Enriching the Soil

Soil is not only our most important resource, but also the most maligned and misunderstood. The world population will double in a mere forty years, but agricultural output is not keeping up with demand. In the process, precious soil is lost, waterways and coastal seas polluted. Humans obviously need to be much more knowledgeable about this problem. What is soil? Where does it come from? What kinds of soil exist? Are all soils fertile? How does soil work? Can all places on the planet be farmed? How much food can the planet make? How do we lose soil? How can we prevent erosion? What damage is caused by erosion? What is sustainability? What can we do? Such questions we will be addressed in our unit on soils. To introduce soils, we see the students conducting an experiment on enriching the soil by adding natural items (e.g. bananas, carrots) to it. Over the next 4 weeks they will be making observations on how their soil changes.