Nick Steiner is Head of Climate Farmers Academy at Climate Farmers and is passionate about solving the climate crisis through regenerative agriculture and permaculture thinking. He writes on Linkedin that fertile soil is the basis of our existence.

Without it we wouldn’t be able to grow the food we need.

I always thought the world is full of soil, but this picture is a great reminder of how flawed that belief is.

The world is full of ‘dirt’, but fertile soil is a precious resource and we are running out of it.

This small layer has built over many, many years on top of the lifeless sand below.

Billions of microbes live in it, fill it with fertility and store carbon in the process.

With many of our current agricultural practices, we are losing these precious few centimeters.

We plough fields and leave the vulnerable surface unprotected. Nutrients get depleted and all life is killed with chemicals. Much of the carbon oxidizes into the atmosphere and a lot more gets carried away through erosion.

The great news: We can build fertile topsoil. With the right agricultural techniques we can add to this layer instead of shrinking it.

Let’s give soil the appreciation it deserves and treat it that way.