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posted by janrinok on Friday December 16 2016, @06:35AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-thought-it-tasted-funny dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 2) by eravnrekaree on Saturday December 17 2016, @04:42AM

    by eravnrekaree (555) on Saturday December 17 2016, @04:42AM (#442363)

    There used to be a closed cycle: plants pulled nutrient from soil, people at the plants, the sewage ended up putting it back into the earth. Plants themselves were left to compost near where they grew, as well. Now with the cycle having been broken, this really doesnt happen much. The humanure movement was relatively safe, but nowadays with so many pharmaceuticals there is no telling what is in it. Municipal sewage is not just human waste either, it is mixed in with all kinds of industrial cleaners, chemicals that cannot be easily seperated from human waste. Yard waste ends up mixed up with other stuff such as electronics, lessening the chance of it returning to topsoil building. If we had more composting tiolets and more composting of plant waste, that might help rebuild the top soil. Yet, modern society does not encourage these behaviours and has other ideas, promoted out of vanity.

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