New soil, new opportunities: technologies for improving soil health

Farmers tested the quality of their soil by burying a pair of pants in the ground.

The idea was that the healthier the microorganisms in the soil, bacteria and fungi, the faster the tissue would be eaten. If you bury your pants today, there's a good chance you'll find them in pristine condition a year from now.

The reason your pants won't be harmed is because there won't be anyone to eat them. According to experts, more than half of the world's agricultural soil has already been degraded, losing beneficial microorganisms.

In India, soil degradation, along with debt burden, is one of the factors that has led to a shocking statistic: an average of 30 people commit suicide every day in the country's agricultural sector.

To improve the situation, the popular Indian guru Sadhguru created the SaveSoil company. The company's goal is to improve soil quality around the world. The soil must maintain at least 3% organic content. “If we destroy the organic matter in the soil, it becomes sand and that's it,” he says. “If we don't deal with the soil problem, we will all end up in the desert.”

History has shown us the devastating effects of poor soil. If soil degradation occurs faster than its fertility is restored, it becomes almost impossible to maintain agricultural production. The topsoil is found at the top of the soil, which has been degraded by centuries of agriculture, significantly reducing the ability to grow food crops.

There are several causes of soil degradation, from overgrazing, to growing only one crop at a time, to overuse of herbicides. One of the main factors reducing soil fertility is the technology that revolutionized agriculture - the plow.

All over the world, from small subsistence farms in Africa to the huge mechanized farms of North Dakota, this very old technology lies at the heart of agriculture.

The modern plow turns the soil over to remove weeds, but in doing so exposes and kills microorganisms that are vital to its fertility.

The plow, along with other machines such as the combine harvester, expanded the scale, speed, and productivity of agriculture, resulting in more land being cultivated more efficiently. But Ben Ruskin, head of agroforestry and horticulture at the UK Soil Association, says the role of technology in farming needs to be rethought. “We need to make sure the technology keeps the soil and plants healthy,” he says.

This means the need for new tools. Farm equipment suppliers such as John Deere are now introducing “no-till” farm equipment designed to minimize soil disturbance. This type of equipment is superior to a traditional plow in terms of productivity. In this case, the soil is not plowed. Instead, seeds are planted through the remains of previous crops with planters or drills that make a V-shaped slot, place the seeds in it and close it. For example, seed drills, which drop seeds into small holes rather than using a large blade to dig a long trench.

This also involves the use of robots, which are more gentle in planting seeds and pulling out weeds. One such device is the Robotti, made by Danish agricultural technology firm AgroIntelli.

Until now, agricultural technology has focused on chemical [pesticides] and physical [machinery] areas, but now it is time to think about biology. Currently, scientists have identified only about 10% organisms living in soil.

Understanding soil composition could spawn entirely new industries, such as biotechnology, which focuses on sequencing the genes of microbes in soil in order to provide farmers with better nutrients for their land.

Interesting and potentially radical ideas can also lie in the area of simple and old-fashioned methods. For example, one experiment conducted through the Soil Association's Innovative Farmers program used willow chip mulch tied around trees to suppress weeds and disease. But it was additionally discovered that the acid contained in it actually stimulates an immune response in the trees.

In addition, the soil we walk on may contain substances used in medicine. According to an article in Chemistry World, natural products from the soil microbiome are a promising source of medicinal compounds. For example, teixobactin, a toxin that could be the basis for a new class of antibiotics, was discovered by sifting soil samples.

For farmers concerned about soil quality but not willing to hang up their pants, there are more modern ways to measure it. Of course, soil samples can be sent to a laboratory for testing. However, this is an expensive pleasure. In the era of widespread availability of smartphones and the Internet, alternative solutions are possible. Jack Ingle is the director Harvest Agri, a British firm that sells a device called a microbiometric soil test. Farmers take a soil sample and add it to a test tube containing a special solution, which is then transferred to paper. Using a free app available on both Android and iPhone, the sample can be scanned to reveal a number that determines how many fungal and bacterial organisms are present in the soil.

And it's not just farmers who measure soil quality. A team of scientists has created a database of soil health measurements collected from various sites around the world called SoilHealthDB. And last year, the European Union created the EU Soil Observatory to collect and track soil data, support soil research and develop soil policies.

But according to Professor Montgomery, much of the future of agricultural technology may lie in learning from the past. “It will take some ancient wisdom combined with modern technology—sensors, robots, and the search for microbial inoculants [beneficial microorganisms],” he says.