Keep Earth’s soils healthy to feed world’s growing population — NGO

Indian farmers collect water from a temporary pond to irrigate their cucumber farm near a river bed area of the River Ganges in Allahabad on Friday. (AFP / Sanjay Kanojia)

California "weed nun" India Delgado, who goes by the name Sister Eevee, walks in the garden at Sisters of the Valley near Merced, California, on April 18, 2017. (REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson)

ROME, Italy: Feeding a growing global population will become almost impossible if the world doesn’t take better care of its rapidly deteriorating soils, a humanitarian agency warned on Earth Day.
More than a third of arable land is already degraded because of soil erosion — the loss of the topsoil by wind, rain or use of machinery — as well as contamination of soil and city sprawl, according to Catholic Relief Services (CRS).
“If we don’t start to address the issue of soil erosion I don’t see how we can address the food security needs,” Lori Pearson, an agricultural adviser at CRS told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Here are some facts on soils degradation and farming:
• Roughly 95 percent of all food in the world is produced in soil.
• More than 35 percent of ice-free land has been cleared of vegetation and converted to agriculture leaving soils more exposed to erosion and losses in soil carbon and nutrients.
* Earth’s soils contain more carbon than the planet’s atmosphere and vegetation combined.
* When land is overexploited or degraded, trapped carbon is released back into the atmosphere, resulting in planet warming emissions.
* It takes nature between 100 and 1,000 years to produce 1 cm of soil, and if poorly maintained it can be lost in a single rainfall, or high wind.
* The world is currently losing soil 10 to 20 times faster than it is replenishing it.
* Each year 25 to 40 billion tons of topsoil are carried away by erosion.
* Crop losses to erosion could reach 10 percent by 2050 — equivalent to removing roughly all the arable land in India from crop production — if no action is taken.
* With the global population set to reach more than 9 billion by 2050, food production must rise by about 60 percent to generate enough for everyone to eat.
* Planting more lentils, chickpeas and other pulses can improve the health of the world’s soils. Sources: UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Foundation.