We Need To Save Earth’s Soil — Changing Our Food Choices Can Help
There is a really strong relationship between meat consumption and the Earth’s rising temperatures. If you choose to eat a chicken breast over a filet mignon, you make a dent in temperature rise; if you choose a meatless meal, you are making an even greater impact. Changing food choice patterns has the power to reduce carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions. It can also make a huge impact on sustaining Earth’s soil, which is an essential key to a successful future food system.
By replacing meat with plant-based sources of protein, we can help to increase soil moisture, which hasn’t been replenished for decades. We must do what we can to prevent prolonged droughts, which are increasing in a warming world. If we don’t reinvigorate soil moisture, its current trajectory points to the Earth’s soil drying even more, which will jeopardize crucial food stocks.
While soil is technically a renewable resource, it can take between 100 and 1,000 years to develop, depending on the surrounding climate. This formation is so slow that scientists apply the term “limited” to it because of its vulnerability to degradation.
Soil is not static: its composition is changeable, based on the weather, which organisms constitute it, which plants grow in it, and other variables. It’s a complex living ecosystem teeming with microbes, nutrients, and other organisms. Healthy soil contains everything necessary for plants to thrive.
Sustainable and regenerative agriculture is a method to ameliorate soil health while also sequestering carbon, storing water, and building healthier ecosystems along the way. The Good Food Institute explains that “there is no food security without soil security – we need robust, healthy soil to feed the world.”
Why is the Earth’s Soil Drying Up?
Soil is amazing. Why is soil so important? It:
- is the basis of food systems;
- the place where nearly all plants for food production grow;
- hosts a big community of diverse organisms that improve its structure, recycle essential nutrients, and help to control weeds, plant pests, and diseases;
- is essential for water filtration;
- stabilizes a landscape against the impacts of drought, flood, or fire; and,
- when soil is healthy, it contains and even increases organic carbon — it stores more carbon than all of the world’s forests combined.
A new global study just confirmed something alarming: the Earth’s soil is drying out at unprecedented levels, and it likely won’t recover in our lifetime. It’s happening faster than the glaciers are melting. Agriculture is a major driver of the degradation of the Earth’s soil. Many common industrial agriculture techniques degrade soil over time: synthetic fertilizer inputs, tilling, monocropping, and deforestation. The losses in the Earth’s soil moisture due to industrial agriculture have caused climate warming and prolonged droughts.
That means real problems for the irrigation necessary for agriculture to feed us all. But it also is impacting other critical water resources for humans. More sea level rise and changes to the Earth’s rotation are also a result of industrial agriculture’s soil degradation.
The research team utilized datasets that hadn’t been previously available to track water storage for decades. The team started off by looking for evidence of changing hydrology around the world, already understanding that global sea level rise is largely fed by the melting of glaciers and ice sheets.
What they found was an unprecedented decrease in soil moisture in the early part of the 21st century. They quickly realized that sea level rise is also affected by changing the amount of water on land. The research team was totally taken by surprise with the results.
- From 1979 to 2016, the biggest soil moisture losses occurred between 2000 and 2002.
- In that time, land lost around 1,614 gigatons of water.
- Water that dumped into the oceans meant global mean sea level rise increased at a rate of about 1.95 millimeters a year.
The results? Jay Famiglietti, co-author of the study published in Science, told the Washington Post that “soil moisture depletion is playing a bigger role in sea level rise than we previously thought.”
A Case Study: Prime Roots
The growing universe of alternative protein product formulation is creating opportunities to introduce diverse crops. A growing field of mycoremediation, or the use of mycelium to restore the health of soil or water, is gaining prominence. Mycelium is the root-like structure of a fungus, and the potential of this fungal system is already being realized in the meat substitute industry.
Unlike animal meat, plant patties, and veggie burgers, fungi-based proteins require a fraction of the land and water needed to grow crops or livestock. Fungi leave a tiny carbon footprint. They’re also gluten- and allergen-free and packed with natural nutrients and all essential amino acids. Most importantly, they’re versatile in the kitchen and tasty for the consumer.
Prime Roots co-founders Kim and Josh say they were “fed up with settling for preservative filled meats or ‘dirty’ options but crave the nostalgic flavors and protein.” They believe that clean deli meats should be the new normal, “to nourish our families and the next generation.” They knew that 42% of global consumers identify as “flexitarian,” or people who are actively reducing their meat consumption, and the saw a market potential for a line of fungi-based protein deli products.
And that’s how it started. Their company rethought meat from the ground up — literally. Their deli cuts, bacon, and pepperoni are made from koji, a fermented fungi that mimics meat’s texture and taste without the water waste. Compared to conventional meat, Koji-Meats use 92% less water and create 91% fewer carbon emissions.
It’s a real climate solution you can taste. A group of us did just that. We sampled Black Forest Koji Ham, Classic Smoked Koji Turkey, and Koji Salami.
It was unanimous — each of the deli “meats” was delicious! Our favorite was the Koji Salami — its dry texture and ample peppercorns truly resembled the salami a few of us who are vegetarians hadn’t tasted since our childhoods. The ham’s color was a bit more brown than we had remembered, but its smoky taste was right on. The turkey didn’t have as much flavor as we had expected, but the idea of elevating our vegetarian sandwiches beyond hummus, lettuce, and tomatoes with the Koji Turkey or the other Prime Roots options was pretty appealing.
With 300 million sandwiches eaten each day in the US, Prime Roots has the first and only plant-based protein company focused on the deli counter. Prime Roots is also the first mycelium-based food company to receive B-Corp certification. Certified B-Corps are businesses leading the future of a sustainable and equitable economy. B-Corps equitably benefit consumers, employees, communities, and the environment—not just shareholders.
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