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Comment by mettamage | Hacker News Reader

I just talked to someone who is pretty knowledgeable about issues regarding:

Global warming

Too few trees reuptaking water

Top soil being depleted

He said that top soil being depleted is arguably the worst problem of the three. So I simply looked up the first recent article about it and submitted it.

I have never heard of this issue and I suspect many of you haven’t either.

Disclaimer: the person I talked to has a startup that replants trees in very innovative ways (by using robotics and by employing techniques so that plants can uptake water way deeper from the ground than normally). I am not affiliated with him, I simply met him at a dinner party.

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I'm certainly no expert, but topsoil depletion scares more than any other environmental problem - it can take a few centuries to replace an inch. Even in the absence of climate change we'd be heading for trouble but increasing temperatures are only going to increase the rate of depletion.

I am no expert either, but you can make compost pretty easily in far less time. Its good for growing plants.

Could composting on a large scale be a solution?

No, compost is just organic material. Good top soil has <10%-20% organics by volume. Also, since the organics in compost will break down over time, they will need to be re-applied. Sand and clay are needed for structure and minerals.

This isn't really new. Top soil in cut down rain forests barely lasts two years of harvest.

Hey thanks for posting this, can you link that persons startup as well? It sounds interesting.

One starup he has is called the Land Life Company, I made a submission out of it since I think it's really cool [1].

The other one is called Sensoterra [2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20421771 -- "Our mission is to reforest the world's 2 billion hectares of degraded land" (apologies if you just want the link immediately)

[2] https://www.sensoterra.com/ -- "Wireless soil moisture sensors: make better irrigation decisions for increased yield, with smart soil moisture measurements"

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