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Every meal you eat now costs the planet 10 kilos in lost topsoil.
That's the warning of "Surviving the 21st Century" author Julian Cribb to an international soil science conference in Queenstown, New Zealand on Dec 15, 2016.
"10 kilos of topsoil, 800 litres of water, 1.3 litres of diesel, 0.3g of pesticide and 3.5 kilos of carbon dioxide – that's what it takes to deliver one meal, for just one person," Cribb says.
"When you multiply it by 7 to 10 billion people each eating around a thousand meals a year, you can see why food is fast becoming the challenge of our age."
"The human jawbone is now by far the most destructive implement on the planet. It's wrecking soil and water, clearing forests, emptying oceans of fish and destroying wildlife as never before – but few people realise it because of long industrial food-chains that hide the damage from them," he says.
Do the 10 kg of lost topsoil result in 10 kg of night soil?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Friday December 16 2016, @01:17PM
The point is that modern agriculture is consuming it faster than natural processes can replenish it.
I bet older agricultural practices are consuming it faster such as with desertification in Africa and Asia.
Reinventing food will in fact create vast new industries, jobs and opportunities for communities around the world – and the smart ones will be leaders in this, The Age of Food.
I think before we do that, we first implement best current agricultural practices and water management. That's the low lying fruit right there and it probably would solve most of the problem right away.