A LONE MAN is riding a motorbike from London to India on a mission to save one of the natural resources that are tightly knit with climate mitigation – soil. He is not an environmentalist nor an activist. He is probably the coolest spiritual leader in the current age. Fondly known as Sadhguru, Jaggi Vasudev embarked on the “Save Soil” campaign because he sees the urgent need to restore organic content in soil to bring this media to its healthy state.
Severe desertification is crippling farms across the globe and farmers are feeling the pressure to change their agricultural practices or leave their profession. Desertification is accepted by United Nations (UN) as one of the most pressing environmental issues that need urgent attention. Failing to restore soil health will lead to food shortages, volatility, and increases in food prices that eventually will affect public health and political stability.
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Sadhguru’s campaign is in line with SDG 15 which calls to protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss. The question now is – do his messages and information align with evidence-based science communication?
While the intention is noble, so much misinformation is spread throughout the campaign. Sadhguru’s Conscious Planet website claims that today’s fruits and vegetables contain 90% fewer nutrients. In a Facebook video, Sadhguru says, “The nutrients one orange offered in the 1930s is equivalent to what we get from eight oranges today.” In the same video, he quotes World Food Programme saying the number of famines is very high in many parts of Africa. If the lay public starts to put these two messages together, it will defect the very purpose of the campaign.
Imagine if the wealthy now start to eat more oranges, leaving the poor with less food. Messages like these raises so much furore, and the sad part is they are not even science-based. Reduced nutrients in crops over years have been disputed by scientists. A paper published in the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis in March 2017 states, “Comparison of food composition data published decades apart are not reliable. Over time changes in data sources, crop varieties, geographical origin, ripeness, sample size, sampling methods, laboratory analysis, and statistical treatment affect reported nutrient level.”
The paper further states, “Comparisons with matching archived soil samples show soil mineral content has not declined in locations cultivated intensively with various fertiliser treatments.” It also says that all changes in nutrition are within natural variation ranges and are not nutritionally significant.
Organic farming is also seen by many as a practice that will reduce soil and environmental erosion. When contacted, a well-known professor of genetics and genomics and Dean of College of Art and Science at Tuskegee University, USA, Prof Dr Channa Prakash says, “If the whole world went organic, we would be producing only 20-25% of the food”.
While there have been many environmental campaigns to address impending global challenges to mitigate climate change, Sadhguru’s Save Soil Movement has been striking a chord with millions of global citizens. This is probably because he uses his motorbike ride and music to connect with people from all walks of life.
Sadhguru, who is based in South India is no ordinary man. He is a Yoga master and a spiritual leader and perhaps a rare one who has 7.6 million followers on his Instagram. His Conscious Planet global movement seeks to bring a concerted and conscious response to mitigate soil extinction and has 112,000 Instagram followers.
This huge campaign and machinery do help to create awareness on soil health but it is deploying scare-mongering tactics which could have been avoided.[/ihc-hide-content]
