This is the first of a 10-part series on how changing ones eating habits may be the most accessible and impactful way to improve the world. Since every terrestrial food item we consume originates from the soil, this is where we’ll begin.

While many of us love to get down and dirty in the garden or on the trails, you’ll find others shrieking if the brown agent comes into contact with their skin or clothes.  Regardless of ones inclinations, the simple fact remains that dirt’s a part of life.  Not only is it a part of life, but it’s one of the key ingredients necessary for life on this planet.

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I’m not referring to just any dirt though; I’m talking about topsoil- the thin layer of loose soil that hosts a party of roots, decaying plant matter, water, air, earthworms, mycorrhizal fungi, minerals, and countless microorganisms.  These valuable guests have been tirelessly battered by our modern agricultural practices and landscape alterations, and their widespread deaths have caused massive infertility within our soils followed quickly by erosion – a process that allows the very substrate necessary for plant production to be blown or rinsed away.  In the United States we’ve already lost over 75% of our original topsoil to these processes, and with estimates of 100 to 2,000 years for the creation of one new inch under natural conditions, the situation doesn’t appear to be improving.

The need becomes obvious then for us to significantly cut back on the practices causing it- overworking the land (too much tilling, overgrazing of livestock, and not enough crop rotation or fallow time), use of heavy machinery (causing compaction that prevents roots to grow and water to be absorbed), use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers (robbing the life from the organic matter within), removal of plants and trees (organisms that hold the soil together and prevent damage from wind-storms), and conversion to urban uses (paving it over with cement).

If these practices aren’t more closely monitored and improved, our soils will loose their health and so shall the plants that we require for life. In the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt, “A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself”.