The world is a big place – but we are rapidly running out of room to grow our food, and we are using it in the wrong way.

For thousands of years, humans have shaped the earth on which we live. Land is where we grow food and graze animals. It is where we build our cities and roads, dig up minerals or chop down trees. It reflects our spiritual values; it is where we go to relax.

(Click to zoom) A selection of man-made problems: land scarcity and environmental damage endanger our food production. cc. Soil Atlas 2015

Land and how we use it has moulded history, politics and culture. In many Western countries, individual land ownership is associated with traditional values and social status. Lands were passed down by families from generation to generation. In socialist regimes, the nationalization of land was an expression of political power that reached a gruesome climax in the Soviet Union under Stalin, when millions were dispossessed and expelled from their farms. The structures that resulted from forced collectivization still shape the agricultural systems of much of Central and Eastern Europe.

The world has only so much land. Well into the 20th century, countries expanded their boundaries through war and colonial suppression. However, increasing liberalization and globalization of agricultural trade since the 1980s, have blurred the importance of a limited national territory. The era of the agricultural multinational firm has arrived. With branches around the globe and logistics that can handle millions of tonnes, the Big Four – Bunge, Cargill, Louis Dreyfus and ADM – shift bulk commodities from where they are grown to where they are processed and consumed. Land shortages can now be outsourced: land, the ultimate immobile resource, is now just another flexible factor of production.

The Green Revolution launched in the 1960s, ushered in the more intensive use of land in the tropics; high-yielding varieties, fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation pushed up crop yields. Fossil fuels compensated for a shortage of land. However, the limits reached by this type of non-sustainable agriculture were ignored. They came to light by the turn of the millennium, when the global ecological damage caused by industrial agriculture became evident. Now the limitation of land reveals itself again – this time from a global perspective. Demand is growing everywhere – for food, fodder and biofuels. Consumers are competing with each other. Cities and towns currently occupy only 1–2 percent of the world’s land. By 2050, they will cover 4–5 percent – an increase from 250 to 420 million hectares. Cropland has to give way; forests are being felled and grasslands ploughed up to compensate. Between 1961 and 2007, the arable surface of the world expanded by around 11 percent, or 150 million hectares. If demand for agricultural products continues to grow at the current rate, by 2050, we will need approximately an extra 320 to 850 million hectares. The lower figure corresponds to the size of India; the higher one, to the size of Brazil.

Growing demand for land heightens tensions among different groups of users. Land is an attractive investment: an increasingly scarce commodity that yields good returns. Worldwide it is the source of livelihood for more than 500 million smallholders, pastoralists and indigenous peoples. People identify with the land; for them it embodies cultural and even spiritual values. Especially in countries without social security systems, access to land is fundamental to survival. But individual and communal rights to land are increasingly under threat.

(Click to zoom) Football pitches reflect the gap between rich and poor. In a just and sustainable world, each of us would have to make do with 2,000 square metres. cc. Soil Atlas 2015

Rising demand also harms the ecosystem. A humane form of use – one that maintains the quality, diversity and fertility of a landscape – is all too rare. The more intensive the farming, the more damage it does to the environment. This is the main reason for the decline in biological diversity, above and below the ground. Every year, around 13 million hectares of forest are cleared; of the world’s primary forests, around 40 million hectares have disappeared since 2000. Fertile soils are ruined, deserts expand, and carbon that has been stored in the soil for millennia is released into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases.

Despite all these developments, the governments of developed countries still call for “green growth” – meaning replacing fossil fuels with biofuels. That is the inverse of the Green Revolution; now, intensive farming is supposed to replace petroleum. Such an intensive path towards growth disregards the goals of social justice, biodiversity and climate.

According to the United Nations Development Programme, if land use continues to increase, the world will already have reached the limits of ecologically sustainable land use by 2020. Global land use, mainly to benefit the European Union and the United States, cannot increase much more. With only 1.4 billion hectares of arable land at our disposal, each person will have to make do with just 2,000 square metres – less than one-third the size of a football pitch.

For more information please visit www.globalsoilweek.org/soilatlas-2015.

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Soil fertility depends on several factors: the soil age, its parent material, its organic matter content, the climate – and people.

It takes centuries – more likely thousands or even millions of years – to create soil. That is how long it takes for the surface rock to be weathered down to a depth of several metres. Only half of what we call soil consists of mineral particles such as sand and clay. Roughly 20 percent is water, and another 20 percent is air. The remaining five to ten percent are plant roots and soil organic matter such as living organisms and humus.

Soil organic matter gives the surface soil a dark, brownish black colour. This topsoil teems with life: in addition to earthworms, lice, spiders, mites, springtails and others, a handful of soil contains more microorganisms – bacteria, fungi and archaea – than there are humans on earth. These organisms decompose plant residues, turn them into humus, and distribute this fertility-giving substance throughout the soil.

(Click to zoom) Humus harbours many secrets. Only a fraction of the many species that live in it have been identified. cc. Soil Atlas 2015

Humus stores nutrients and water, and gives the soil a stable structure with many pores. It also contains carbon that plants originally absorbed from the air in the form of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. This makes soil one of the most important active carbon pools. The soil organic matter stores 1,500 billion tonnes of carbon, globally – this is almost three times more carbon than in all above ground biomass including trees, shrubs and grasses.

Soil is like cheese; the holes are just as important as the mass. The pores, or the voids between the solid mineral and organic particles, ensure that the soil is aerated, allowing roots and soil organisms to respire. Besides air, the pores may contain water, held there by adhesion and capillary forces. A cubic metre of soil may contain up to 200 litres of water, supplying the precious liquid to plants even though it may not have rained for a long time. The volume of pores in a soil depends on the size of the soil particles, the soil organic matter content, the presence of roots and the activity of soil organisms.

Earthworms are especially important; some of them burrow vertically down into the soil, allowing water to drain into the subsoil quickly during heavy rain. The subsoil contains less humus and fewer living organisms than the topsoil. It is lighter in colour, often yellow-ochre or reddish because of various iron compounds. A deep subsoil, that allows roots to penetrate and extract water even when the topsoil has run dry, is important for soil fertility.

Location often determines how much time was available for soil to form. In Central Europe during the Ice Ages, advancing and retreating glaciers wiped the slate clean by scraping off and churning up existing soils and depositing new sediments. The brown soils typical of the region are only about 10,000 years old – very young and little-weathered compared to most other soils. They often contain minerals that slowly release nutrients such as phosphorus and potassium into the soil. The red soils typical of the tropics, on the other hand, have undergone millions of years of weathering; many of their original minerals have been dissolved, transformed or washed out. Much of the phosphorus that has been mobilized is now firmly sorbed by iron and aluminum oxides and is thus unavailable to plants.

Soil properties depend in large part on its parent material. A rock that is rich in quartz will result in a light, coarse-grained and sandy soil that is well-aerated but stores relatively little water and nutrients. If the parent rock is rich in feldspar, the resulting fine particles will finally form a heavy soil, rich in clay. Such soils can store more nutrients and water, but are poorly aerated. They partially hold onto water so tightly that plant roots cannot absorb much of it. The best soils are neither sandy and light, nor heavy and rich in clay. Instead, they mostly contain medium sized particles called silt. Silt combines the advantages of both sand and clay: good aeration, along with the ability to store lots of water and nutrients.

Soils that are especially fertile are good for growing crops, while less-fertile soils are more suited for meadows, pastures and forest. For ecological reasons, even less fertile soils can be valuable. Peat soils are too wet for intensive farming, but store huge amounts of carbon. If the soil is used too intensively or in an inappropriate way, its functions decline and it starts to degrade. An estimated 20 to 25 percent of soils worldwide are already affected, and another 5 to 10 million hectares – about the size of Austria (8.4 million hectares) degrade each year. Arable land is particularly affected. But cultivation does not necessarily damage the soil: the floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates in Iraq, and the highlands of New Guinea, have soils that are still fertile despite being farmed for 7,000 years.

For more information please visit www.globalsoilweek.org/soilatlas-2015.

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But this resource upon which our lives depend is being stretched more and more to its limits. As the world population continues to grow, the amount of arable land available per person drops. Since 1960 this has more than halved. At present it is slightly more than 2 000 m², or about a third the size of a football field. At the same time, the heavy usage of the available land is leading to soil degradation. This means that the soil is losing its ability to support food production and to fulfill important ecological and climate functions. Once soil has been lost, it is essentially lost for good: it takes 1 000 years for a mere five cm of soil to form.

But we use the land not just for crops, but also for pasture and forests. Thus, when we eat meat or use paper, we are also always indirectly consuming land. We Europeans especially are using more land than we have a right to statistically—1.2 hectares per person annually. This is a global problem. And a very concrete problem that we must face in Germany as well.
The installation ONE HECTARE provides a glimpse into functions of the soil and how it is used worldwide. It sheds light on the dilemma of how to avoid overusing a limited resource, and it shows how we are nevertheless squandering large amounts of this resource. In addition, it asks how land may be distributed more equally and sketches some ways that this precious resource may be used more sustainably.

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Although the quantity of fertile soil is in fact quite limited, we generally pay little attention to this resource. And yet it is the basis for producing 90 per cent of our food, it cleans and stores water, and helps to reduce the effects of climate change.

But this resource upon which our lives depend is being stretched more and more to its limits. As the world population continues to grow, the amount of arable land available per person drops. Since 1960 this has more than halved. At present it is slightly more than 2 000 m², or about a third the size of a football field. At the same time, the heavy usage of the available land is leading to soil degradation. This means that the soil is losing its ability to support food production and to fulfill important ecological and climate functions. Once soil has been lost, it is essentially lost for good: it takes 1 000 years for a mere five cm of soil to form.

But we use the land not just for crops, but also for pasture and forests. Thus, when we eat meat or use paper, we are also always indirectly consuming land. Germans for example are using more land than we have a right to statistically—1.2 hectares per person annually. This is a global problem. And a very concrete problem that we must face in Germany as well.

The installation ONE HECTARE provides a glimpse into functions of the soil and how it is used worldwide. It sheds light on the dilemma of overuse and scarcity, and it shows how we are nevertheless squandering large amounts of this resource. In addition, it asks how land may be distributed more equally and sketches some ways that this precious resource may be used more sustainably.

Photo credit: CC IOM Haiti@Flickr.com

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The distribution of land around the world is very unequal. Smallholders in particular struggle to survive and feed themselves.

In many regions agricultural land is distributed very unequally. This is especially the case in many countries once under colonial rule, where the question of who has a legal right to the land, forests, and waters is often complex and unclear. Although many areas have been declared state property, actual land use is based on local, usually historical rules. As fertile land has become more highly sought after, by locals as well as international investors, conflicts have increased. Consequently, in recent years thousands of families have been forced to leave their land against their will—often without any compensation. In Germany, too, the lack of access to land is a problem for smaller farm operations. This is especially true in the former East German states.

At a global level, unequal access to land is particularly detrimental to the world’s 475 million smallholders whose harvests feed some 2 billion people. Securing rights to land is thus key to securing the livelihoods and food supply of rural populations. Protecting land tenure rights thus also reduces the exodus from rural areas, and with it the problem of the growth of slums and increasing poverty in big cities.

Politicians around the world have recognized the potential for conflict posed by increasingly scarce resources. Together with private and public organizations, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization approved the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT) in 2012. This was a milestone on the path to securing land tenure rights—particularly for disadvantaged and marginalized groups, which in many regions includes women.

Establishing a more just distribution of land and protecting the land rights of the rural population continue to be major challenges, however. Often this requires tackling existing power structures. Addressing this challenge is essential n order to improve the quality of life in rural areas and achieve global food security.

Photo credit: Soil Atlas 2015 (http://globalsoilweek.org/soilatlas-2015)

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One hectare of soil contains 15 tonnes of organisms—equivalent to the weight of 20 cows.

Directly under our feet is a living ecosystem that supports us and provides us and our planet with the nourishment that sustains us. The soil. It performs innumerable services for humans, animals, and the environment. The soil layer regulates and stores nutrients and water. It is thanks to the soil that we have clean drinking water; soil also forms the basis for the production of more than 95 per cent of our food supply.

The soil constitutes the second-largest carbon reservoir on the planet (surpassed only by the oceans); it plays a major role in regulating the global climate. But this is only possible with the help of billions of tiny assistants who make their homes in the soil. Taken together, the organisms in a hectare of land weigh as much as 20 cows: they include microorganisms, bacteria, spiders, beetles, and worms. Creatures that cause many of us to shudder when we see them thus in fact perform many functions that are crucial to ensuring our survival. Soil also plays a decisive role in preserving biodiversity.

Together, tiny creatures, plant roots, and humus make up about 7 per cent of the soil; the remainder consists of some 45 per cent mineral particles such as sand and clay, 25 per cent air, and 23 per cent water. Adequate air circulation and water supply are important to maintain the structure of the soil, to assist the activities of the soil-dwelling organisms, and ensure that the plant roots have sufficient access to oxygen. But the organisms in the soil are not the only ones who depend on it; directly or indirectly, many people also earn their livelihood from the soil.

If we are to achieve the goal of worldwide sustainable development, how we take care of the soil will be essential. We cannot afford to destroy the living surface of our planet by exhausting its capacity, burying it under asphalt, or allowing it to erode away.

Photo credit: Soil Atlas 2015 (http://globalsoilweek.org/soilatlas-2015)

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Every day in Germany more than 70 hectares of land are built over; globally the total is 2,880 hectares a day.

In 2007 for the first time in history more people lived in cities than in rural areas. In 2014, city-dwellers made up 54 per cent of the world population. By 2050 it will have increased to two-thirds.
Although there is a global trend towards urbanisation, there are still significant regional differences. In affluent countries up to 90 per cent of the population already lives in cities, but other regions are rapidly catching up: Latin America and the Caribbean are already highly urbanised (78 per cent), while Africa (38 per cent) and Asia (45 per cent) are still largely rural.

As cities grow, they bring myriad challenges for humans and the environment. Once fertile land is covered with structures or concrete, it is rarely ever returned to its previous state. Worldwide two hectares of land are lost to urbanisation every minute. With the land, many vital services performed by the soil are lost forever. Although Germany’s population is decreasing, every day some 70 hectares are developed for apartments, streets, and other infrastructure.

Soil that is covered with concrete is sealed and cannot absorb water any more. When large areas have been developed, heavy rain can easily lead to flooding. Soil also helps to regulate the local climate in cities. It has a cooling effect that helps to mitigate the urban “heat islands”. This function is becoming even more important due to climate change and the increase in extreme weather such as heat waves.
In many European cities there are already more than enough buildings to meet the needs of the population. By altering the ways we use existing structures and improving our transportation patterns, we can help to reduce the amount of fertile soil being sealed. The first steps towards this goal have already been taken. For example, today some rooftops are being used as to produce energy or food, to improve water absorption, or as a space for relaxation or sports activities.

Photo credit: CC Not A Cornfield@Flickr.com

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