Kiss the Ground + Allan Savory

since chemical agriculture ramped up worldwide in the 1970s we have lost one third of the earth's topsoil but industrial agriculture isn't just harming our soils it's also affecting something much larger the most massive tsunami perfect storm is bearing down upon us but fossil fuels carbon coal and gas are by no means the only thing that is causing climate change now because the fate of water and carbon are tied to soil organic matter when we damage soils you give off carbon carbon goes back to the atmosphere [Music] healthy soils absorb water and carbon dioxide but when we destroy soil it releases water and carbon dioxide this dries out the soil and turns it into dust the process is called desertification and how we deal with it could determine the fate of more than just our climate desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert and this happens only when we create too much bare ground [Music] soil and the plant and the climate are connected if you don't have a living plant you're gonna have more evaporation what we want is transpiration when the moisture leaves through the plant when it does that it increases humidity and when it increases the humidity we have more rain sixty percent of our rainfall comes from the ocean but a lot of people don't realize 40 comes from small water cycles where our rain comes from inland what's going on is we disrupted the small water cycles that's when you have too much sensible heat coming off bare soil you're having these huge vortexes of hot air going out instead of attracting the rain it's pushing the rain clouds away take one square meter of soil and make it bare and i promise you you will find it much colder at dawn and much hotter at midday than that same piece of ground if it's just covered with plant litter you have changed the micro climate now by the time you are doing that on more than half of the world's land [Music] you are changing macro climate desertification of our soils is a pressing threat to our climate and our species but i have for you a very simple message about two-thirds of the world is desertifying as soils turn to dust around the world every year 40 million people are pushed off their land by 2050 it's estimated that 1 billion people will be refugees of soil desertification more than 20 civilizations in all regions of the world have failed because of agriculture damaging the environment their communities could not handle the deteriorating environment and the rising population globally that's what we're doing today poor land leads to poor people poor people leads to social breakdown poor land leads to increasing frequency of floods and droughts mass emigration across borders and into cities and it's leading to ideal recruitment conditions what we know right now is the way we're feeding ourselves is undermining the very ecology that we're dependent upon so the long-term prognosis for our survival on this planet given business as usual is very very [Music] poor to the united nations the world's remaining topsoil will be gone within 60 years in other words unless we find a way to save our soils we have 60 harvests left

Channel: Force of Nature Meats

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Id: 9R2Mg8AieeA

Length: 6min 19sec (379 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020