Dystopia
Soil, a simple physico-chemical support? It is from this conviction that soilless agriculture was born around fifty years ago. Ignoring the complexity of this living environment which allows life on earth, industrial agronomy has brought in its wake erosion, salinization, loss of yield and flooding.
Can we still call it “modern”?
Soil lives, forms…or dies. Since the systematic use of fertilizers and pesticides, 40 tonnes per hectare per year are lost in France. “Soil is the result of a synergy between clays coming from the parent rock and humus coming from organic debris”*. When the soil fauna, and in particular the earthworms, which bring up potash, calcium and magnesia, are no longer nourished, the soil becomes acidified. Then it becomes salinized due to massive irrigation which brings salts up from the groundwater. A soil in good condition contains one to four tonnes of earthworms per hectare, they allow the formation of the clay-humus complex by their incessant back and forth between the deep soil and the surface soil. Algae, amoebas, bacteria, fungi act in turn to decompose the lignin in plants, from which the formation of humus comes. Chemical fertilizers feed plants directly, amendments feed the soil. We must choose: boost the plants, to the detriment of quality, or ensure the fertility of the land. Under penalty of
having to look for another planet...
- Claude and Lydia Bourguignon, “The soil, the earth and the fields”