Taking Action at Home
So how can you take action at home? Well, you can do these things:
- Perform VSA's in your garden
- Using your VSA results, use the effective fertiliser that your garden needs to improve the soil quality
- If you're a student, you can perform VSA's in the school grounds with permission
- Perform VSA's at the local park
- Perform VSA's in your garden
- Using your VSA results, use the effective fertiliser that your garden needs to improve the soil quality
- If you're a student, you can perform VSA's in the school grounds with permission
- Perform VSA's at the local park
Consequences
There are consequences of testing and improving the quality of soil in your home and garden, but these are minor compared to the results and rewards you will gain by doing this.
By completing VSA's, yes, you will be digging up a hole in your lawn but the soil and turf does grow back and looks as good as new, as you can see in our before and after photos in our gallery. Doing a VSA may take some time (as we have experienced!) and tending to your soil will cost money, but we guarantee it will be better in the long run. As you may have read on our info page, soil is important for a sustainable world for a variety of reasons. Environmentally, it makes a big impact as soil is what plants grow in- which provides us with oxygen and we use land resources to produce food. NZ's dairy industry is also very dominant and our cows, which provides us milk, feed on grass. As you see, it is all part of a cycle, as someone mentioned at our Gala. Economically, healthy soil is important. Some, if not most, of our exported goods do come from some form of plant or natural beginning like food and milk. If our soil quality is low, the impacts will show in our products which means that quality is reduced as well. Quality is what the selling price depends on so the better the soil, the better our exports so the more money we earn. Soil does play a role in society as well. We humans need our nutrition and what provides us with the nutrients we need for our bodies? Food. Healthy soil means the crops we are producing will be better so what we're getting will be healthier. If the soil is poor, crops will not be the best they can and our bodies won't be able to function properly. As you can now see, the consequences are insignificant compared to the benefits of improving our soil.
By completing VSA's, yes, you will be digging up a hole in your lawn but the soil and turf does grow back and looks as good as new, as you can see in our before and after photos in our gallery. Doing a VSA may take some time (as we have experienced!) and tending to your soil will cost money, but we guarantee it will be better in the long run. As you may have read on our info page, soil is important for a sustainable world for a variety of reasons. Environmentally, it makes a big impact as soil is what plants grow in- which provides us with oxygen and we use land resources to produce food. NZ's dairy industry is also very dominant and our cows, which provides us milk, feed on grass. As you see, it is all part of a cycle, as someone mentioned at our Gala. Economically, healthy soil is important. Some, if not most, of our exported goods do come from some form of plant or natural beginning like food and milk. If our soil quality is low, the impacts will show in our products which means that quality is reduced as well. Quality is what the selling price depends on so the better the soil, the better our exports so the more money we earn. Soil does play a role in society as well. We humans need our nutrition and what provides us with the nutrients we need for our bodies? Food. Healthy soil means the crops we are producing will be better so what we're getting will be healthier. If the soil is poor, crops will not be the best they can and our bodies won't be able to function properly. As you can now see, the consequences are insignificant compared to the benefits of improving our soil.
The Bigger Picture
If you want to contribute more to the sustainability of New Zealand's soil, you can donate to the link provided below: