Taken from a sadhguru's article (I left out the rest because it was mostly unnecessary).

Why Do We Need to Save the Soil?

Sadhguru: Eighty-seven percent of life forms on this planet – microbes, worms, insects, birds, animals, human beings, plants, trees and every other vegetation on the planet is sustained by an average of thirty-nine inches of topsoil. And that is in grave danger right now. In the last forty years, forty percent of the world’s topsoil has been lost. The United Nations says we have soil left only for approximately eighty to hundred harvests, which means another forty-five to sixty years of agriculture. After that, we will not have the soil to produce food. You can imagine the suffering that we will unfold in the world. Thirty percent of India’s land is already degraded, and 90% of India’s states are seeing soil turn to desert. That means nothing can be cultivated there. So, protecting the soil for the future generations of this land is the most important thing.

How Can Soil Revitalization Help the Environment?
I was speaking at one of the UN agencies in Germany, and they asked me, “What are the three things we need to do to prevent an ecological disaster?” I said, “The three things are, ‘Soil, Soil, and Soil.’” This is something that is not being looked at because it is fashionable in the cities to talk about air pollution. I am not saying it is not a concern, but if you take the necessary actions to fix the soil, that action will take care of water also. Air pollution can be fixed in a short time if we are willing to sacrifice our economic exuberance a little. But if you want to fix the soil that you have destroyed, it will take 15-25 years if you go at it aggressively. If you do it without much interest, it will take 40-50 years before you can get the soil to a certain level.

If the soil is in a bad condition for that long, that means two to three generations will go through terrible states of life.
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Through practices from the last century, with artificial fertilizer, the soil has been depleted of nutrients. The artificial fertilizer only supplied the macros that were needed for growth, not the micronutrients, the minerals.

Even if a soil that has been used for monoculture is turned over into biological or organic farming ground, it'll still take to about 25 years before it is high quality soil.

Especially in the first years you'll have plagues to deal with. The practices (artificial fertilizer, round-up and other "crop protection measurements") have been harmful to the soil and shifted to those that have the best resistance, amongst whom more often than not, pests play a big part in.

Sadhguru does not seem to be aware of the details of this, and the article itself is not of great quality.
However, 45-60 years left of harvest left for the entire globe is not much.

The rest of the article is about agro-forestry. Having a diet thats mainly out of fruit instead of the 4 seasonal thing crop production.. This may make sense for India, but not for the rest of the world.

I posted it here anyway with some additional comment, for the newer members whom might not have heard of this before.

Thanks for posting.

If anyone owns land, or even just a yard and want to plant veggies, you can get the soil really good using this method:

1. Till it
2. Drop in a bunch of earthworms and plant either alfalfa or red clover (in the spring)
3. In late autumn, till it again

The red clover/alfalfa (and earthworms when they die) decompose, making the soil fertile. You can do it again 2 years in a row if needed. You can find more detailed instructions online but this was the gist of it.

This is true. When I was a child, I dug a big hole in my parents' backyard for fun. It was about a yard deep, well below the topsoil. After I filled it in, there was still a small pile of the dirt from a yard down, and it would not grow ANYTHING. For many years, the grasses sprouted up everywhere except for that sterile dirt. Finally, after about 10 years, I can't tell where it was anymore. If it had been a larger area, I can certainly see it taking 15-25 years.

However, the world could still grow some food hydroponically, but I've heard that it's less nutritious.

Lunar Dance 666 said:

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One of my pet peeves is how people say or mention that the introduction of artificial fertilizers "saved" millions of lives when in reality all it did was lead to an overpopulation boom.

Not sure exactly how we are supposed to deal with that. For some populations who have decreased from before, are they in need of some growth to allow for old souls to incarnate? Therefore, do we have to cap the birth rate of some populations, while encouraging others to grow (to a set point)? Just another headache to deal with.

Recently i looked into this myself as well, and it is as you say, artificial fertilizer has killed the soil. Not only did it deprive the soil of nutrition's, it has also killed off the bacteria and fungi that healthy plants need to thrive.

There are bacteria and fungi that leech off of the plants by rooting themselves into the roots of the plants, these bacteria and fungi do take nutrition's from the earth and supply it to the plants, making the reach of the root system expand substantially. This in turn makes it so that the nutrition's and water that the plants could not access by itself, is now accessible.

Even tough it is concerning how the earth has been attacked by artificial fertilizer, i don't think its something to be concerned about in the slightest, nature is not a force to be re-conned with.

SSinHeartandSoul said:

Recently i looked into this myself as well, and it is as you say, artificial fertilizer has killed the soil. Not only did it deprive the soil of nutrition's, it has also killed off the bacteria and fungi that healthy plants need to thrive.

There are bacteria and fungi that leech off of the plants by rooting themselves into the roots of the plants, these bacteria and fungi do take nutrition's from the earth and supply it to the plants, making the reach of the root system expand substantially. This in turn makes it so that the nutrition's and water that the plants could not access by itself, is now accessible.

Even tough it is concerning how the earth has been attacked by artificial fertilizer, i don't think its something to be concerned about in the slightest, nature is not a force to be re-conned with.

Click to expand...

Deserts tell a different story. They're an ever expanding thing. Some people have started up projects in an attempt to regreen the desert. Left by itself this process would never happen.

Lydia said:

Thanks for posting.

If anyone owns land, or even just a yard and want to plant veggies, you can get the soil really good using this method:

1. Till it
2. Drop in a bunch of earthworms and plant either alfalfa or red clover (in the spring)
3. In late autumn, till it again

The red clover/alfalfa (and earthworms when they die) decompose, making the soil fertile. You can do it again 2 years in a row if needed. You can find more detailed instructions online but this was the gist of it.

Click to expand...

When you are starting to get soil out of a near dead state you won't be able to grow vegetables on them. Vegetables (most of them anyway) need a lot of support and nutrition which has to be already present in the soil.

One of the places I have been to before had some kind of poor growing sand like soil on it. I was told that they started out with growing spurrie on the soil. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spergula_arvensis

Then a year later or so they started out with a few other plants, herbs mostly. Herbs do not need as much nutrients that vegetables need.

They had to build up the soil from scratch. But by the time I visited, it already looked like a green oasis.

Here also sympythum off is used as an improver of the soil (herba).

There are also solutions one can buy that do contain bacteria etc. Like probiotics for the soil.

https://www.microferm.co.uk/about-us/

Blitzkreig said:

Lunar Dance 666 said:

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Click to expand...

One of my pet peeves is how people say or mention that the introduction of artificial fertilizers "saved" millions of lives when in reality all it did was lead to an overpopulation boom.

Not sure exactly how we are supposed to deal with that. For some populations who have decreased from before, are they in need of some growth to allow for old souls to incarnate? Therefore, do we have to cap the birth rate of some populations, while encouraging others to grow (to a set point)? Just another headache to deal with.

Click to expand...

So far I understood, that as more people reach godhood a population will keep growing.

I think that first and foremost responsibility should be taught rather than restriction.
As for the overcrowding we have today.. I think we should save that discussion for later into this war.