Save Our Soils, Save the Family Farm, Save the Planet

Australia’s soil crisis undermines our national security.

Hello, I am Michael Kiely, Climate Change Coalition candidate for Parkes

AND HERE IS A SUMMARY FOR THE TIME POOR:

•Breakthrough strategy for agriculture crisis
•Australian soils robbed of organic carbon for 200 years by ‘strip mining’ land management
•Lost 50% topsoil and 80% soil organic carbon in 200 years
•Soil carbon critical for growing pastures and crops; holding water in soil; preventing salt infestation; resisting drought.
•Composting can restore agricultural soils
•12 million tonnes city garden waste, food scraps go to landfill sites each year
•Should be going onto agricultural soils
•Cost of transport is the barrier.
•Solution: empty coal and wheat rail trucks returning from terminals
•National Crisis Partnership: composters, rail transport authorities, coal miners, wheat industry.

…….

The catastrophe facing Australia’s soils should be declared a national emergency. Our soils are the source of our food and clothing. Their degradation is a national security issue. Some people seriously argue that Australia’s natural environment should not be subject to the strain of agriculture. Hand it back to the kangaroos. But where will our food come from? Overseas?

Two words: “Food security”. You cannot let foreign countries decide if you will be fed.

Soil degradation and desertification has led to the fall of great civilizations like the Incas and the Egyptians. A sustainable society is based on sustainable agriculture. But today Australian agriculture is not sustainable.

Since the first plough turned Australian soil, we have lost 50% of our topsoil. The half we have left has lost 80% of its nutrients: organic matter, like humus, has been strip-mined from our soils by generations of Australian farmers following government advice.

The more soil organic matter we lose, the faster erosion eats into our greatest national asset. Loss of soil fertility by ‘strip mining’ agriculture leads to the breakdown of soil structure,. Poor soil cannot hold or use water effectively. It lacks essential minerals. It produces sickly plants which in turn produce sickly animals. And we eat those plants and animals. If soil biology is right, grasses, crops and animals are healthy.

The active constitutent of soil organic matter is carbon (captured by the plants during photosynthesis and stored down near the roots). In Australia, approximately 75% of soils now contain less than 1% organic carbon. And 80 % of Australian soils are estimated to have lost up to 50 % of the total soil organic carbon in the top 20 cm of the soil profile (Australian Greenhouse Office, 2000). Globally, grassland and forest soils tend to lose 20 to 50 % of the original SOC content after 40-50 years of land use change.. In Australia, the loss of carbon varied from 10 to 60 % over 10-80 years of cultivation (Dalal and Chan,
2001).

Even with the most sophisticated modern chemical fertilizers, crop yields continue to fall. Land that was once grazed in central Australia is now abandoned. Land that once grew hard wheat now grows only oats for stock feed.

While this is going on in the country, in the cities of Australia around 12 million tonnes of compostable organic matter – garden waste, food scraps – are going into landfill sites each year – at great expense. Once there it leaches methane as it decomposes. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, 23 times more powerful than CO2. At the same time trillions of litres of human wastes are being pumped into our oceans. All valuable compost.

Our soils are staggering. Our landfill sites are overflowing. Our oceans are being poisoned with sewerage. Will someone see the connection? The Federal Government should declare a national emergency and immediately ban all compostable matetrials going to landfill, as the British Government is doing gradually. Then the Australian composting industry should be engaged to produce soil-renovating compost.

The major problem has always been the cost of getting the compost to the farm. Well the cost of not getting it there is far higher. Doesn’t the State Government own a rail system? Surely it could be dragooned, as the armed services have been in other national emergencies. What about all those coal trains carrying coal from country locations to the coal loaders. Don’t they go back to the mine empty?

Our soils need organic matter so they can produce healthier plants and animals. So that they can capture more CO2 and store it as soil carbon. So they can be restored to their former health. This is a national emergency, Prime Minister. And there is a solution staring you in the face.

Michael Kiely can be contacted via Michael@carboncoalition.com.au



A FEW FACTS

• “The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself”, President Franklin D. Roosevelt

• “We stand, in most places on earth, only six inches from desolation, for that is the thickness of the topsoil layer upon which the entire life of the planet depends” (Sampson 1981).

• Loss of topsoil has been a major factor in the fall of civilizations. You end up with a country like Iraq, formerly Mesopotamia, where 75% of the farm land is a salty desert.

• Iowa has some of the best topsoil in the world. In the past century, half of it’s been lost, from an average of 18 to 10 inches deep.

• Productivity drops off sharply when topsoil reaches 6 inches or less, the average crop root zone depth.

• Crop productivity continually declines as topsoil is lost and residues are removed.

• Erosion is happening ten to twenty times faster than the rate topsoil can be formed by natural processes