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Quotes about Topsoil from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"And as the plants die over time, they decompose and form new topsoil, and the balance between gentle rain, topsoil loss and topsoil restoration is maintained. But think about what happens if a machine or wheel cuts a track on the hillside. The plants in that one location are damaged, and with the next rain a slight increase in normal erosion takes place. The roots of the plants no longer secure the soil and soon a gully forms. When the rains come again, more topsoil is lost, the gully grows deeper, and there is less organic matter to recycle into new topsoil." - Thomas M. Newmark and Paul Schulick, BEYOND ASPIRIN Nature's Answer To Arthritis, Cancer & Alzheimer's Disease (Get the book.)

"According to former UN Assistant Secretary-General Robert Muller, each minute 52 acres of tropical forest are lost, 50 tons of fertile topsoil are blown off, and 12,000 tons of carbon dioxide are added to the atmosphere. Each hour 1,693 acres of productive dry land become desert, and each day 250,000 tons of sulfuric acid fall as acid rain in the Northern Hemisphere. An estimated 100,000 chemical compounds are injected into the land, rivers, and seas, millions of tons of sludge and solid waste are dumped into the oceans, and billions of tons of C02 are released into the air." - Ervin Laszlo, Quantum Shift in the Global Brain: How the New Scientific Reality Can Change Us and Our World (Get the book.)

"Trees reach down deep into the ground and mineralize the earth's surface soil by pulling the minerals up to the stems, leaves and branches, which eventually fall to the topsoil for recycling. The diet most Americans eat is rapidly destroying the planet for generations to come. Of prime concern is the fresh water used for cattle ranching. As Howard Lyman points out in his book Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat, the water required to produce just ten pounds of steak equals the water consumption of the average household for an entire year!" - Susan E. Schenck, The Live Food Factor: The Comprehensive Guide to the Ultimate Diet for Body, Mind, Spirit & Planet (Get the book.)

"Heavy Metal Cleanse (Optional) Since the Industrial Revolution, production and distribution of heavy metals have rapidly accelerated, so that the air, water, and topsoil of the planet have become permeated with them. These metals tend to persist and accumulate in the environment (and in our bodies!), for they cannot be degraded or destroyed. Today heavy metals are extensively used as components of countless consumer products, though the consumer is generally unaware of their presence in the seemingly harmless product." - Brenda Watson and Leonard Smith, The Detox Strategy: Vibrant Health in 5 Easy Steps (Get the book.)

"Deprived of manure and continually doused with chemicals, our nation's soils are losing their texture and ability to retain topsoil. topsoil is the rich soil layer without which food production becomes seriously endangered. The amount of topsoil we are losing from Iowa alone would fill 165,000 Mississippi River barges a year. Losing topsoil, notes World-watch Institute's Ed Ayres, "has about the same effect on a terrestrial community as losing blood has on a person. Only so much can be lost." - John Robbins, Food Revolution: How your diet can help save your life and our world (Get the book.)

"This plant matter then eventually falls to the topsoil increasing the mineralization of the soil for more vegetation to grow. Deciduous trees, which drop their leaves each year, strongly mineralize the topsoil. The cooking of food is by far the biggest waste of resources on planet Earth. Viktoras Kulvinskas, in his classic book Survival Into The 21st Century, reports that cooking destroys 85% of the value of food. When I first realized this, I was staggered. But I did not understand the full implication of this fact." - David Wolfe, The Sunfood Diet Success System (Get the book.) "United States' forests have been cleared for cropland to fuel the meat-centered diet; the percentage of U.S. topsoil loss directly attributable to livestock raising is 85%; more than half the water used in the U.S. is used for livestock production; 2,500 gallons of water is required to produce one pound (0.45 kg) of meat. Avocado trees not only provide food, they also create clean air, beautify topsoil and provide homes for wildlife. Many raw foodists I have met have eaten one to three avocados nearly every day since they started on a program of natural nutrition." - David Wolfe, The Sunfood Diet Success System (Get the book.)

"The highly fertile top layer of soil—the uppermost twenty centimeters or so—is known as topsoil. Like the air we breathe, this layer of earth is so ordinary and ever-present that it is easy to take for granted. But it is absolutely essential to our lives, health, and prosperity. By maintaining larger and larger farms, using giant machinery that tills the topsoil and kills all but the planned-for crops, planting giant monocultures (identical crops), and soaking the land in pesticides, weed killers, and chemical fertilizers, industrial agriculture strip-mines the soil." - Alex Steffen, Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century (Get the book.) "In what were once the thriving farm towns of America's heartland you can see what happens when topsoil is destroyed. You can see it in the fields themselves, in the dust clouds that blow through the region, and in the coffee-black run-off that swells the rivers with every serious storm. AS & EG Prairielike Farms and Smart Breeding To put a stop to the degradation of our topsoil, we must change the way we farm. Today, we grow most crops on mass monocultural farms of annual plants." - Alex Steffen, Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century (Get the book.)

"The amount of topsoil we are losing from Iowa alone would fill 165,000 Mississippi River barges a year. Losing topsoil, notes World-watch Institute's Ed Ayres, "has about the same effect on a terrestrial community as losing blood has on a person. Only so much can be lost."16 The production of every quarter-pound hamburger in the United States causes the loss of five times the burger's weight in topsoil.17 Unfortunately, instead of being returned to the soil and helping to rebuild topsoil, the wastes from today's livestock often end up in our water." - John Robbins, Food Revolution: How your diet can help save your life and our world (Get the book.)

"With each rain, only a little topsoil is lost, because the plant roots secure the soil. And as the plants die over time, they decompose and form new topsoil, and the balance between gentle rain, topsoil loss and topsoil restoration is maintained. But think about what happens if a machine or wheel cuts a track on the hillside. The plants in that one location are damaged, and with the next rain a slight increase in normal erosion takes place. The roots of the plants no longer secure the soil and soon a gully forms." - Thomas M. Newmark and Paul Schulick, BEYOND ASPIRIN Nature's Answer To Arthritis, Cancer & Alzheimer's Disease (Get the book.)

"We have destroyed forests; eroded topsoil; polluted and altered the atmosphere; poisoned oceans, rivers, and lakes; and let the worst effects of our despoliation fall on the poor. But crises can bring out remarkable qualities in rulers and their subjects. The development of our ability to forecast El Nifios is one such response. Perhaps the now-widespread public consciousness of global warming and of El Nifios will lead to unprecedented levels of cooperation and commitment among people and nations to create a self-sustaining world." - Brian Fagan, Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations (Get the book.)

"Avocado trees not only provide food, they also create clean air, beautify topsoil and provide homes for wildlife. Many raw foodists I have met have eaten one to three avocados nearly every day since they started on a program of natural nutrition. Most seem to never get tired of them! I know raw-foodists who have been eating one avocado nearly every day for five, ten, even twenty years. One day I was at the beach looking for a place to surf while eating an avocado. A gentleman walked by, looked at me, and commented, "soul food." He was right. Avocados are soul food. They feed our essence." - David Wolfe, The Sunfood Diet Success System (Get the book.)

"Eighty-five percent of the topsoil lost in the USA each year is directly associated with the raising of livestock. In this way, 4 million acres of cropland is destroyed every year. In the same way, precious rain forests have had to give way to satisfy the demand for more meat in the world. • To grow one pound of wheat requires only sixty pounds of water, whereas the production of one pound of meat requires a staggering 50,000 pounds of water. To produce one pound of chicken, 1,800 pounds of water are needed." - Andreas Moritz, Timeless Secrets of Health & Rejuvenation: Unleash The Natural Healing Power That Lies Dormant Within You (Get the book.)

"The seed on the right, which was planted at the exact same time and day, was planted in topsoil made from forest compost products, such as leaves, pine needles and so on. As you can see in the picture, there is a great difference between the two plants. The plant on the right is far healthier and is taller, more vibrant, and is obviously benefiting from the superior nutrition it has been provided. Identical genes, but different health outcomes There are a couple of other things to note here as well. Both plants have the exact same genetic code." - Mike Adams, The Seven Laws of Nutrition (Get the book.)

"In the toughest Dust Bowl years, between 1934 and 1940, millions of acres of Great Plains topsoil blew away in colossal dust storms. One, in May 1934, reached all the way to Chicago, dumping red snow on New England. Hundreds of thousands of people, including 85 per cent of Oklahoma's entire population, left the land and trekked west. All this took only an average 25 per cent reduction in rainfall - enough for ploughed farmland to blow away, but the giant dunes stayed put." - Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Get the book.)

"For every pound of beef you eat, factory farmers must use 2,500 gallons of water and a gallon of gasoline to run machinery, and 35 pounds of topsoil is lost due to erosion.21 As long as we continue to eat meat, we contribute to the loss of our environment. • Over 1 million animals are slaughtered for human consumption every hour.22 • A large portion of U.S. commercial milk cows receive a protein hormone such as bovine growth hormone (rBGH) to increase their milk supply, which has been artificially increased by a factor of 25 in some instances!" - Dr. Edward F. Group III, DC, ND, DACBN, Health Begins in the Colon (Get the book.)

"Vegetation shrivels, and when heavy rainfall does arrive, it simply washes away what remains of the topsoil. It may seem strange that floods and droughts can be forecast to affect the same areas, but with a higher proportion of rainfall coming in heavier bursts, longer dry spells will affect the land in between. This, then, is the most likely forecast for the Sahel: whilst rainfall totals overall may indeed rise, these increases will come in damaging flash-flood rainfall, interspersed with periods of intensely hot drought conditions." - Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Get the book.)

"Never before have we affected the natural environment to such an extent that we are losing our topsoil, our massive North American aquifers, and our world's rainforests.10 We are changing our climate so rapidly that many of the world's best-informed scientists fear the future. Never before have we been eliminating plant and animal species from the face of the earth as we are doing now. Never before have we introduced, on such a large scale, genetically altered varieties of plants into the environment without knowing what the repercussions will be." - T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. and Thomas M. Campbell II, The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health (Get the book.)

"Since the roots of sugarcane grow very deep, they are able to receive a pretty broad range of minerals and trace elements usually lacking in the topsoil. During the refining of sugarcane, the plants are boiled to a syrup from which the crystals are extracted. Then they're boiled two more times, both of which produce molasses. Blackstrap molasses, however, comes from the third and final boiling and is essentially the "dregs" of the barrel." - Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S., The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth About What You Should Eat and Why (Get the book.)

"The panels of treated cardboard, each infused with appropriate local seeds, spores of topsoil fungi, and harmless fertilizing agents, would become very special compost: by tearing the panels up and watering them, refugees could start gardens, complete with mulch, fertilizer, and the microorganisms good soil needs. (Even clothing and blankets can be designed to be compostable when they wear out.) The entire transitional tent city could then be plowed into gardens as refugees settle in to stability." - Alex Steffen, Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century (Get the book.)

"Lowdermilk estimated than a foot of topsoil had been lost from hundreds of millions of acres of northern China. He found exceptions where Buddhist temples protected forests from clearing and cultivation; there the exceptionally fertile forest soil was deep black, rich in humus. Lowdermilk described how farmers were clearing the remaining unprotected forest to farm this rich dirt, breaking up sloping ground with mattocks to disrupt tree roots and allow plowing." - David R. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations (Get the book.) "He saw how deposition of mud washed from the hills enriched valley bottom soils and how loss of the topsoil ruined upland fields. Eliot recommended spreading manure and growing clover for improving poor soils. He endorsed marl (fossil sea shells) and saltpeter (potassium nitrate) as excellent fertilizers almost equal to good dung. Bare soil left exposed on sloping ground was particularly vulnerable to washing away in the rain. Sound as it was, few colonial farmers heeded Eliot's advice, particularly in the South where new land was still readily obtained." - David R. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations (Get the book.) "Leaving the jungle, we saw bare slopes that provided stark evidence that topsoil erosion following forest clearing led to abandoned farms. Around villages on the forest's edge, squattets farmed freshly cleared tracrs. Weathered rock exposed along the road poked out of what had until recently been soil-coveted slopes. The story was transparently simple. Soon after forest clearing, the soil eroded away and people moved deeper into the jungle to clear new fields. A few miles in from the forest edge, family farms and small villages gave way to cattle ranches." - David R. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations (Get the book.)

"Before the era of continuous soil depletion, the topsoil consisted of as many as 90-100 different minerals. The great rivers such as the Nile in Egypt and the Ganges in India caused extensive flooding every year, bringing new minerals from the glaciers and mountains to the land, automatically fertilizing it. The people living in these areas were generally in perfect health and lived on average 120-140 years. The situation changed with the erosion of forests and building of dams. Today, there are merely 12-20 minerals found in plant foods." - Andreas Moritz, Timeless Secrets of Health & Rejuvenation: Unleash The Natural Healing Power That Lies Dormant Within You (Get the book.)

"On hillslopes, the thin layer of a foot or so of topsoil was essential to good farming. Such lands were naturally prone to erosion and vulnerable to poor farming practices. On lowlands, the soil was replenished by upland erosion that produced fine deposits downslope. "As to Lands lying near Rivers, the great Improvement of them is their over-flowing, which brings the Soil of the Uplands upon them, so as that they need no other mending though constantly mowed."6 Working land too hard for too long would reduce soil fertility. Sloping land was particularly vulnerable. " - David R. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations (Get the book.)

"AS & EG Prairielike Farms and Smart Breeding To put a stop to the degradation of our topsoil, we must change the way we farm. Today, we grow most crops on mass monocultural farms of annual plants. These farms require a huge amount of labor—including yearly plowing, which causes soil erosion—and huge quantities of chemical fertilizers and petroleum-based pesticides. To move beyond this type of farming, which locks us into constant service to compromised and degenerating land, we need to think of farms the way we think of prairies. Wes Jackson, founder of the Land Institute, knows this." - Alex Steffen, Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century (Get the book.)

"Iowa prairie soils 150 years ago had about twelve to sixteen inches of topsoil; now they have only about six to eight inches of topsoil. The loss continues. The "Dust Bowl" of the 1930s was the coincidence of a periodic drought with a decade of zealous overplowing as tractors came broadly into use. The diminishing returns of mechanized plowing were not understood until a catastrophe had been set in motion. The human race had no prior experience with tractors." - James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century (Get the book.)

"Deciduous trees, which drop their leaves each year, strongly mineralize the topsoil. The cooking of food is by far the biggest waste of resources on planet Earth. Viktoras Kulvinskas, in his classic book Survival Into The 21st Century, reports that cooking destroys 85% of the value of food. When I first realized this, I was staggered. But I did not understand the full implication of this fact. You see, if 85% of the food value is destroyed in cooking, then, also destroyed, is 85% of the time, labor, resources and energy that went into creating the foods." - David Wolfe, The Sunfood Diet Success System (Get the book.)

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