It should not be possible to enrich oneself by doing violence to nature’s ecosystem that sustains life in and on earth, writes Hans-Åke Scherp.
The climate crisis manifests itself through increased carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere, which leads to warming of the earth, floods, droughts, crop failure, storms, soil erosion, reduced biological diversity. The strange thing is that nature’s role is rarely mentioned as important in the climate debate, despite the fact that it consists of different ecosystems that are all linked to the climate.
If ecosystems are weakened, nature’s natural food chain and carbon cycle are broken. Life’s most important ecosystem consists of the sun, plants, soil and microlife. The plants’ photosynthesis transforms sunlight into carbohydrates, sugar, with the help of water and the carbon dioxide of the air.
Photosynthesis is carbon storage engine. A third of the carbohydrates of photosynthesis are sent down to the roots and form food for the microorganisms consisting of bacteria, fungal mycelium, protozoa and nematodes that increase the soil’s carbon storage. Increased carbon content in the soil contributes both to reducing the content of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and to creating more fertile soils. Considerably more carbon is stored in the soil than is found in the atmosphere and the plants combined. Without soil, there is neither nature nor life on earth. Earth is our real destiny.
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Technical solutions must be tested on how nature benefits or tolerates them, and economics must be guided by ecology. It should not be possible to enrich oneself by doing violence to nature’s ecosystem that sustains life in and on earth. Nature must be given the leading role if we are to cope with the arable land, the climate crisis and the natural disasters associated with the climate and soil extinction.
Due to soil erosion According to the UN, we will not have any arable land left on earth in 60 years if we continue to farm in the same way as now. Microlife’s creation of soil aggregates provides a soil structure that counteracts the soil erosion that has caused us to lose between 60-80 percent of our topsoil in the last 100 years, soil that ends up in waterways, lakes and oceans with toxic algal blooms as a result.
A soil that produces nutritious and tasty plants needs to have a carbon content of at least 3 percent. Soils that fall below that are progressively depleted. In Sweden, the average value is 1.48 percent, in Africa 3 percent and in India 0.5 percent. The carbon that is in the atmosphere needs to be returned to the earth. The depletion of the soil, together with soil erosion, leads to ever-worsening storage of carbon dioxide and to ever-worsening famine disasters. If the earth is abused, it ceases to give.
A porous soil structure created by micro-life is like a sponge that reduces flooding by absorbing and holding water, which also increases the soil’s ability to cope with periods of drought. But by plowing, digging, using artificial fertilizers and chemical pesticides, we destroy the micro life and the living sustainable soil. A healthy and fertile soil with a rich and varied micro-life is created by cover cultivation, using compost, co-cultivating plants from different plant families, promoting biological diversity, transitioning from clear-cutting to continuous forest and transforming lawns into meadows and cultivation.
In order for our generation to be remembered as having saved the earth from a disaster and not as the generation that let it happen, we need to act now to save the earth. We must replace the current ego system where we shape and adapt nature according to our own needs and discretion with an ecosystem where we are part of nature with nature’s various ecosystems as a guide. In this way, we become a generation that takes responsibility instead of a generation that regrets it in a few years.
Hans-Åke Scherp
Gardener
