Common as dirt is our most precious bank about to go bust?

Matt Fortnam in the Department of Earth Sciences talks to Professor Vala Ragnarsdottir, co-ordinator of the European SoilCritZone project, about the importance of soil, and draws comparisons between the global financial crash and the impending global soil crisis. Fertile soil can be regarded as capital. Not the capital familiar to economists and stockbrokers, but something much more important. If soil is capital, then the trees, crops and wildlife that come from this soil are the profits which society depends upon for food and wealth ? for its very existence. To yield higher profits, we need to protect and build our capital. In the past 30 years, industrial agriculture has increased demand on the Earth's soil to such an extent that its capacity for renewal is being exceeded by one hundred times or more. In other words, we are consuming capital as if it were income.