Facts About Dirt

Even a spoonful of soil supports a serious number of living organisms:

• In one gram of soil, 5,000 to 7,000 different species of bacteria can be found.
• In one acre, a five to ten tons of animal life are thriving. 
• The average quarter acre lawn supports 50 to 250earthworms.

Soil is a non-renewable resource. It takes nature more than 500 yearsto create 1 inch of topsoil.

• First rocks are weathered down. 
• Then microorganisms in the soil break down the organic matter in soil.

This non-renewable resource is threatened by over-farming and pesticide use.

• The off-site costs of soil erosion in the U.S. have been estimated at up to $20 billion a year, with more than one-third of this blamed on agriculture. 
• U.S. cropland loses at least three billion tons of topsoil every year, making agriculture the single largest non-point polluter.
• Farmers use around 300 different types of pesticides on food we find our grocery stores today; a significant amount of these end up in our soil.
• Contaminated soil cannot as effectively remove carbon from the atmosphere, produce the food we need, keep our groundwater clean and sustain the food chain that is dependent on it.

Most Americans don’t know we can use our own food waste to make our backyard soil richer:

• More than half of the trash a family throws away every year, about 1,200 pounds, is organic matter that could be composted into fertile soil.