[MUSIC] My name is Matias Leopold. I'm originally from Germany, and I'm working now for the University of Western Australia in the context of soil science, geomorphology and landscape evolution. Which also connects me with the future farm projects with the topic of soils. Farming has been a part of human for more than 10,000 years. Many things have changed during this time and humans first started to grow crops. We have developed new plant varieties. We apply organic or artificial fertilizers and we use mechanical aids and innovations such as remote sensing techniques. To help modernize modern agriculture, to produce large parts of our daily food. What hasn't changed much in the past 10,000 years is the place where we grow our crops. The vast majority is still produced in terrestrial soils. So the survival of mankind actually relies on soils, just as it relies on water. The world population is rising more and more which means we need to grow more crops in soil. Have you ever asked yourself, how does soil free farm got there in the first place? What is required to form a soil and can we take it for granted? Or are soils under threat? To start answering these questions we first have to have a look at where we can find agricultural soils in the world. Here you see a map of the world where the intensity of the blue color highlights the percentage of arable land compared to the overall land area in this country. Nearly everywhere in the world we find areas or soils which are agriculturally used for crops. And it seems as some countries do better than others. France, for example, using 33% of their land for crops. Whereas, the US only uses 16%, China 11%, and countries like Canada, or Brazil, or Russia, even below 10%. So is this the solution for the big challenge we face in the near future with the prognosis of a rising world population? Isn't it obvious? We simply increase the arable land and grow more crops. Well, unfortunately, it's not that easy. And to understand why, we have to take a closer look at soils and their abilities, as well as their functions in the ecosystem. So what is the soil? Well, first, it is product of nature that has developed over time. And if you would take a soil profile you quickly discover that the soil is not only the small bit you can see on the surface it can have diverse colors and structures with depth and we call these all together a soil. The famous Russian soil scientist Dokuchaev describes soil in a very simple formula which is S = the functions of (SPM, C, R, O, T, and HI). So soil is the function of soil forming factors which change from place to place on the globe such as the factor of soil parent material. Which is the inorganic minerals, the weathering products from a granite, or a volcanic rock, or a limestone, or the local sediments. The factor of the local climate. Whether you're in the tundra, the midlatitudes, the dry savannahs, or the rainforest. There is the salt forming factor of topography of a landscape. Whether you have a soil on a steep mountain face or a flat lowland. Also the variation in organisms which are often closely linked to climatic changes. And the time, the factor of time with certain processes like weathering of rocks could take place. And more and more important, the factor of human impact. If you build a house and a road and seal the surface with the soil below, it is useless for agriculture. A simplified, but maybe better understandable way of describing soils is to look at where they sit within the ecosystem. So the Earth ecosystem is an interaction of several spheres, such as the biosphere. So all the living plants and animals and bacteria. The lithosphere, which are the inorganic components such as the rocks and sediments. The atmosphere with the gasses and mainly rainwater together with the energy fluxes Such as temperature or solar radiation. And last but not least, the hydrosphere with the water and lakes and streams and most important is groundwater in soils and sediment. The area where all spheres interact is defined as the critical zone or the zone that sustains life on earth. The pedosphere or the soil zone is located in the center of the critical zone. It is extremely thin compared to the dimensions of the earth and the atmosphere, which is only about 1 to 2 meter thickness. In other words, our soils are extremely thin and thus extremely vulnerable. Its lower boundaries fall by loose sediments or hard rocks and its upper boundaries form by the vegetation and the atmosphere. It forms over a long period of time, hundreds to thousands of years. Once lost or destroyed it won't come back by natural processes during your lifetime. Here you see a variety of different soils from different regions in the world. The different colors are an expression of the different soil forming factors that led to this pattern. The physical, chemical and biological properties vary enormously in soils. Remember, not every soil is suitable for cropping. Arable soils are limited on Earth. Within the future farm concept, it asks us for intelligent management decisions now in order to provide sustainable functions for soils in the future. We want to provide optimal bulk densities for example for our crops. Increased the water storage capacity, the nutrient availability. Increase and manipulate in a beneficial sense the carbon storage abilities. And last but not least, we want to provide healthy soil biology for our crops. On the right hand side, you see a couple of different soil property maps of the UWA future farm invest in Australia. These maps show the difference in clay contents, bulk density, pH values, or carbon contents. You can see just by the color variation that there are differences. Because of this natural variability, we need to use and treat these areas differently to sustain the productivity of our soils. Remember, soil is the place where agriculture, and thus food production, starts. We cannot afford to lose our soils, because remember, soils are part of the critical zone upon which humanity utterly depends. [MUSIC]