One Centimetre of Soil on the Planet Takes 400 years to Form!! Iran Loses 2 Billion Tons of Soil Annually!! Read this Perspective!!
One Centimetre of Soil on the Planet Takes 400 years to Form!! Iran Loses 2 Billion Tons of Soil Annually!! Soil Erosion by Water Costs 8 Billion USD to Global GDP! 33 % of India’s coastal line witnessed Erosion! Not just “Save Land”, But “Save Soil” should be New Age Slogan!! Read this Perspective!!
Dear Friends and Students
I hail from the place named Vijayanagaram, one of the North Coastal Districts of Andhra Pradesh. The popular and renewed Telugu poet Sri. Gurajada Venkata Apparao hails from this town. Yesterday, when I was reading an article titled “Soil erosion control, requires special attention” in TEHRAN TIMES, a famous Iran’s newspaper, I was remembering the poetry of this influential social reformer & great poet. He said, “Desamante Matti Kaadoyi, Desamante Manushuloyi”. It means, “A Country is not made of Land; A Country is made of its People”. It was mentioned in the context of the Independence Movement. This is absolutely right at that point in time.
However, in the context of Environment Protection, looks like, we need to re-write this as “Desamante Raai Kaadoyi, Desamante Mattioi”, which means “A Country is not made of Rocks; A Country is made of its Soil”. I shocked to see the following statistics pertained to Iran’s soil loss: “Each ton of soil is valued at $28 in terms of metal ores, so the loss of 2 billion tons of soil annually means the annual loss of $56 billion”. This is more than the sale of oil and agricultural products, gardens, and few other farm products.
Iran stretches to 165 million hectares. In that, 90 million hectares is not covered by soil. It is critical and vital to protect the land from soil erosion. According to estimates, 16.4 tons of soil erodes in Iran per hectare. This is more than 3 times the global average.
The importance of soil is not just for agriculture purposes, but to also prevent global warming. Kioumars Kalantari, an environmentalist says, rich biodiversity and organism of soil store more carbon, reduces greenhouse gases which is the cause for climate change and global warming. See the volume of the carbon available on the earth's surface: 3,000 billion tons of carbon in the soil, which is about 315 times the amount of carbon released into the Earth’s atmosphere. Maintaining the carbon balance allows the planet to remain hospitable for life!
If you look at it from an Indian perspective, according to a 2015 report of the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS), the estimated amount of soil erosion is around 147 million hectares. Coastal states like Kerala are prone to water erosion and northern states like Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, and Gujarat face the problem of wind erosion. We need to create an immediate action plan to contain this soil erosion. Few practices like Contour farming (the practice of ploughing sloped land along lines of consistent elevation in order to conserve rainwater and to reduce soil losses from surface erosion), Contour bunding (A traditional low-cost method of soil conservation suitable for sloping land), strip cropping (crops are grown in strips parallel to each other, tree crops act as windbreakers or shelterbelts to the smaller crops), shifting cultivation, controlled grazing, afforestation, mixed cropping and mixed farming, etc should be promoted (geographyandyou.com/soil-erosion-and-conservation-in-india).
Feb 14 is famous for Valentine's Day!! I don’t want to comment further on this significance. But, do we know, World Soil Day? Honestly, I am not! I am hearing this first time. It seems Dec 5th is World Soil Day!! In 2018, there was a major campaign took place on this day “#StopSoilPollution”. It is shocking to read: 33 % of India’s coastal line (7,517 km) got eroded (esp. eastern coast along the Bay of Bengal)! Of course, the good news is, 29% of the coastline also saw a gain in soil or land accretion.
Do you know why Soil Erosion? Human Activity is one of the major reasons. Currently, I am staying in a place called Visakhapatnam on the Bay of Bengal Coast. Looks like the Bay of Bengal's intensity and wave heights have been increasing over the years. This is impacting the coastline. Of course, another reason is due to dredging in port areas and sediments are dumped in deep seas.
Few states which witnessed highest soil erosion are WB (63%), Odisha (28%), AP (27%), Kerala (40%), GJ(26%), MH(24%), and KA(22%).
Friends, again I am repeating: Desamante Raai Kaadoyi, Desamante Mattioi: Save Soil!
Your Well-wisher
Ravi Saripalle
Join Inspire to Innovate Storytelling Movement (i2itm.blogspot.com)
Source Inspiration: https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/456823/Soil-erosion-control-requires-special-attention