Gaspard Kœnig urges the large-scale development of agroecology, the only way to restore fertility to the soil. Without this dynamic, humanity is doomed, insists the author ofAgrophilosophy. Reconcile nature and freedom (Editions de l’Observatoire, October 2024, 336 pages, 23 euros) andHumus (Editions de l’Observatoire, 2023).
What is the state of the soil and the degree of urgency of the situation for the human species?
Humanity has always preferred to look at the sky, like Thales in the Theaetetus, of Plato, who ends up falling into a hole. The soil is still very little known. To date, we have only discovered one percent of the species that live there. However, they are abundant: three tons of worms per hectare evolve under our feet, along with millions of bacteria and fungi… The soil plays a fabulous metaphysical role, since it converts death into life, decomposing organized bodies and allowing others be. born. From an agronomic point of view, living soil is naturally fertile.
And yet we destroy it. 60% of European soils are exhausted; They lose on average 80% of their biomass. Yields are falling, even in intensive conventional farming areas. This impoverishment threatens food, but also biodiversity, carbon storage, water filtration and storage, etc.
The good news is that nature is resilient. If left alone for five or ten years, soils can recover. The bad news is that, once you reach the bedrock, you have to wait a thousand years for the soil to reappear: 40 centimeters of humus and a primary forest…
What are the solutions to get out of this deadly situation in which we are at the origin of the human being?
Current agricultural yields are not sustainable, as they are based on the destruction of the capital that is land. The ecological transition should go less through industrial decarbonization, which is abstract, technical and centralized, than through the agroecological transition. Once again we are entering a physiocratic era, where the agricultural issue will become essential. The principle of agroecology is to respond to the problems posed by nature with nature-based solutions. We find it well formulated by Henry David Thoreau when he describes the cultivation of his bean field in Walden. It is about progressively abandoning chemical inputs and even the plow, thus breaking with ten thousand years of agricultural practice.
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