Book Review (re-posted): Soils

What Has Nature Ever Done for Us

There is book review on the Guardian site. This is timely as Australia government goes through all sorts of actions to set the clock back on environmental issues. I dread what chance anyone would have right now of confronting this government over the long-term treatment of our soils, our biodiversity; in fact anything at all to do with nature.

Many farmers are well on side with these issues but this contemporary thinking is still not the business as usual for most. The sad fact is that many farms are part of larger conglomerates whereby food is a commodity to produce profits. Everything therefore must be used and exploited in the effort to maintain profits. The concept that there is a cost to the environment, to the soils, to the landscape, to the planet and our future here, is just too far out of the thinking.

Think supermarkets and how cheap they try to offer the food. What price are we paying in reality.

This review is worth noting and the book should be on your reading lists. I’m off to find a copy. click here for the review:

here’s part of the review:

Nature underpins our productivity and our fecundity. It replenishes fresh water supplies and provides us with plants for food and pharmaceuticals. Peat bogs soak up rainwater that would otherwise cause flooding while mangroves protect shorelines from storms. The air we breathe is constantly recharged with oxygen and the carbon dioxide that we, and our factories, exhale is dealt with by nature.

Then there is the soil beneath our feet. A single hectare can store and filter enough water for 1,000 people, while more than 90% of our food is grown in soil (the sea provides the rest). Yet we strip trees from its surface and erode vast tracts without considering the consequences. The result wreaked destruction throughout history, leading to the loss of the Mayan, Easter Island and other civilisations. As Franklin Roosevelt remarked: “The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.” Yet there is no evidence we have learned that lesson, as the current destruction of Amazon and Indonesian rainforests testifies.

click here for the review:

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Paul Costigan, 14 February 2014