1a. Importance of Soil
Since our childhood, everyone has been taught that the essentials of human life are food, water, and shelter. And definitely, food is really important for us to survive. But without soil, food can’t even be imagined. 95% of food production depends upon the soil, but people still tend to spoil it. Soil is called the “black gold” and now it is running out.
Soil is just a speck of dirt but a life without soil is also dirt.
Soil is a combination of minerals, air, water, arthropods, animals, and other living organisms that accumulate in layers and compact over time. Soil without life is dirt, a sterile substrate.
Soil is not only the source of food. It is also the second largest carbon repository next to the oceans and it acts as the world's natural water filter. Likewise, the importance of soil is bewildering. Healthy soil is important for agriculture. The nutrients from the soil are what the plants use to grow. The nutrients move from the soil to our food. When the soil is fertile enough, it will also help in increasing the yield rate.
The future of agriculture is becoming a question mark. Various farmers had given up on agriculture as a result of the various issues they face and they still don’t get a productive output. Unhealthy agricultural practices and a lack of adequate knowledge about land are the foremost reasons. The main focus of this chapter is realizing and identifying the soil’s importance and needs. Machine Learning is utilized in various domains and industries where people tend to handle large data. For example, Machine learning is used for credit scoring, fraud detection, algorithmic trading, and risk assessment, where large volumes of financial data are processed and analyzed. Machine learning techniques are employed to process and analyze data from IoT devices, such as sensor data, to derive insights and make predictions. Machine learning algorithms use historical data as input to predict new output values. Imagine a basic-level ML-based mechanism that takes soil tests regularly to establish the soil and understand what it's lacking, in addition, it also provides you with ways to spice up the soil. All the factors like nutrient level, acidity level, PH value, and condition are gathered. Metric volume units are a major tool for predicting the outcomes where ML can do it without being explicitly programmed to do so. Once farmers tend to understand what the soil desires, it's simple to revive it. A metric volume unit saves time. Framers must be able to distribute the specified nutrients among the sphere of victimization using drones and other different technologies.
The united states have already declared that the soil is finite and predicted a catastrophic loss within 60 years. Within this century, countries like the USA, China, and India will be barren of topsoil, if no step is taken. “There are places that have already lost all of their top soils,” Jo Handelsman, author of “A World Without Soil”. He has said that our past, present, and future are beneath our feet (Michele, 2022). An American fiction movie in 1995 called the water world talks about how people suffered without soil. Imagine a world without soil, no solid food, and no life.
According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification,” The impact of soil degradation could total $23 trillion in losses of food, ecosystem services and income worldwide by 2050”. “Soil is the habitat for over a quarter of the planet’s biodiversity. Each gram of soil contains millions of cells of bacteria and fungi that play a very important role in all ecosystem services,” Reza Afshar (Miller, 2022), chief scientist at the regenerative agriculture research farm at the Rodale Institute, told CNBC.