Climate change and collapsing soil fertility

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limate change is the prime difficulty among a host of other challenges presently facing humanity.

And while we wrestle with the complexities of climate change, the other complications are unfolding almost as quickly.

Among them are energy shortage, the exponential population growth and, of course, the deterioration of the earth’s soils.

The latter has not gone unnoticed by the University of Melbourne’s Carlton Connect Initiative which is highlighting the problem, first with a seminar, “Dead Dirt” on Wednesday night and then with a special exhibition, curated by Dr Renee Beale known as “Dirty Secrets”.

Dirty Secrets uncovers the hidden curiosities buried in soil and encourages a deeper search for our connection to the land and its importance to our survival.

It was American novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer, who said: “The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.”