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Droughts and flooding brought on by extreme weather are degrading the soil in some of the poorest areas of the world so much that they can no longer sustain crops, reaching a tipping point of “zero” harvests.

As a result, parts of Africa, the Middle East and Latin America are now dependent on humanitarian aid to survive.

Bearer of this bad news is UN food chief Martin Frick, who warned the BBC that without efforts to reverse land degradation globally, richer countries would also begin to suffer crop failures. This makes it a us problem, not their problem.

The organic matter that holds soil together breaks down as it deteriorates. This means that it is less able to absorb carbon from the atmosphere and support plant life, which lowers agricultural yields.
The UN recognises soil as an essential instrument for reducing climate change since it is the second-largest carbon sink after the oceans.

But right now, the UN says that 40% is already degraded, and 95% of the world’s land could follow suit by 2050. Still wondering why Mark Zuckerberg is building an underground farm in Hawaii, or Bill Gates owns 270000 acres of farmland in the US?

“There’s too much carbon in the air and too little carbon in the soils,” Mr Frick said. “With every inch of soil that you’re growing, you’re removing enormous amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere.

“So healthy soils – carbon-rich soils – are a prerequisite to fixing climate change.”

Modern farming methods that deplete the soil of organic matter can lead to land degradation, as can protracted droughts followed by intense downpours. According to scientists, climate change is causing numerous extreme weather events to occur more regularly.

While it is difficult to directly blame climate change on droughts, scientists have shown that global warming has increased the likelihood of more, like the one that just occurred in East Africa. Burundi, in East Africa, have lost 10% of its usable farmland after months of heavy rain and flooding, and cereal crops in the Darfur region of Sudan were 78% below the average for the previous five years.

As if possible, it gets worse. Environmentalists anticipate that failed crops will put pressure on the world’s food supply and increase migration from affected regions as soil degradation occurs. According to Praveena Sridhar, chief science officer of the environmental organisation Save Soil, “It’s going to be disaster for human beings.”

“It will resemble Mad Max.”

“There will be no humanity. There’s not going to be any giving. Fairness won’t exist… Your survival is the only thing that will allow you to exist.”

Environmentalists tend to have a doom-and-gloom outlook, but even the UN food chief says “What we are seeing is most worrying”. Yikes.

He does, however, argue that such an eventuality could be avoided by moving toward “localised farming that seeks to reinvigorate the land”. Frick believes there was an “unhealthy dependence” on the few nations that are large-scale exporters of crops such as wheat, maize and rice. If any of these suffer crop losses, the developing world particularly feels the brunt when their crops fail.

Frick said that to tackle hunger and land degradation at the same time, the world’s poorest should be incentivised to rejuvenate degraded land through regenerative practices – including by being made eligible for funds from carbon credits schemes.

And it can be done. A WFP project in Niger involved local women creating micro-dams in arid land, using dung and straw to create basins for tree planting. The trees created shade from the sun, allowing the women to grow fruit and vegetables without artificial irrigation, reducing degradation and allowing them to substitute food in their own gardens.

At a UN conference way back in 2015, it was already suggested that there were only 60 harvests left before the Earth’s soil becomes too degraded to support viable crops, but Frick says there might still be hope for us.

“How many harvests you have left is largely a function of… how we get our food production in tune with the realities of this planet.”

Not everyone can afford a tropical bunker, so we might want to get on that.

[source:bbc]