Celebrate Soil [Opinion]

I got together with one of my friends recently and the subject of work came up. She has heard about my travels to Spain and Germany to learn about greenhouse production, as well as my trips to see growers throughout the country and to visit seed companies to learn about the latest varieties.

As a nurse, my friend really doesn’t know much about the ag industry so she always asks me lots of questions. When I talk about the issues you face, she is genuinely interested because, as she realizes, “We have to eat.”

Unlike the many consumers in this country who are unaware of where their food is produced or how it is grown, she gets the importance of this information and having a safe, consistent food supply.

During our recent conversation, I told her that 2015 is the International Year of Soils.

I explained that the designations is intended to draw attention to the importance of having healthy soils to grow crops.

With a world population on the rise, the ag land base may decrease, reducing the amount of available soil to produce food. Plus, recent extreme weather events have wreaked havoc on soils and growers’ yields alike.

There is no time like the present to draw attention to the primary resource needed to produce a healthy crop: soil. It’s not like there is an infinite amount of this resource available, either. From a sustainability standpoint, starting with healthy soil is the first step to producing a healthy crop. By knowing what is in your soil, you know which inputs are necessary and which ones are not.

So what is the plan to raise awareness of this precious resource in the U.S.? Working with the Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) and other partners, the Natural Resources Conser-vation Service will be showcasing the importance of soil with monthly themes created by SSSA. For example, this month’s theme is “Soils Support Urban Life.” In March, the theme is “Soils Support Agriculture,” in July the topic is “Soils Are Living.” You get the idea. Even kids can learn something from a newly developed activity book that can be downloaded here: Soils.org/files/iys/iys-colorbook-for-web.pdf.

My friend understands why this is so important. We need to make sure others do to. Check out the SSSA website (Soils.org/IYS) and promote the efforts of the Interational Year of Soils on your website, talk about it among your employees, and with your customers.

We need all the help we can get to tell the story of ag to the masses, and this is one more way to get the message out.