Speaker 1: Imagine the country you live in being hit by less and less fertile soil,
making crop growing increasingly difficult.
Speaker 2: Sandstorm conditions prevail in the Indian capital and now there are fears of
early desertification on the region.
Speaker 3: Desertification and erosion are both concerns.
Sadhguru: Soil is the habitat upon which zillions of lives thrive. Because of that thriving life,
everything grows. We eat food, other animals grow, everything happens because soil is rich.
Once there is no richness in soil, then you have forsaken the planet in many ways.
We talk of carbon, we talk of emissions, we talk of pollution at various levels; before all that,
we need to address the most important concern. Because there is a misunderstanding in the world,
there is a campaign to project civic issues as environmental issues. Right now if plastic bags
are floating around in New York City, this is not an ecological issue, this is a civic issue.
If our rivers are polluted, this can be fixed in one or two years if you set up the necessary
purification plants and enforce the law. These are civic issues which can be fixed
with a little bit of law enforcement and awareness. But the real issue is soil.
The United Nations agencies with enough scientific data, they are clearly saying
that we have soil... agricultural soil for another eighty to hundred crops on the planet.
This is forty-five to sixty years, is what we have agricultural soil.
We are calling this as soil extinction. You’ve heard of dinosaurs going extinct,
you've heard of dodos going extinct, but this is soil extinction is what we are looking at.
The real problem is soil extinction because in the last thirty years, eighty percent of
the biomass insects have disappeared from the planet. Eighty percent! This is a... a
suicide, you know, this is a real suicide.
So in forty-five years time or fifty years time,
there will be serious food crisis on the planet, it's inevitable. When food crisis comes,
well, whoever has the biggest guns will come and take the food. And the chaos
and the suffering that we will create for populations around the world is unimaginable.
Don't think only the poor people will die, they will kill the rich and rich will die.
So this is not to paint a dark picture, this is a reality which has happened many times
in our history. And once again it is being predicted
by top scientists in the world. So what are we going to do?
Why is soil going away? Where is it going away? See, what is sand becomes soil if you add organic
content to it. What is soil becomes sand if you take away all the organic content from it.
If you go into a rainforest, the organic content in the soil will be over seventy percent.
In normal agricultural soil the minimum organic content
that has to be there to call soil, "soil," is three to six percent.
Three percent is the most minimum. But today, for example in India,
sixty-two percent of India’s soil, the organic content is 0.5% or below that. So literally we
are on the verge of desertification. This is across the world, this is not in one country.
In United States, the way the land has been used in terms of herbicides, weedicides, pesticides...
Well, we need to understand nearly eighty-two to eighty-six percent of biodiversity is within
the first twelve inches of top soil. When we plough with machines, like tractors plough
to a depth of nine to twelve inches and leave it open, this means we are destroying the
biodiversity completely. What biodiversity means is, it’s the humus in the soil.
The word human comes from the word humus, that means this is actually living soil.
So, it's very, very important that soil becomes the focus,
because if you put one-third to forty percent of the land,
especially in the tropical world under tree shade, your climate change could be easily reversed.
Land is getting hot, simply because it is ploughed or it is paved. Land has to go under vegetation,
whatever kind -- natural grasses, bushes, trees, whatever -- because all these are serving the
ecological activity. And we must also understand, soil is a very significant carbon sink,
and soil is the largest water soak on the planet, and soil is the basis of all life.
This thirty-six to thirty-nine inches of topsoil on an average around the planet,
is the basis of eighty-seven percent of life on this planet. To keep the biodiversity alive
is the most important thing that we need to do right now. Unless we start now,
this will not happen. As a part of this we are unfolding a movement called Conscious Planet,
to bring maximum number of people. Right now it looks like climate change, ecology,
all these are playground for the rich and elite. No, this must change. Individual
human beings should become conscious about the danger that we are facing.
Ecological issues must become election issues
and political parties must give significance to ecological issues in their manifestos.
Governments must be elected for their concern for ecological issues. This needs to happen.
So we are seeing how to bring about a policy recommendation for 192 countries.
The rally is starting on 21st of March which is the equinox day in London.
And from London, it’s a single lone motorcycle riding through twenty-four countries, 30,000 kms
reaching the Cauvery basin,where we are on-ground working in a river basin, which is 83,000 sq km
and 5.20 million farmers work here.
The very body that we carry is soil; without soil being rich and well,
this body and every other life cannot be well. So in terms of ecology, in terms of climate change,
the most important thing is - that we need to have a conscious approach as to how we manage our soil,
how we rejuvenate our soil, how we revitalize our soil. This conscious approach and creating
a conscious planet is what is most important. Without involving large mass of people, this will
not become a reality. Because we are democratic nations, unless people say, this is what they
want, that is not going to happen. So let's create a conscious planet. Let us make it happen!!!