World soil day (4 of December)

Dedicating one day to the soil to remind us what we should undertake to preserve it is far from enough, but, it reminds us, nevertheless, to rethink, all over again, the attitude we have towards the earth and soil.

Generations which existence was depending mostly on soil are slowly disappearing. More and more people are moving to live in towns, industrial places, and the need to find places to construct different kind of constructions, infrastructures, commercial centres, shops, etc. are huge. Statistics from all over the world are clearly informing us that agriculture land is decreasing (vir 1, vir2), and on the other hand, the need to feed the world inhabitants is growing. Huge corporations are buying lands for their governments even in continents like Africa. According to some news China’s banks, German’s banks, etc. are also buying land there, as a investment for future in Africa (vir) and also in Europe (vir). They are buying land that is cheap, already cultivated or not, but with prospects to serve future demands for more food.

It is not only human that uses agricultural and farming land rapidly… also nature itself, bad weather condition, nature catastrophes, etc. are causing erosion of the soil. Having in mind that it takes 100 of years for soil to be reintegrated one can only imagine how bad prospects are for the future. It Is not only that we are leaving financial debts to our inheritors, but the baby-boom generation (basically almost all leaders in the world were born after the second world war, being part of the baby boom generation, the generation which burdened the environment more than any other prior generation) , that basically leads the world nowadays will leave to the future generation the nature and the environment in a bad health. The main feature of baby-boom generation, being part of the industrial and economic prosperity, is that it lost basic instincts of the importance of the soil. This is a huge difference in comparison to generations that used to depend from the land and agriculture, not so much from the factories and industry. Hence, it is not surprising that critical statistics do not worry them.

Slovenia is one among the worst example, at least in Europe. The citizens of Slovenia is left with 880 m² agricultural land. It would be appropriate to have it app. 3000 m². (vir) Slovenia is losing every day small farm. Changing the land from agricultural for building purposes is one way direction; usually there is no U-turn. When changing agricultural land, one have to pay the indemnity, however this is the one-time cost, but the land is changed forever.

To understand our attitude towards agricultural land, one can take into account also this perspective – we have got 320 shops in Slovenia, extended to more than 300 m²; Great Britain only has got 120. It is not, as one may think, good news, that Slovenia citizens are left with the most square meters per head of shops in Europe. And still … new shops, using also agricultural land, are being constructed as we speak, even though, that overall turnover of commerce is decreasing for every year (vir). This fact is rather unbelievable – the overall turnover decreases, but the number of shops increases This, of course, leads to very harsh competition among the shops. Even not very prudent consumer can easily find out, that the competition is indeed harsh and strong. Commercials, advertisements are more and more numerus are more and more invasive, offering lower and lower prices (usually for worse quality of goods). Although that we are already facing with insolvency of different shops, also shops are leaving the territory of Slovenia, one can still notice new shops being constructed on, still yesterday, agricultural lands. It is just a wrong approach. There is nothing sustainable in this development. It is nothing that would preserve the soil; these are just bad news for our children, inheritors. Not only that first quality agricultural land should be locked for building purposes, not being used for new constructions, but even not all agricultural land is used for farming. Only 8% of land in Slovenia is used for agricultural purposes (vir).

Additional element on that decrees number of agricultural land are also inheritance procedures. Although, it is general rule, that the farm can be inherited by only one farmer, who will take care of the farm, after the death of predecessor, the inheritor still has to pay out other inheritors, meaning that one needs to get financial resources for that purposes. Consequently, the inheritor will usually sell part of the farm, i.e. lands, to get sufficient financial resources for payment of other inheritors.

One more issue is important in this respect; a huge dispersion of different constructions also means an unsustainable use of agricultural land: Slovenia is among the worse countries in the EU. Huge dispersion of constructions does not have only negative impact to agricultural land, but also takes away habitats to wild animals, plans, all sort of species, negative impact to economy, public expenditure, since it is more expensive to procure public infrastructure, like roads, sewage systems, telecommunications, drinking water supply, …

All above facts have lasted for decades now… The state i.e. responsible authorities just failed to change them.

Categorised in: Blog

This post was written by Rajko Knez