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Essay on Environment Example
Essay on Environment Example
Take a closer look at this essay about soil health. It explains how damaged soil affects our food, the planet, and the future, and why protecting it should be a bigger priority.
Oct 23, 2025
Essay Examples
3 min read
Table of contents
Created by the StudyAgent AI tool, this essay shows how a well-organized academic paper should look. It includes all the key parts: an introduction, main idea, body paragraphs, and a conclusion, to guide students in learning how to write clearly and effectively.
Why Healthy Soil Matters More Than We Think
When people discuss environmental disasters, they often point to something like melting ice caps, rising sea levels, or air pollution. Yet below our feet, a slower disaster is occurring. Soil degradation, which is the gradual loss of soil health caused by erosion, chemical waste, and deforestation, is slowly disassembling our ecosystems, agriculture, and climate initiatives. This essay will argue that soil degradation is an underreported environmental disaster that calls for urgent policy, education, and innovation to reverse it before it is too late.
Soil as the Base of All Life
Soil that is healthy is alive, made up of microorganisms, nutrients, and organic matter that sustain all terrestrial life. From crops to trees, whatever we rely on above ground starts below the ground. However, the United Nations reports that nearly 33% of the world's soils are degraded, meaning they are incapable of supporting healthy plant life. When soil dies, the food web above it begins to fall apart. Crops become less productive. Forests thin, and habitats disappear. Soil degradation is a foundation issue for life itself.
The Invisible Link to Climate Change
Soil is also one of the planet's greatest carbon sinks, storing three times more carbon than the atmosphere. However, when soil is degraded, whether through deforestation, over-farming, compaction, or drought, soil releases its stored carbon into the atmosphere, thus accelerating global warming and making soil degradation both a victim as well as a driver of climate change. In a strange twist, billions of dollars are allocated to carbon capture technology, regenerative agriculture, and reforestation; however, funding natural carbon solutions based in healthy soil is largely unfunded and underrepresented.
Short-Term Profit vs. Long-Term Survival
Industrial agriculture is one of the greatest contributors to soil degradation. When pesticides, mono cultures, and tilling are pushed for the single purpose of yield versus longer-term sustainability (i.e., profit), soil is the long-term loser. The damage to soil is even greater in developing countries, where poor land management and deforestation (primarily for cattle or cash crops like palm oil) exacerbate the situation. Fortunately, there are practical solutions, such as crop rotation, no-till farming, cover cropping, and composting: any or all of these could raise the level of soil health. As long as there are no global incentives to promote soil-friendly practices, the train wreck will just continue, quietly but surely.
Conclusion
The environment does not always yell when it is in trouble. Sometimes it whispers. Soil degradation is one of those whispers, and we often ignore them until the crops fail, the forests are logged, and the climate tilts. To save the planet, we must look down, quite literally. Soil restoration is an investment in food, carbon, water, and life. If we want land to grow in the future, then we need to work on the ground we're standing on.
