SOIL is really incredible stuff – it must be to produce all the food that keeps nearly eight billion of us alive. We should wonder in awe that it can also provide nutrition for a cabbage, a chrysanthemum and a cedar tree, while at the same time grow the food for nearly four billion grass eating domestic animals.

As a mixture of minerals, decaying vegetation, water and organisms without number it supports life and so is as important as the oxygen we breathe. As it is half solids and half space water and air can penetrate, and it's second only to the atmosphere in the amount of CO2 it contains.

Just one gram of soil contains billions of microscopic organisms belonging to thousands of species, and plant roots play an important role in maintaining this hidden world. They are far more extensive than we imagine and the complete root system of one rye plant, hairs and all, would be about 400 miles long stretched out, with a surface area of 600 square metres.

So mature soils are the most abundant life zone on the planet, with microscopic organisms and the larger ants, termites and particularly earthworms, up to two million of the latter per acre of fertile land, heavier than the livestock grazing above them.

It's clearly a bit more than just dirt under our feet and we should really value the whole complex of living matter and minerals that we ignore, mistreat and take for granted. It keeps us alive, and the word 'soil' needs reclaiming from its association with spoiling something.

Most of the world's soil is young, formed after the recent Ice Age, so it's less than 20,000 years old, and much is considerably younger. It takes it's initial character from the underlying rock type, so sandstone, limestone and clay can all determine the initial colour, texture and drainage of the young soil, and whether it's acid or alkaline.

However, given time, the climate, the drainage and particularly the life forms and added vegetable debris will change the original sterile material to a living, thriving medium that we should care for more than we do.

We should keep it as natural as possible, with a high organic vegetation content so that it holds water, and restricts flooding. A continuous vegetation cover means it lasts longer and is not washed or blown away, and much of modern arable farming, with ploughing, and just the use of chemical fertilisers, degrades the land, reduces its fertility, and releases CO2 to the atmosphere.

If we stopped wasting food, and significantly reduced our meat eating, we would be able to farm organically and protect both the soils and our future.