1.What is the ‘SAVE SOIL’ movement about? Why do you think it was necessary to run this movement?
Sadhguru: According to the United Nations,in normal agricultural soil, the minimum organic matter to call soil as soil should be between 3–6%.But in large parts of the world, it is well below 1%. The average soil organic matter is 1.48% in northern Europe, 1.2% in southern Europe, 0.3% in Africa, 1.3% in the United States and 0.68% in India. What this means is that most agricultural soil on the planet is moving towards desertification.
The United Nations agencies, with enough scientific data, are saying that the planet has agricultural soil only for another eighty to hundred crops. That means we would run out of soil in 45–60 years. If that happens, there will be a serious food crisis on the planet – it is inevitable. What we are facing now is soil extinction.
Regenerating soil across the world is important, but the problem is people have not spoken up. This is why we have taken up the Conscious Planet – Save Soil movement. To raise awareness and initiate government policies to revitalize soil, in 2022, I rode as a lone motorcyclist from London to southern India, covering 30,000 km in 100 days. At 65 years of age, it was not a joyride. But I did it because as a generation, we have a challenge and a privilege that we could be that generation which turned back from the brink of a disaster. Or we could be that generation which slept through and fell over.
If we take concrete action now, then in the next 25–30 years, we could turn the soil around quite reasonably. But if we wait to act after 50 years, it will take 100–150 years to turn the soil around. That means four or five generations will go through terrible states of life because of the weak condition of soil. That is why the urgency.
The Conscious Planet – Save Soil movement is about bringing policy change, that agricultural soil should have a minimum of 3-6% organic matter. Fortunately, the response has been phenomenal. Through the Save Soil movement, we have reached over 4 billion people. 81 nations are in the process of forming soil policy. Now, I am very sure that policies will definitely be implemented almost everywhere. It is only a question of managing the pace.
It is important that we keep the pace. Otherwise, disasters can happen. Making course corrections after disaster strikes is not the way to do it. It becomes extremely difficult.
So every one of us must keep the message going to Save Soil. Sign off your mails, your messages, at least once a day, just type out Save Soil. Every day at least once, you must say Save Soil to someone. You can greet people with“Save Soil”, because this is the best blessing you can give to this generation and future generations.
- How can we Save the Soil?
Sadhguru:There are many ways to attend to it. But whatever you do, there are only two ways you can put organic matter back into the soil – green litter from vegetation, and animal waste. These two things must rise. There is simply no other way.
At the farm level, the land should not be left open to sunlight. Just 50–60 years ago, every farmer knew that land must always be under cover. Only then the bio-activity will pick up in a phenomenal way and you will have the needed organic matter in the soil. One way is to grow trees and smartly prune them whenever you have to, pulverize them and put organic matter back into the soil. Or, in a country like India, where there is sunlight for twelve months of the year, you can grow four to five maize crops. When the maize grows to about 5-6 feet, you can chop it and put it back into the land. Along with that, if you use a mixture of legumes and pulses, the organic matter in the soil will go up anywhere between 1-3% in one year!
Soil degradation is a global scale disaster, but it can be turned around simply with a committed focus. It does not need any absolutely new technology or trillions of dollars. What it needs is a committed approach from the governments.
To achieve the minimum 3-6% organic matter, we need a three-pronged strategy. Firstly, the governments of the world need to incentivize farmers to raise the organic matter in their soil. Secondly, we must simplify the carbon credit market so that it is accessible for the farmers. The third part of the strategy calls for market recognition and valuation of the produce as per the organic matter of the soil which it comes from.
If these three actions are implemented, we can easily achieve 3-6% organic matter in soil. This is the way forward.
- Are the ways to Save the Soil different in other countries or the same as in India? How many ways can we protect the soil?
Sadhguru:As part of Save Soil, in consultation with the top scientists in the world, we have prepared a soil policy document.It has hundreds of ways in which we can regenerate soil in the world, depending on the latitudinal position, region, soil conditions, economic conditions, and also the agricultural traditions of the nation because agricultural traditions cannot be changed overnight. Every country can do it in their own way taking all this into consideration.
Many UN agencies have joined us. We have active partnerships with United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), UN Environment Programme (UNEP), World Food Programme (WFP), and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) scientists are also working with us. We are also setting up a group of 25–30 scientists who will handhold small countries for the next 24 months to see that soil regeneration can be embedded into their policy and also in action on the ground.
- Save Soil has become a global movement now. What’s next now? What more changes do you want?
Sadhguru: Soil is the very foundation of life. This body – not just ours, but that of all life forms – is just an outcrop of this soil. If soil is not alive, there is no way life can happen here. It is not that we suddenly thought of the Save Soil movement. For the last 26–27 years, we have been working on this. In many ways, our other initiatives of Project GreenHands, Rally for Rivers or Cauvery Calling are not different things – it has all been about soil. But we talked about rivers and water because people can relate to it much more easily.But they are all connected. It is all about life, foundational life, but it is just being spoken with a different focus.
Fundamentally, human beings have lost connection with what is life and everything that nourishes and sustains life around us. The ecological destruction we have caused is only because we are in a mode of unconscious, compulsive action. Only when our societies move into a conscious mode, can our activities be oriented towards a solution. In this context, creating a conscious planet is the most important goal.
Everything that we have done at Isha is fundamentally about creating conscious human beings – raising human consciousness towards the right kind of action. A “conscious human being” means the basic platform is not your body, your psychological drama, or your emotional drama. The basic platform is life which, in its very essence, is naturally connected to everything else.
In 2024, we will be launching a global movement called Conscious Planet. Its aim is to ensure that at least three billion people have a 12–15-minute spiritual practice that they can do every day, because there is only one problem on the planet – the human being. If this human being is a little more sensible, so many problems would disappear right now.
- The Young Blood is more involved in this movement. This represents well how our youngsters are connected with our soil. Share some light on the same.
Sadhguru: One reason why we chose a motorcycle during the Save Soil journey is to inspire the youth. Unless the youth get involved in this movement, it is not going to happen. We also brought together a large number of musicians, who created a variety of music about saving soil because music has a massive influence. Music and motorcycles excite the younger generation, so I used both!
