Soil has long been hailed as a fountain of energy flowing through every soul of the planet in some form, being capable enough to even sprout life from Death (the dead and decayed matter is broken down in soil with the help of Detritivores).
And hence, soil and life are co-dependent having evolved together.
But the very soil that engraves a life is ending up real fast.
This valuable resource is constantly eroding at an annual global average rate of 13.5 tonnes per hectare i.e., 3.4 tonnes per person.
Soil, with optimum processes yielding through time and temperature can be created over time, with dead and decayed things break down into usable energy and nutrients made available to the ecosystem depending on the underlying rock structure.
But the process of erosion happens at least 10– 30 times faster than the time taken for soil to be produced.
Just like Climate change, the problem is not with the erosion but its accentuated rate at the behest of human activities like Deforestation, tweaking with the land-use patterns required in the area, dam construction etc.
With the top soil erosion, annual crop yields get slashed by 0.3 per cent and if we are to continue at that rate, 10% of the food production will be jeopardized and lost by 2050.
The worst comes when nearly 4000 billion tonnes of carbon stored in this natural sink gets released as it stores comparatively more carbon than the animals, plants and the atmosphere together.