The Issue Of Deforestation And Soil Erosion In The Film “Dirt! The Movie”
The earth is in a way alive, it breathes and over time has formed a habitat for us human to thrive in. In the Film Dirt “The Movie” the outermost layer of the earth, the crust, is explored providing various messages as to why the soil is such an important asset to our lives. Using live footage and presenting us with various experts the film demonstrates how the soil is the foundation to life. It also explores many of the intimate connections both in organic and spiritual terms that soil has.
Dirt is part of our outer layer meaning all life forms such as vegetation depend of the nourishing soil it provides. Within the film we come to understand that in a small chunk of earth we can find more biological information, DNA, than the number of life forms inhabiting it. This small handful of soil contains billions of micro organism that share the building blocks of to our own blue plan. An important message sent to the audience is that as we take the soil for our own purpose we should also give back. Through the film this main idea is expressed yet we are presented with many of the ways we mistreat the earth’s crust. Every year we mine with explosives in search of expensive material, cut trees in large amounts and cutilize pesticides and fertilizers that ruin the soil over periods of time.
It seems as if human are more like a virus than a living species in this planet. If this type of treatment continues we would ruining the planet by killing the soil which will simply lead to environmental degradation. If our environment suffers so will the human population, this is true for developing countries. Due to deforestation and soil erosion land becomes like a desert, food becomes scarce and poor people feel the impact of impoverishment. In the film it states that industrial means and globalization not only speeds the degradation of soil but leaves farmers in bankruptcy because they can’t keep up. In Indian alone there is almost 200, 000 suicides because farmers can’t afford to farm anymore.
Following its conclusion the films gives us many examples of how to improve this situations. Many schools are making green choices prompting generations to see the importance of agriculture and helping the environment. An institute makes inmates provide and care for a garden allowing them to rethink their purpose in life.
In conclusion the film teaches us that change needs to be done, if we don’t make changes in this world we will die with it. The need to ravage land and soil in search of luxury and wealth is simply digging for our own graves, using cheap means for agriculture is poisoning the future generations and working to improve our world is building a better future.
