THE EDITOR: Most of us are familiar with words and concepts such as climate change, carbon emissions, air pollution and water scarcity, but very few have focused attention on soil. For thousands of years, life on Earth has been sustained by a thin layer of fertile soil on the earth's crust. This fertile thin layer is now in crisis.

Even though soil is the basis of our lives, agriculture, deforestation and other factors have degraded and eroded the topsoil at alarming rates. Globally, 52 per cent of agricultural land is already degraded. If current rates of soil degradation continue, experts in this area agree that this would be the end of life as we know it. Yet our Ministry of Agriculture website does not even list soil management as an area of interest, which may mean it is not being addressed here at home.

So what can we do now to save our soil. Each of us can bring awareness to this issue and ask the Government to include soil management and regeneration as a critical part of its agricultural policy. Luckily, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has researched and created all the effective and necessary guidelines and policies needed to manage our soil.

We do not have to spend time and money creating any of it from scratch. What is required to plan and execute sustainable soil management is easily available. We need to request those in the Government to act now to include those guidelines into our agricultural policy.

Let us make it happen by each of us continuously posting (until we get action) on its Facebook page/Twitter and/or writing to the Minister of Agriculture, copied to the Prime Minister, asking for a soil management and regeneration policy and requesting twice yearly updates on the implementation of this policy to be shared on the Ministry of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries' website and social media accounts.

Together we can make it happen - #SaveSoil.

LOU-ANN MAHARAJ

Westmoorings

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