Julia W. Gaskin, senior public service associate and sustainable agriculture coordinator with the UGA Cooperative Extension, was quoted by Mother Nature Network about the importance of soil.
Solving soil problems is important because soils support 95 percent of all food production, and by 2060 humans will ask the Earth’s soils to produce as much food as has been consumed in the last 500 years, according to the Soil Health Institute. Yet, in the last 150 years, the world’s soils have lost half of the basic building blocks that make soil productive.
“There’s a lot of stuff about soil we don’t understand very well,” said Gaskin, who is a soil scientist. “I think there is so much potential for us to be better partners with the soil and help suppress plant disease and get plants healthy, less stressed and more productive.”
Gaskin shared 15 facts about soil in the article, such as soils are one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, and there are more than 20,000 types of soil in the U.S.
