Growing good soil

Welcome to spring. Where once the seasons were clearly defined, we now experienced four seasons in a day, sometimes in an hour. I remember winter in Whanganui - as we biked to school the puddles were iced over. Frosts were regular and the seasons were stable during their time.
Extreme storms were rare. The Wahine storm of 1968 was the only one of its kind that I remember. Now we see with regularity, cyclones, hurricanes and the instability of weather patterns, in New Zealand and globally.
I wrote a story about lawn liberation where people were urged to do just that - liberate their lawns and grow good soil. Growing good soil means it's healthy and teeming with worms.
When Cyclone Bola struck the East Coast of the North Island in 1988, tonnes of top soil washed into the sea with valuable farmland lost.
During the 2004 February storms topsoil equivalent to the top third of Mt Ruapehu was washed into waterways and into the sea in the Whanganui/Rangitikei region.
Soil erosion is the silent global crisis that is undermining food production and water availability, as well as being responsible for 30 percent of the greenhouse gases driving climate change.
Iceland is presently hosting the International Forum on Soils, Society and Climate Change.
It is estimated that every year 100,000 square kilometres of land loses its vegetation and becomes degraded or turns into desert.
The forum will discuss the threat to the future of the planet with the loss of soils around the world.
It has been reported that& "Food production has kept pace with population growth by increasing 50 percent between 1980 and 2000. But it is an open question whether there will be enough food in 2050 with an estimated three billion more mouths to feed. That means more food has to be produced within the next 50 years than during the last 10,000 years combined".
Concern is growing that global food production per hectare is already declining.
Zafar Adeel, director of the United Nations University's Canadian-based International Network on Water, Environment and Health said there were a number of reasons for this decline, including the fact that soil degradation was producing growing shortages of water. Soil and vegetation acted as a sponge that held and gradually released water, Adeel explained.
The boom in vegetable-based biofuels was the newest challenge to food production and conserving land and water resources.
Governments around the world are subsidising crops to produce the biofuels, placing greater pressure on soils.
Hundreds of kilometres of farmland are expected to be planted?in biofuel crops to meet the stampede for the world's rapidly growing thirst for fuel.?These crops use a lot of water. And water is fast becoming a valued resource that is also running out.
I have grown up hearing that landlocked Maori land was wasteland. On the Whanganui River are vast tracts of land in multiple ownership, which has lain undisturbed for decades. Native trees over 700 years old are still standing.
This land will never be sold into foreign ownership, and plans were underway to look at the diversity of what is already growing there, and what can be grown. Organic food is top of the list for some of the trustees on one of the largest tracts of land outside of the incorporations, in the middle reaches of the river. Central to the success of the future of the land is the health of the soil. It is far better to preserve than to restore.