To restore our soils, feed the microbes
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July 28, 2017
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)
(THE CONVERSATION) Our soils are in trouble. Over the past century, we’ve abused them with plowing, tilling and too much fertilizer.
What many think of as “just dirt” is actually an incredibly complex mixture of rock-derived minerals, plant-derived organic matter, dissolved nutrients, gases and a rich food web of interacting organisms.
By plowing and overtilling, we have increased erosion on agricultural fields by 10 to 100 times natural rates. Over just the last several decades, w...
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