UK soils are dying, soil microbes could be our best hope – Microbz Soil

Microbz Soil

UK soils are dying, soil microbes could be our best hope

 

Human activities, intensive farming and climate change have dramatically affected nature and the health of our soil. If solutions aren’t found to regenerate soils then the ability of future generations to grow food will be seriously compromised.

Our soils are dying. The situation is dire. The UK is estimated to be 30 to 40 years away from fundamental eradication of soil fertility. The dirt beneath our feet is getting poorer and poorer and will eventually threaten our very survival. You can’t grow food in soil that has no life.

In 2017 Michael Gove, then Environment Secretary, said “countries can withstand coups d’état, wars and conflict, even leaving the EU, but no country can withstand the loss of its soil and fertility.”

Intensive farming over recent decades has meant our soils have been churned up by heavy machinery and drenched in chemicals which force higher yields in the short term but in the long term undercut its future fertility.

You can increase yields year on year but ultimately you are cutting the ground away from beneath your own feet. Farmers, in fact anyone who works close to soil, knows that. And Soil degradation is expensive. Every year in England & Wales it is estimated to cost £1.2 bn due to the loss of organic content of soils, soil compaction and erosion.

This is not a problem confined to the UK, the UN have warned that if current degradation rates are not reversed there may be less than 60 harvests left in the world’s soil. All over the world issues of erosion, compaction, nutrient imbalance, pollution, acidification, water logging, loss of soil biodiversity and increasing salinity have been affecting soils.

You might think when you look around that there is soil everywhere, but it isn’t the quantity that matters but the quality. The nutrient dense topsoil is key. With an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 species of microorganisms per gram of soil, soils can represent one of the most highly diverse ecosystems on our planet – and these organisms are the bedrock for life to thrive.

Winning back the health of our soils could be the most important task for the next generation. A single hectare of healthy soil has the potential to store and filter enough water for 1000 people and soils in the UK store over 4 billion tonnes of carbon in the form of organic matter. Not to mention the benefits for long term sustainability and the ability to provide healthy food for an ever growing population.

So what are we going to do about this problem? Microbz for Soil was started by Jeff Allen with the purpose of bringing life back to UK soils. We brew soil microbes that increase the number and diversity of microorganisms in soil.

Scientists tell us that soil with a diverse microbial community promotes plant growth, while soil with more homogeneous microbial makeup suppresses growth.

Just like us, plants have a microbiome too. It is called the rhizosphere. It’s a narrow area of soil very close to the roots where bacteria and microbes influence plant growth and disease suppression.

Microbes work to convert nutrients into food for the roots to absorb, produce hormones that stimulate growth, prevent infections, filter out metals and contaminants from the soil and release nutrients. In order to have healthy plants and soil we need to put more microorganisms back into the soil.

For many years, the benefits of plant growth promoting rhizobacteria and mycorrhizal fungi in agricultural soil have been understood and we have developed products that combine those two key elements and apply them at the right place and concentration to accelerate soil regeneration.

Jeff Allen, Founder of Microbz says, “all of life came from this mantle of soil and we eventually go back to it. We have devastated the microbial life in our soils by overusing chemicals and intensively farming. But it isn’t too late to reverse this impact. We harvest beneficial microbes and put them back into degraded compacted soils to revive our dying land.”

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