DIRT THE MOVIE

DIRT THE MOVIE REFLECTION

In class we watched a very interesting documentary about soil. The movie talked about how soil is essential to us and how we recently have been wasting and destroying it. Soil is essential to us because soil provides us with nutrients to grow plants. Plants produce oxygen and oxygen is one of the necessities of life. If there were no soil there would probably be no life on Earth. For a long time we have been relying on plants and trees to get food. So even if there is a steady oxygen supply we would still die out because of starvation. Soil also provides us with a layer that is easy to live on. In other words, underneath soil is mostly rock, and sand and plants cannot grow on these materials only. Soil also provides us with water and nutrients. If there were no soil we would not have anything to drink. Our bodies need certain nutrients that the soil provides us. Humans also have been using soil to build shelters. Since there is so much soil it is easy to dig out and build a small structure out of it. Now only poor people usually build their houses out of dirt or clay.

The movie also talked about how we have not been using dirt properly. When we mine we want to get valuable resources like coal and metals. But most miners throw away all of the soil. This is dangerous for several reasons. The first reason is that all of the dirt and soil they dug up is thrown away while you could use it for farming. A second reason is that since you dug up all of that dirt without replacing it, it could have an impact on the local ecosystem. Overuse of fertilizer over many years can actually harm certain plants, the air, and creatures. Farmers use a method in which airplanes spray fertilizers over a crop field. Usually this is too much fertilizer. The movie also talked about how we can help the environment. We can help by protesting and also start forming organizations that build dirt shelters for the poor. We can also use dirt in poor countries for other ingenious reasons like using it to fill in gaps in roads, building bases for falling trees, and making walls around farms to keep animals out or locked in a certain area.