Soil Pollution: A Hidden Threat to Food Security and Human Well-being
Hafeez Ur Rahim*
Key Laboratory of Industrial Ecology and Environmental Engineering (Ministry of Education), School of Environmental Science and Technology, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
Submission: June 01, 2020; Published: June 01, 2020
*Corresponding author: Hafeez Ur Rahim, Key Laboratory of Industrial Ecology and Environmental Engineering (Ministry of Education), School of Environmental Science and Technology, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
How to cite this article: Hafeez Ur R. Soil Pollution: A Hidden Threat to Food Security and Human Well-being. Agri Res & Tech: Open Access J. 2020; 24(3): 556272. DOI: 10.19080/ARTOAJ.2020.24.556272
Opinion
Agricultural soils, today, bears an increasing pressure for the production of sufficient food to feed the growing population around the globe. However, by 2050, the intensification would rise when the world sees the population of 10 billion getting multiplying further and farther, which will ultimately cause the problem of food security across the globe and more specifically in developing countries like Pakistan [1]. Soil is one of the most fundamental resources for agricultural production systems. Besides serving as the main medium for crop growth, soils sustain the productivity of plants and animals, maintain or enhance the quality of water and air, and support human health and habitation, within both natural and managed ecosystem boundaries [2]. In recent years, increasingly more soils are found to be contaminated with organic and inorganic toxins like (Heavy metals, Pesticides, PAHs, POPs, etc) globally due to waste emissions from industrial production, mining activities, waste (i.e., biosolids and manures) application, wastewater irrigation, and inadequate management of pesticides and chemicals in agricultural production [3,4].
As everyone knows, soil quality plays a pivotal role in agriculture productivity and environmental resilience [5] and hence, a key indicator to life-saving web; while on the contrary, soil quality is now seriously threatened by anthropogenic contamination, which may pose unacceptable ecological risks to biota and human beings that can lead to comparatively poor capacity of our agriculture lands. Thus, the socio-economic development will be hampered to such a great deal that the desire for prosperous and healthy future will remain a wish. The contamination of soil with heavy metals and organic pollutants has increasingly become a serious global environmental issue in recent years. Considerable efforts have been made to remediate contaminated soils. If the scientists succeed in the remediation of contaminated soils and increasing the yield potential of soils, it will lead to a significant contribution to future food security. For this reason, the prevention of soil pollution should be a top priority by the Governments and other stakeholders to facilitate agricultural research institutions, environmental protection agencies and more especially Master and Ph.D. students in universities to carry out long-term environmental and agricultural quality research combined with the importance of soil and human health. If the findings are used to support sound soil conservation and remediation policies that benefit both local food security, production and soil and human health health, then the studies will be profoundly worth supporting.
Conflict of interest
The author declared there is no conflict of interest.
References
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