Don't treat soil disease how can we take a bite of food safety

Holding the bowl dare not to eat

“Soil is very important for human survival and development, not only related to food security, but also the whole ecological environment,” said Prof. Zhou Jianmin, President of Nanjing Branch of Chinese Academy of Sciences. Soil is directly related to sustainable human development, 2015 has been declared the International Year of Soils by the 68th UN General Assembly . The IYS aims to be a platform for raising awareness of the importance of soils for food security and essential eco-system functions.

Aimed at soil pollution, Prof. Zhou suggests that relevant departments should develop more rational evaluation criteria and do a scientific treatment, in order to solve the "soil disease."

Talking about soil pollution, Prof. Zhou care-laden said: "I think the biggest problem is the pollution data is unclear, in our country how many soil have been polluted? What about pollution levels? These problems are not very clear". He has been advocating for the 3rd national soil survey because recent 30 years is the period of biggest soil change, but not very detailed data.

In addition to natural factors the aggravation of soil pollution is caused by unscientific development.

Prof. Zhou said that now there is a widespread misconception, the public is generally thinking that using organic fertilizer produced food is healthy. In fact, it depends. We should mainly look at the source of organic fertilizer. At present animal feed ingredient is very complicated in our country, and some even contain heavy metals, hormones, antibiotics, etc. Therefore harm caused by the blind use of organic fertilizers sometimes even greater than chemical fertilizers.

(Information source: Nanjing branch of CAS)