We overlook it. We walk all over it. Trample it every day. Yet we need it. Like the air we breathe.
It's about time that we talk about soil. And certainly about time that we start protecting it.
There can be no life without it. It feeds us. And we are responsible for it.
Soil is formed from rocks that are decomposed slowly by the sun, the wind and the rain, by animals and plants.
In this way, 10 cm of fertile soil are created in 2,000 long years. Only 10 cm in 2 millennia.
Soil that we deplete in only a few years, gone forever.
Forests and plants protect the soil. But every year, 13 million hectares of forest are cut down.
Fields are cultivated inadequately. Added to that are monocultures and farming on slopes.
After the harvest, fields are left naked and unprotected. All this greatly accelerates erosion.
And so, gone with the wind, washed away by water. 24 billion tonnes of fertile soil were lost in 2011 alone.
A loss of 3.4 tonnes per person worldwide, no matter what age.
Erosion costs each person $70 per year, a worldwide cost that amounts to $490 billion, an astronomical amount.
Our cities are also growing rapidly. Every year in Europe, an area as large as the city of Berlin is transformed into urban areas.
Half of these soils are sealed. This is soil from which nothing can grow.
But fertile soil is finite and therefore invaluable.
Investors and states have realized this. The race for the soils of the world has already begun.
Land grabbing often with questionable means for questionable purposes.
Millions of hectares of land change owner every year.
The price, ruined lives, uprooted families. Usually, these are the poorest of the poor.
Often they have no choice. They destroy the forest because they need land to survive.
We need healthy and fertile soil now more than ever.
Projections say the available arable land per earth inhabitant will be reduced by half by 2050.
But already today, 1 billion people go to bed hungry night after night.
That's 1 billion people too many and this number will increase every day if we do not distribute soil fairly.
If we do not increase yields dramatically on every piece of land or simply discover a second earth.
But we might not want to rely on that option.
Soil and land issues rarely get our attention or that of our policymakers.
We see the full supermarket shelves and believe that things will stay like this forever.
We live on credit at the expense of soils, but they are not inexhaustible.
We take out money from a bank account into which we never make any deposits.
One day this account will be empty, our credit overdrawn and our soils will be gone.
But there is good news.
We have long known what we must do in order to preserve soils for our children.
Let's remember, soil is a sensitive living being who wants to be taken care of.
Not a factory. Everyone has a right to soil.
This right must be safeguarded by the law.
And we cannot afford to bury our livelihood under a layer of asphalt.
Now it's up to us.
We must open our eyes and find ways to apply our knowledge.
So we don't end up losing the ground under our feet.
