by Fred Bahnson; April 20, 2010
published in Faith & Leadership
John Jeavons expects that 20 years from now most of the world’s people will be struggling to eat.
Jeavons, a developer of sustainable agriculture methods, delivered this dire message at a three-day workshop I recently attended. Although his vision might seem to approach the apocalyptic, this class was not “How to Build Your Own Backyard Bomb Shelter” or “The Book of Revelation Explained!” It covered a more humble subject, one to which we moderns have paid far too little attention: soil.
According to Jeavons, the simple dirt in which we grow our food could soon become disastrously scarce, and he promotes its replenishment with an evangelistic fervor.
This Earth Day there will no doubt be much talk of how to solve climate change, population density and our energy problems, talk that will make appeals to saving that vague abstraction known as the environment.
But perhaps it’s time to turn our attention to caring for something concrete, like the host of living organisms beneath our feet on whose health our own health -- and that of our neighbors -- depends. Perhaps it’s time to give the kind of attention the Yahwist writer in Genesis gave in describing our vocation as God’s creatures: till and keep the adamah, the fertile soil.
read the full article HERE