I congratulate you!  I imagine my posts the rest of the week will be a bit more abbreviated.  One last thought I want to mention.  This comes from me wanting to learn how to apply all of this information to my future career.  Has there ever been a restaurant that sources its ingredients indirectly?  Think of this:  A restaurant goes daily to the local grocery store to pick up the produce and other close-to expiring goods which would otherwise go in the landfill and uses those ingredients to create their meals.  The menu would change pretty often, because the chefs would never know what to expect.  They would just make up recipes on the fly with what they were given, and the circle could even extend beyond just grocery stores.  They could go to farmers at the end of week after the market is over, or other restaurants which throw away valuable veggie scraps.  Do you know how much stock you could make?  :)  Of course, there would need to be laws supporting that kind of a business model.  I can only imagine the sort of liability issues that someone would run into trying to do it now, but what if, one day, a restaurant like that could exist?