At the roots of climate change, there are four key issues: Soil Loss, Deforestation, Water Loss & Toxification, and Industrial Agriculture.
These issues are symptoms of our relationship with the natural world. We have treated Earth as though it were an inert, infinite bank account, rather than an intelligent living system to be curated and harvested.
Removing this element of respect from the agricultural equation creates complicated challenges in maintaining fertility, building soil, storing carbon, recharging aquifers, preserving forests and keeping our oceans clean. All the while, we are producing inferior crops with poor nutritional value.
Human exploitation of landscapes is undisputedly the most environmentally destructive force on the planet. Our current models of food production look more like extractive mining processes than regenerative systems of sustainable farming.
We cannot know for certain where this path will lead, but the course does not look promising. Destabilizing weather patterns continue their trend toward volatile and unpredictable, and our global food supply chains are already seeing an impact.
A change is coming - either by force, or by choice. Because if we do not develop a new means of engaging with the planet, our species will have no future. Before we can create solutions to move us forward, we must first grasp the problems holding us back.
Soil is the foundation of our ecosystems. It serves many crucial functions: the absorption and filtration of water, regulation of greenhouse gases, moderation of Earth's temperature and - perhaps most importantly - the supply of nutrients to our forests, grasslands, and crops.
Each year, we lose about 5 tons of our global agricultural soils per hectare. It takes thousands of years to create this soil, and hundreds of years to accumulate just a few centimeters of topsoil. Due to the modern strategies of large-scale farming, such as mechanical tilling, mono-cropping and use of pesticides, we have lost roughly half of our global topsoil in just 150 years.
What took Nature millennia to build, we may erase in just a few centuries.
Topsoil is the most densely populated habitat on the planet. According to Slow Food Movement, one hectare contains 15 tons of organisms, and approximately 1 billion microorganisms occupy a single teaspoon. This is 200 times denser than coastal ocean water, which is a distant second for population density.
Soil loss and erosion occurs when bare soil is exposed to rain and wind. Industrial agriculture, deforestation, and overgrazing are the main contributors.
When water, specifically warm rain contacts bare ground, it suspends the soil, causing break down and vulnerability to drifting. Forests and other perennial ecosystems, such as savannah and grasslands, would usually prevent this by storing water in the landscape, and releasing small amounts over time as needed.
When we deforest, the water in these areas becomes surface runoff, which moves in larger volumes with greater speed, transporting more exposed soil over time. Unfortunately, the most buoyant component of soil is carbon-rich organic matter, which provides the habitat for microorganisms.
Microorganisms are the foundation of life, having existed for over 3.4 billion years. They terraformed our environment; transforming an inhospitable ball of rock into a miraculous garden of flora and fauna. By removing natural green space to provide land for industrial agriculture, we have lost a plethora of these plant and animal species, while creating a host of other issues associated with soil loss.
In soil, these microorganisms build symbiotic relationships with vegetation, facilitating the synthesis and uptake of essential nutrients, vitamins and minerals. This uptake determines the nutrient density of what ends up on our plates.
The quality of our food is based on the health of our plants, which is directly linked to the health of our soil. To determine soil health, we look almost exclusively to the quality and diversity of its microorganisms. This is known as the Soil Foodweb.
This delicate web is already well into the process of collapse. As the climate changes, and extreme wind and rain events occur more frequently, soil loss will only accelerate. And without soil, there is no food, and without food, there is no civilization.
Water is the single most valuable resource on Earth. While the thought of losing soil and forests might not cause alarm for most people, the idea of a world without fresh water suddenly strikes a nerve. Because regardless of location, role or race, our immediate survival depends on it.
Of the freshwater we use each year, 70% is dedicated to industrial agriculture. At these volumes, one would expect an inherent obligation to responsibly manage such a vital resource. Instead, modern agricultural designs are devastatingly inefficient and the biggest disrupter of hydrological cycles.
The advent of deep groundwater extraction empowered us to produce crops where it was previously impossible. However, the subsequent agricultural successes have come at a massive cost. What we extract from these underground aquifers is often ancient, taking millions of years to accumulate. The process of replenishing this water is very slow and complex, and the amount we take greatly exceeds the amount we give back.
To make matters worse, we deplete these aquifers to water landscapes that have been made to drain water, rather than retain it. Instead of infiltrating the ground, roughly 80% of water that contacts conventional agriculture land becomes runoff. Mainstream landscape designs are unable to replenish even a small percentage of what they require for crop production.
When land is cleared for farming, the fields are levelled and a significant amount of drainage is added, in order to lower soil moisture. Usually, this drainage water would slowly percolate back into the aquifers. But because the land is highly compacted, with minimal vegetation and soil carbon to promote absorption and percolation, this drainage becomes runoff, rushing into rivers, streams, and eventually, oceans.
Replacing surface vegetation with mono-crops also interrupts hydraulic redistribution, which is the passive movement of water up and down through root systems, from wet soil to dry. Surface vegetation plays a major role in depositing and withdrawing groundwater. Plants with deep tap roots have the ability to mine water and redistribute it laterally to neighbouring plants without access. This process is integral to the soil-foodweb, as it depends on hydraulic redistribution during dryer times.
Before the outright loss of water altogether, the most frightening issue we will face is widespread contamination, which occurs primarily through pumping and pesticides.
Salinization of soil and water stores is a byproduct of groundwater extraction. Pumping from aquifers reduces their cavity pressure, inviting salinized ocean water to rush in and fill the vacuum. The introduction of this ocean water not only contaminates our freshwater aquifers, but also leads to saline - or salt-rich - soil, which has catastrophic effects on soil chemistry and fertility.
The heavy drainage runoff from these landscapes is also made toxic by the use of agricultural chemicals. When this waste floods into neighbouring ecosystems, it not only poisons rainfall and marine habitats, but alters oceanic oxygen content, causing algae blooms and the death of microflora - the photosynthetic equivalent of forests - which impacts the entire aquatic food chain.
It is clear that industrial and chemical agriculture is a threat to water supplies worldwide. If we fail to protect what dwindling stores we have left, while encouraging Nature's innate methods of collection and filtration, our planet is fated to go the way of Mars and degrade into a toxic, barren dust bowl.
Through the industrial era, we began to see forests as mere obstacles and timber mines. But the truth is we would not be here without them. Including their soil, forests support more life than any other habitat on the planet. They also perform crucial roles in creating and regulating climates.
These lush biological reserves are also troves of ethno-pharmacological treasures, many of which are still yet to be discovered. Roughly half of all pharmaceutical drugs come from plants, and we have only identified an estimated 10-25% of all plant species on the planet today; thousands of which go extinct each year, never to be discovered.
Forests are known as “the lungs of the planet” not only because of their compounded process of photosynthesis. They not only produce oxygen, which makes the atmosphere breathable, but also absorb massive amounts of carbon dioxide, making them one of the greatest carbon sinks in the natural world. The impacts on our CO2 emissions from deforestation are trumped only by fossil fuels.
Despite their wonders, and immense necessity, statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) show we cut approximately 7.3 million hectares of forest annually without replacing it. This cutting occurs mainly in the name of agricultural expansion - to grow corn and soy for animal fodder, grasslands for cattle grazing and palm trees for oil.
The most common protest of deforestation is the immediate preservation of life. But while we will look back and regret the reckless loss of biodiversity, the most alarming collateral damage is actually seldom mentioned.
When we remove old growth trees and perennial vegetation to make way for agriculture, we cripple Nature's ability to moderate ecosystems and sustain complex forms of life.
Besides producing oxygen, offsetting carbon emissions, filtering and regulating rainfall, replenishing groundwater stores and protecting soil, forests are primary contributors to ecosystem resilience – a region’s ability to adapt to extreme weather and changing climates.
The health of any ecosystem is fostered by series of intricate relationships between biodiverse regions. Individually, they are highly delicate, but immensely resilient as a collective, capable of supporting and restoring others when they are damaged. If large enough areas are destroyed, or industrial agriculture is introduced, only human intervention can facilitate repair of these relationships.
Removing forest also puts our soil at risk. The subtropics, and particularly the tropics, are the most vulnerable, since their soils are already quite shallow due to their natural climate. There we find not only the most vibrant diversity of species, but also the highest activity of storms and clear cutting. 100 acres of rainforest are cleared every minute, according to 2017 estimates by the World Resources Institute. These areas will likely be the first to see complete loss of arable soil.
Until big industry can see these current deforestation strategies for what they are - an ironic, self-destructive undermining of their own success - we will continue to wreak irreversible havoc on the environment, demolishing livable habitats for every species on the planet, including our own.
When it comes to environmental devastation and threat of extinction, industrial agriculture is second only to meteor impacts and mega volcanoes, becoming the leading cause of environmental destruction and loss of biodiversity in plants, animals and microorganisms.
At the outset, our intentions were admirable. By leveraging exciting discoveries in modern science, we sought to provide food to flourishing populations in a rapidly urbanizing world. Innovations in mechanics, chemistry and genetics brought the promise of revolution to an ancient and static enterprise. We were equipped with a robust capitalist optimism; believing this would be the golden age of agriculture.
But the collateral damage of our so-called "progress" is more harrowing than we could have ever imagined. We have reduced rainforests to rubble, destroyed our topsoil, destabilized Earth's climates, polluted our land, water and air, and even poisoned farmers and consumers in the process.
We grow millions of acres of nutrient-deficient, single-plant crops with harsh chemicals and large machinery. Billions of animals, which would otherwise roam free and support land fertility, are drugged and crammed into prison-like facilities, all in the hopes of yielding a few extra pounds of meat and a small bump in quarterly profits.
The industrial model of farming is highly abusive to landscapes. At a rapid pace, we continue to transform large amounts of forest and perennial vegetation into synthetically vegetated deserts. Once converted for agriculture, we compact and erode the soil, dehydrate the land by unsustainably pumping groundwater, and create floods of toxic waste through the use of pesticides.
The smallest victims of the process are easily overlooked: microorganisms. Before we can create alternative approaches to farming, or repairing the damage already caused, we must understand the crucial role they play in the growth of vegetation.
In the process of photosynthesis, crops produce carbohydrates not only for energy, but also for bait. Plants secrete these carbohydrates into the ground through their roots in the form of sugars known as exudates. These exudates are used as attractants for microbes, bacteria and fungi. In exchange, these microorganisms provide the plants with rich nutrients, which are byproducts of their rapid life cycle.
This symbiotic process of nutrient interaction between plants and soil microorganisms is known as the rhizophagy cycle, which yields healthy, nutrient-dense crops. Pesticides, heavy machinery, reduced soil carbon and the removal of ruminant animals from landscapes, all contribute to the disruption of this crucial process.
Chemical pesticides and genetic modification have also affected our health and the environment in ways we have yet to fully understand. As more investigation is carried out, the body of evidence for negative consequences grows, especially related to glyphosate, which the primary ingredient in Roundup - the most widely used herbicide on the market today.
Glyphosate is an antibiotic, which has been demonstrated to be highly toxic to plants, animals and microbes, and specifically disruptive to the metabolic and detoxification processes of the human body. The impacts on soil biology and the human microbiome are among the most concerning. Estimates are glyphosate has already contaminated 75% of rainfall in the United States.
Multi-billion dollar companies who have founded monopolies on this broken and exploitative infrastructure have no interest in exploring alternatives. Even when the cost is the collapse of civilization, they will firmly grip the steering wheel as the ship sinks.
While the production volume of large-scale agriculture can be argued for, the ends no longer justify the means. Feeding an ever-expanding population in ways that undermine their long-term survival is irresponsibly negligent. We must integrate what we have learned from our mistakes and devise a new agricultural methodology.