Returning Life to the Soil: Civilizational Redemption in the Post-Goldilocks Era
title: "Returning Life to the Soil: Civilizational Redemption in the Post-Goldilocks Era" slug: "fanchunping-soil-life-redemption-2023.en" date: "2023-07-01" category: "ecology" author: "Fan Chunping" excerpt: "Soil is a living system. Industrialized agriculture has reduced soil to a mere medium, stripping it of its vitality. In the 'Post-Goldilocks Era,' returning life to the soil is the leverage point for saving civilization from its foundations."
Returning Life to the Soil: Civilizational Redemption in the Post-Goldilocks Era
Author: Fan Chunping (Senior Editor, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Beijing Institute of Technology)
First published in Guandong Academic Journal, Issue 4, 2023
[Abstract] Addressing the civilizational crisis signaled by the near-collapse of Earth's ecosystems, this article uses the metaphor of the "Post-Goldilocks Era," draws on solution frameworks proposed by international organizations and far-sighted individuals such as "nature-based solutions" and "soil strategy," and points out that healthy soil simultaneously performs functions including ensuring food safety, balancing ecosystems, and fixing fertilizers, water, and carbon. It can contribute to resolving a range of current crises from food security to global warming. It argues that soil, as a "living system," is the foundation of civilization, and that industrialized agriculture, by reducing soil to a mere "medium" and stripping it of its vitality, is the root of all that ails modern agriculture. The core problem of soil today is "deactivation" due to excessively low organic matter content. The article proposes "returning life to the soil" and "returning agriculture to agriculture," with organic farming and soil restoration as the leverage point for saving human civilization in the "Post-Goldilocks Era."
Introduction: The Goldilocks Metaphor
The word Goldilocks carries two meanings: a type of beautiful golden flowering plant, and a lovely golden-haired girl. The fairy tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears tells of Goldilocks losing her way and stumbling into the home of three bears, where she drinks the bowl of porridge that is "just right," sits in the chair that is "just right," and sleeps in the bed that is "just right." The story teaches young readers that between two extremes there always exists a "just right" condition, and that one must learn to discern and choose.
The Goldilocks story has been extended into different concepts across disciplines: "Goldilocks economy" describes an ideal economic state neither too hot nor too cold; the "Goldilocks problem" in cosmology asks why this universe is habitable; the habitable zone is called the "Goldilocks zone."
Following this logic, this article holds that the period from the end of World War II to the first decade of the 21st century essentially constituted a "Goldilocks economy." It can be called the "Goldilocks Era" of human society. The emergence of disruptive signs in the new century, especially over the past decade, marks the arrival of the "Post-Goldilocks Era."
I. The Post-Goldilocks Era: Where Does Civilization Go?
In recent years, the term "Year One" has appeared frequently—2010 was the "Year One of Cloud Computing," 2013 the "Year One of Big Data," 2016 the "Year One of Artificial Intelligence," 2021 the "Year One of the Metaverse." Human society has entered a period of accelerated economic development and exponential growth—accompanied, correspondingly, by the accelerating collapse of natural ecosystems.
Two representative views on the new era exist: one is the "era of intelligent civilization," which holds that the new era is an upgrade of industrial civilization and that technological progress alone can resolve all problems; the other is the "era of ecological civilization," which maintains that humanity is part of Earth's ecosystem and that industrial civilization must be replaced by ecological civilization.
This article argues that the new form of human civilization should be ecological civilization, and that the journey toward it will be fraught with difficulty and peril.
II. Redemption: Finding the Leverage Point in Civilization's Foundations
The deterioration of Earth's ecosystems has triggered one tipping point after another:
First, ecological overshoot. In 1970, the first Earth Overshoot Day fell on December 23; it has advanced earlier every year since, reaching July 28 by 2022.
Second, the biomass of human-raised livestock exceeds wild biomass. Humans and livestock outweigh wild mammals by a factor of more than 20; human activity over the past 10,000 years has reduced plant biomass by half.
Third, anthropogenic mass exceeds natural mass. In 2020, the mass of human-made objects surpassed total global biomass for the first time in history.
Fourth, climate tipping points are being activated one after another. Of 15 identified tipping points from a decade ago, 9 have already been activated, potentially triggering a climate system collapse.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned: "Our planet is near breaking point."
Multiple lines of research point in the same direction: soil. In 2020, Nature Communications published a joint commentary by 20 of the world's leading soil scientists, calling for a globally unified soil strategy to ensure climate stability and food security.
III. Returning Life to the Soil: Saving Civilization Through Organics
(A) Soil Is a Living System
Soil is alive—it is a "natural body." "A handful of soil may be home to thousands of species and billions of organisms." Healthy soil contains about 5% organic matter, which nourishes plants and sustains the circulation of air and water through its pore spaces.
Deactivated soil deteriorates into dust and sand, eventually leading to desertification.
(B) "Soil-as-Medium" Is the Root of All Agricultural Ills
In industrialized agriculture, humans cast themselves as the subjects of production and treat the soil as a mere medium for applying fertilizers and pesticides. This conception is the root of all that ails modern agriculture. Understanding the principles of hydroponics clarifies the harm of treating soil as a medium in industrialized agriculture—dead soil cannot produce safe food, nor can it retain water, fix fertilizers, or sequester carbon.
(C) Returning Agriculture to Agriculture
Through practical experimentation, Jiang Gaoming has developed a "Six Without" principle plus core technology: no pesticides, no chemical fertilizers, no herbicides, no plastic mulch, no synthetic hormones, and no genetically modified seeds. In practice, this has been shown not only to block the input of industrialized substances into the soil, thereby revitalizing the soil and protecting ecosystems, but also to yield more than conventional industrialized agriculture.
Organic farming produces four major effects: blocking pollution, increasing soil organic matter, ensuring food safety, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Conclusion
The damage caused by primitive agriculture to ecosystems fell within nature's self-regulating thresholds. Today, agriculture has no more room to shift and rotate.
The 1980 World Conservation Strategy contains a famous line:
"We have not inherited the Earth from our ancestors; we have borrowed it from our children."
Humanity, like Goldilocks, has wandered into the future generations' "cottage in the woods." Starting from organic farming, returning life to the soil, is one of the few remaining opportunities for civilizational redemption in the "Post-Goldilocks Era."
First published in Guandong Academic Journal, Issue 4, 2023