your photos and videos. are watching t w news i'm nicole phillips next up our documentary film the last harvest don't forget you can catch all our stories on our facebook page and our web site that's the w dot com. shifting powers the old order is history the world is really going i think itself and the media's role is keep the topic in focus of the global media forum 29 teams today one out of 2 people is online who are we following whom do we trust to beijing and shape the future at the touch of the a global media form 20 volunteers. so

oil is a healthy living vibrant ecosystem minute self it cycles nutrients it holds water and it sustains life all life began and then the soil you need. was promoted monoculture in the big big way and the monoculture i'm sorting is just not working. where you want us to we need our above land but over fertilizing 911 count in the long run. are going to say it's pretty clear we're facing climate change so it's even more important for the future that we keep our soils healthy marks through to. go somewhere although we eat twice as many vegetables as we did in the 1970 s. we've taken less and less minerals and tries. intense yes but i am.

running really keeping food at a very very low price artificially you know just. by deploying very simplistic agricultural systems we have to safeguard them protect there was some nasty chemicals. in. the world's arable land is the foundation of civilization it gives us almost everything that we eat but of our own natural resources it attracts the least attention and it's being destroyed faster than it's reformed. $10000000.00 hectares of land

a year or 30 football pitches every minute are depleted and taken out of production . you are you are putting it set the soil is anything about disposable. surface wrong takes a long long time to become arable land that i had in the wrong cans to crumble it can take thousands of years before you can grow crops in it they've got to sort of soar you know give me nothing so my kind of glaze. almost a little open they would if we shared the planet's arable land each person would get about 2000 square metres of it but the world's population is growing and we're rapidly destroying the soil so that figure won't apply in the long run. saudis are most important. measure of their were on the content 80 percent of them by ourselves there were around for his readers or valuing system if there were around and if we don't take care of the team he would garden then the quality of

the production line and then we all seek because so jasiek. the soil is a living system and if unstable will throw everything else out of balance including us human beings we probably don't realize just how important it is or how much of the land on our planet desirable the entire population of the world is to be fed from an area smaller than russia that's all there is. i'm sorry mr fennis layer on the earth in which the trance and the life can thrive so it's a very very shadowy area some places maybe a meter burning some of the places is only a few centimeters so it's a very thin layer. it kind of occupies the space between

rock and life half of soil is broken down pieces of mineral and half of it is decomposing organic matter that was living and so it's kind of that interface. let me take the photos so might look pretty sterile but you just can't see the things and see it in each square meter they are more bacteria than people on earth that is to me a bacteria and it's many where you everything that comes into contact with the soil like leaves and toxins chemicals that shouldn't be there is processed by the organisms that live in the soil toss your hound all don't want any special fees if you. soil once thought by many to be dead cold and black. but a large portion of all living creatures are believed to inhabit this microcosm. the length of fun guy my ceiling is virtually endless an ecosystem that breaks down

organic matter whether it's minerals purifies water and services the entire biosphere. doesn't bore you to be out here and all that it's primarily the bacteria that react with any new material so the millions of bacteria that reproduce if they get too much food. or go on the skin then they're funky that break down nutrients so that they're in the perfect condition to be absorbed by plants along with soil moisture braddock's so gave the markets. you know it's all about life and death because you need that that cycle and that's what the soil food web is. the plants in the soil need one another they've developed and perfected a mutual balance during the course of evolution that has become

a so sufficient entity. if you look at how a healthy soil ecosystem functions it's all about photosynthesis how much sunlight can i capture with living plants those living plants then through photosynthesis pumped carbon into the soil and as they do that that carbon then in the soil feeds all that soil life and allows that soil to produce much much more. photosynthesis is a miracle of nature that extracts carbon and in conjunction with the degradation of organic matter creates humus the soil layer that is a prerequisite for all food production it's in the humus that we find most of the nutrients but it's also the humus the disappears in modern farming diversity and the number of organisms decrease and the self-sufficient entity falls apart.

it seems awkward to regard the plough until it just dreads since they traditionally symbolize fertility and good times but contemporary food production has become so industrialized that it causes damage to soil layers deeper down as well. soil compaction is an increasing problem become more and more specialized which calls for more rationalize ation measures the machinery gets larger and heavier cultivation seasons become longer so we tell the land while it's wet like these factors all course soil compaction the yield gradually decreases as the soil is deprived of and to breathe or. this impacts the layers below ploughing depth which become almost like cement. it creates

a kind of lid that won't let through any rainfall and that results in flooding it also prevents water from being filtered and groundwater reserves from being replenished. industrial monocultural food production creates problems. which promoted monoculture in a big big way and then monoculture on saw it it is just not working in europe you have soldiers to have formed the last 30 years never seen another crop than the wheat or maize and when you look at this on as just horrible what we find is no earth worms no life hardly any partridge aquatic to tea with in the sort of bigger ocean problems and you have a farmer that's telling you that he said every year he's using more fitted eyes or

any deals on any better. our food supply chain rests on streamlined farming. one of the conditions for this is mano cultivation the same annual crops over large areas there's no variation in the natural interaction between plants and soil has been done away with. the soil decays one 3rd of all soil in europe is said to be under stress. in some parts of the usa california among others plantations and groundwater systems are collapsing the cycle has been thrown off balance. this is the land of huge cultivated areas taken globally

a 3rd of all wheat is grown on the american prairie but there are farmers who work differently recognise the threats and work question industrial farming. modern agriculture to me unfortunately has become one that's driven by money. i often look at most producers merely as puppets you know they're doing what they're told to do plant this crop use this fertilizer use this chemical grow this model called sure to me that's not what agriculture should be agriculture should be about producing healthy food in a way that actually regenerates the soil but it's just not that way to. just look at this soil how cap it is now i'm a big guy but. i got a hard at it. but look at the cross on the soil look at the plating us and if you

smell lad you can smell the bacteria how rancid it is now this operation same family for 50 years but the only true crops they have grown is flax in spring we monocultures very little diversity the other thing you notice obviously there was no earthworms there was no life you see you know insects out there. this crap isn't getting very many nutrients at all from the soil the soil is more last just a medium to hold the plant up for their operation they farm approximately 40000 cropland acres. i use of synthetic herbicides past the sides fungicide. look at the right mass. the roots are moving horizontally they're not move and vertically. look at the bulk and said you can just see the

ball that's the other soil how hard it is that's from synthetic fertilizers. and they're all absolutely yes the earth worms are some of the most important and innocence in the soil and also the and then there are many different species and sizes but they do the same thing all along that i have they transform the organic material don't get as they dig tunnels in the soil you know. in these tunnels shall untruths have space to grow and rain can get in town. and put it creates a poorest and fine mess of small cavities in the ground with the water can easily trickle down my feet so you reach the groundwater and get purified and not run off the surface carrying with the topsoil and causing erosion that would that mean the nastiness some are killed or.

monoculture affects all soil organisms especially earthworms were immensely important to the fertility and structure of the soil and the humus they transport minerals and nutrients from deep down to the surface. and healthy. this means tons of earthworms and countless miles of their tunnels unfortunately they're in decline. without the earthworm the humus and the ecosystem lose their most brilliant engineer. first friends do not like synthetic fertilizers they do not like as decides they do not like fungicide they do not like herbicides they do not like monocultures they

do not like bare soil they need proper residue they need a healthy home they need soil aggregation. and be something in agriculture that doesn't use counting the amount of but only chemical 1st alliance's the earth limbs lack food and think that they have nothing to eat they need organic material to live without it they die or go somewhere else after the 2 months. but how does an earthworm move across these vast fields on the surface of the salt it was swept clean of all plant debris and are going to matter. ordinary manure is no longer a given the only thing that suggestive of the days of self-sufficient farming with nutrients was circulated by the dung flies enjoying what little code on these still around.

the lack of organic matter not only affects earthworms and other soil living creatures but also the all important exchange of nutrients between plants and fungus. in debate here there versatility or so some all of the elements are very important. you have a lot of fungus laker we call me call these which are very very important because they are the elements that make the link between the new treatments and all the elements you have in this earth and there with the roots of the being aired so if you don't have this huge family of fungus you know have any communication between the sorry and the plants so they really are no communication. from

fundy have my syria to absorb nutrients like phosphorus plants have photosynthesis they can't just sunlight and carbon dioxide you see on their own they can't absorb enough nutrients from the ground and also the fungus in the plant swap with each other a bit on my thinking on. 90 percent of all plants interact with fung going to guarantee be absorbed in a vital minerals and other nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus a crucial ecosystem service that is under threat from chemical farming. the problem with my chorus is that like any fun guy they are sensitive to the fungus sites and you know the culture we use a lot of from the side especially when we are in will country and once the plants loses this symbiotic association with the microbes that it loses also its ability

to take a phosphorous in the soil. only good it's a form beneficial if mike arise that disappeared from the soil it takes a long time for them to return they create a recall denies ation starts from. the edges of the field. so if you have large fields it's an even slower process you know some of the process. if this natural exchange is lost we risk becoming dependent on chemical fertilizers particularly phosphorous which is only mined in a few places in the world. we compensate for the lack of natural nutrients with chemistry elements like nitrogen phosphorus and potassium are manufactured using energy intensive methods. fertility has diminished but crops

still grow are we covering the depletion of our soil with chemical fertilizers. so can the chemical fertilizers mean you don't need animals to funnel stands and you can get big harvests even in soils that lack what they need to deliver these harvests that's the theory and. i really have a call that chemical fertilisers among sugar it's a lot of energy easily accessible but short lived you can't run a marathon on sugar alone. soils are meant to be there forever that's why we can't fertilize them with think that you're slow or you'll die. and right now we will put you know 100 kilos of nitrogen and between 40 and 60 of those kilos go somewhere else in the environment they're not taken up by the crop. monoculture and chemical fertilizers constitute

a threat to the soil becomes passive in the nutrients and up in the oceans lakes and other waterways. dangerous compounds phosphorous based protocol it's become part of the food we eat. we're going to force we just you know want to problem with phosphorus fats and i says is that they often contain cadmium. removing it is costly. keeping it means lots of cadmium in our food in the future many problems are accumulating in modern agriculture but i would doubt it will because. much of what we end up using agro chemicals for insecticides fungus sites things like this is to compensate for the lack of diversity diversity in the natural

system is what prevents diseases from taking down all of the plants there. it's what prevents one insect from just exploding because there's habitats for predators living in other plants and so by by deploying very simplistic agricultural systems we have to safeguard them protect them with some nasty chemicals. her. her.

and production agriculture today producers are focused on how do i kill at best kill a pest. for every insect species that's the past there are 1700 that are beneficial so here we are in production agriculture trying to kill at one pass when we should be providing a home for the 1700 that you that this makes it makes no sense what we're doing in agriculture they. are asking. what happened you find everything in diversity but in just over half

a century agriculture has become industrialized and reliant on finite resources. the soil has become a cheap means of production for farmers and wine producers dead soil is a reality. when i started my winery 10 years ago it had been rented to a samurai who was not working naturally at all and i realized. that i started to work on where almost. there was no energy there were very superficial and there was no life no biodiversity nothing was going on

there maybe 1010 percent of the songs are well looked after and then the majority of the soldiers we see anyway when we do social studies. we can where and when you use pesticides then is more difficult for the plant to get a good healthy nutrition because there are microbial communities completely disorganized and then you get into a vicious cycle. is it our way of life that has silenced the land. by wanting the cheapest possible products fruit and vegetables all year round and we threaten england and thereby the prospects of future farming. have we been promoting large scale farming land consumption instead of land management.

from their farming that we are having today especially now or a sponge asians is moving to because lives properties that are monitored by become bodies they decide the brother for the national view of this is making that we are changing the fertilization in this system no for the action and this is resulting in our farms that are not sustainable we are using a lot of chemicals not only if given the lies or source of pesticides on besides the results right now is that we have more of those young less healthy sorry. on these large scale orange plantations the topsoil isn't seen as a living ecosystem but as a cheap means of production this will come back to bite them. in 20 years time the

thin soil cover could be gone. but soil is disappearing in countries further north to rich and black the bare soil is exposed to the elements wherever you look the expenditure exceeds the income. we're in the process of depleting our soil work out of all capital. we're going to say well it's pretty clear with facing climate change we're likely to get more severe weather so it's even more important to the future that we keep our soils healthy and take the area from even one gold marks through to. a new historian although much of the soil we have on earth is vulnerable to erosion water or wind erosion erosion has been identified as a very serious threat to our soils because of the cold war more what i would look.

better for the absolute north things the extent of erosion is increasing or is specially where all the nutrients are in the finest particles party with their nettings. humus and nutrients disappear in the rain in the wind what has taken thousands of years to create is a road away in the blink of an eye what remains is soil that has lost its self-sufficiency its ability to produce its very life and that will hurt us. for manono and get out when you grow the frog it can never contain more nutrients than the soil contains. the plants can retain carbon via carbon dioxide through 30 synthesis but they can produce anything else it's up to the soil so if the soil is depleted of nutrients we get

a cross that's depleted of nutrients. we're not getting the micronutrient content that requires us to stay well and the consequences are that you're seeing more and more chronic disease conditions being presented earlier and earlier and earlier over a generational change. where we're force feeding vast sways mainly with them p.k. fertilizes in a manner that creates rapid growth but doesn't necessarily how the plant itself to be as i say my community and there so you have a massive surprise over a carrot or potato that doesn't necessarily mean that the nutrient content is as dense as it would be in the past.

my guess is as i had cancer the calcium levels and zinc levels haven't increased but the carbohydrate levels have. that's how our crops eels have increased. that although we eat twice as many vegetables as we did in the 1970 s. we take in less and less minerals and trace elements down. selectively bred fast growing crops to shallow roots and poor nutritional value. if moreover the soil is lifeless and incapable of delivering minerals and trace elements does it mean that contemporary food production is failing to carry out its most important task delivering a healthy and diverse food. but boredom only lost the diversity both in a great culture and in our food when we switched to modern wheat varieties. and the

mineral levels have also decreased in these we. means so we get less micronutrients from the modern weights than we did from the old varieties. also faster and got lots of them. thanks for telling what ensued we have put too much emphasis on high yield crops there were 50 years ago we had 10 times as strong to 4 tons of grain today we have 10 tons of grain to 4 tons of straw but we need to eat twice as much flour to get the same amount of nutrients for someone magnetics and. more carbohydrates and fewer micronutrients the vitamins and minerals that govern all the functions of our cells and which in small quantities are essential to us.

more sugar less nourishment. is it possible we're eating more because our bodies suffer from deficiencies. always eating more as a result of this new. bill i think i think they're going the body strive towards wanting something nourishing something that requires. and that is not sated so if you know the word you can be over for a. mound nourished and that's one of the biggest problems that we've got. in terms of great. health related problems with him out west side. just about if it is the biggest lifestyle related cause of chronic illnesses today . and we need to focus on micro malnutrition. since micronutrients on part of so many functions in the cells it's difficult to

gauge what that efficiency results and it could be any illness. from him still. we compensate for cereals rice with low nutritional value. when they refined and polished they lose even more of their minerals in micronutrients. so we add stuff like i think copper. in quantities that might not be justified physiologically. less than the industry most processed baby food storage and formula isn't reached with ion. of the ion we enrich the food with we have only about 2 percent. the rest goes into the large intestine. and the ion changes the intestinal flora. today we

link many illnesses in the western altered intestinal flora like allergies loosen intolerance and type one diabetes in children on. my. minor changes and deficiencies created in balance since the resultant so-called hidden hunger and chronic conditions. could be reduced nutritional value without food be a fundamental cause. a resource bring from deficiency disease. how did it come to this. shouldn't our food contain everything we need. the tragedy is that i actually didn't food manufacturing fraternity could create more can you treat food for the populace is just going to get some aspects of this and it's not been a priority for them to create tougher food. mass farming doesn't help to call the

tree in any sense whatsoever we're not helping the environment we're only really keeping food out of a very very low price artificially low price. where has this cheap food let us you know united states spends more on health care than any other developed country in the world yet last time i checked were the 42nd to help his country a little more 1st in 80 to 80 h.t. cancers parkinson's alzheimer's osteoporosis and the list goes on and on. cancer probably i'm going to spin for the kool aid on one problem with today's food production. is that we equate agriculture with any other business.

food products with any other products. and found this has resulted in animals being treated as animal units i. talk about here and review. lost touch with why we farm adoring fans on far far off. everything has been streamlined to be about money i own my home. and actually say yes can't borrow we've lost all sense of thoughtfulness care respect. human. respect and you can see. with this production intensive market driven by economic growth our society is rapidly becoming urbanized and that uses of land fertile living topsoil is trapped beneath shopping centers concrete

infrastructure and soil sealed surfaces despite the resource is tarred over. the climate could quickly change our way of life so we need the arable land to store the carbon that's creating the changes to the world's weather systems top soils have a function in climate regulation that we can utilize and maybe at the same time get ourselves more crops. 50 is for sure got a smaller comment from some experts saying that if we increase the organic matter in all songs by 2 percent we could get rid of all greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. so that's how big the impact of what we grow is on the climate. so you could say that more fertile soil also results in advance of climate before.

we could fix the greatest challenge of our time global warming simply by growing more in our fields non-lethal felt that all. so with nature as our model we can grow more and reduce climate change a shift towards protective crops low tillage cultivation more diversity and quality instead of quantity. annual monoculture and chemical dependency will hopefully soon be a thing of the past there are opportunities for regeneration and climate smart cultivation . sustainable agriculture is possible it's in the ceci. one solution can be found in perennial crops which reduce topsoil use in

a kind of filling that basic perennial foodstuffs are part of our future. well this is intermediate wheat grass which produces the grain current and it is a relative of wheat it's kind of a cousin of wheat. and it looks like wheat but it has a very important difference we eat is an annual that you name replant every year and has relatively shallow roots kerns has very deep roots and as a perennial so really grows year after year after year protects the soil. builds soil or gana matter takes up nutrients very efficiently and provides a lot of carbon or soil or solar goetic matter for organisms in the soil to eat. by removing the ecosystem the agro ecosystem into a perennial state we think we will not only conserve the saul resource but make

agriculture a very very sustainable. one condition for sustainable food production its biological diversity right now and in the future could species reach ecosystems be the life insurance of humanity. in the long ecosystems even in healthy soil them more species than is necessary at any given time. that. it provides a buffer in times of stress for you. for example climate change. them in. the middle was coming bob and biological diversity is of enormous importance of course i would argue that it is an insurance

for the future and to see. the. holding her with a large biodiversity we know that if something changes in the future and something will there are always some groups and organisms that are ready to take over unfortunate head to keep the system functioning so i'll just leave the trainer. i mean couldn't have a set of couples without this stuff then the soil's ecosystem could care less of avoiding and so which would mean that we could no longer grow crops and that's all and i think now you can go to. not being able to grow things what a horrible thought. and every day we're cutting more of our lifelines. but

traditional locally sourced food is an option small scale production and high nutritional value instead of the cheapest possible support to farmers and growers that manage their land instead of the wasteful large scale production our choices at the supermarket are crucial for the arable land and for our chances of growing anything at all in the future. the worst case scenario for soil would be that producers and consumers don't realize that. that's where the nutrients come from that sustain life all life all life began and ends with the soil. this is about the immediate future possibly just one generation away. when we're

used up the very thin layer of topsoil that we have at our disposal. we have to do away with the notion that the soil the ecosystem and nature are there to be exploited rather than interact if we're to have any kind of future at all. without life no soil. and no soil. if people don't speak about nature as they speak about over and over it's not over and just don't spin your humanity and senator are wrong to strip eating you know we beyond we've been young trees in nature such as heat if we destroy nature we destroy bess i mean it's ridiculous to suggest humanity engine it you know or are together so i tour you are killing you many tea because he kills an extra. people must understand that you know.

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some time in the 26th. my great granddaughter. put me the world be like in your life time in around half a century. your world will be around trying to grease one. inevitably sea level rise by at least one century. we're going to have some climate impacts me turn greater than your c.e.o. . it's really frightening paltrow. played. why aren't people more concerned. little yellow. shorts move through the 1st t.w.

. had a bit of. a tearful farewell and the thank you to a costly opportunity to serve the country i know. britain's prime minister will resign on june 7th her failure to deliver that nearly 3 years after the u.k.'s referendum sealed her fate also coming up. u.s. president donald trump arrives in japan for a special state visit as the new and 1st 1st foreign guests post.