SOIL is our lifeline. It sustains life with a variety of foods, holds and filters water to provide us with clean and safe potable water and maintains ecological balance by storing carbon. But Pakistan has played havoc with its soils. We refused to accept that soil is much more than just a combination of minerals in rock material in the form of sand, silt and clay. We started deep tillage and mono-cropping was preferred over biodiverse fields. Inorganic chemical fertilisers and pesticides replaced natural soil rejuvenating practices and water-intensive seed varieties were imposed on the farmers.
The result was massive destruction of the soil’s microbial life, which nature deploys to help plants produce delicious and nutritious food. Bacteria and fungi decompose dead organic matter. Without these decomposers, dead materials will pile up, causing unimaginable pollution and making life impossible. They break down the organic waste and recycle it to process food for plants.
Another group of microbes has taken on the role of mining minerals from the rock material in the soil. They make the organic acids that break down crystalline structures of the rocks into sand, silt and clay.
There is yet another set of microbes........