Thursday 14th November 2024
Soil It's A Wonderful Thing
Here at Yeo Valley Organic, we often say that the key to our planet's future is quite literally under our feet. With World Soil Day 2024 right around the corner our aim is to raise awareness on the importance of looking after our soil. So let's get the dirt on how fantastic our soil really is!
Did you know that…
Soil is responsible for around 95% of our food production, yet we know very little about it.
One gram of soil is around a quarter of a teaspoon, and this may harbour up to 10 billion micro-organisms – most of which are still unexplored.
Soil stores more carbon than the atmosphere and all the world’s plants and forests combined, which means that soil is one of our most important weapons in the fight against climate change.
As organic farmers, we’re always trying to find out more about what’s beneath our feet. Regenerative organic farming is based on nourishing the soil, creating a healthy, living ecosystem. Decades of industrial farming have taken their toll on our planet and serious questions are being raised about the future of our food production.
Back in July 2023, the European Commission proposed the continent’s first soil law, intended to undo some of the damage done by intensive farming and mitigate global heating. Research indicates that this could help absorb carbon from the atmosphere and ensure sustainable food production.
This year's World Soil Day theme is ''Caring for Soils: Measure, Monitor, Manage'' which aims to understand the importance of collecting accurate soil data to understand our soils better and support decision making.
20 of our farmers are part of a pilot project that started back in 2021/22 and will continue until 2026/27 to understand soil better through collecting data. This will help us understand the impact and possibilities soil has in our climate crisis. The project collected 11,000 bags of soil across over 1,100 fields and found over 18,000 worms in its first year!
So what can we look for and smell in good, healthy soil?
''Healthy soil is important as it underpins everything that we do from growing the crops and forage that are needed to feed the cows to recycling all the nutrients needed on an organic farm. The soil structure should be the texture of a chocolate sponge with a fresh earthy, sweet scent that tells us that there is life down there'' - Tom White, Regen Farming Manager.
Find out more about our project on our regenerative farming website. What's more you can learn about our regenerative grazing, agroforestry, diverse cropping and composting projects there too!
So don’t dismiss soil, it has more potential than we yet know…
