If we want to save soil we need to get viral!

February 3, 2011

My last blog was trying to get you to sign up for some of the Soil Association’s great causes at http://www.soilassociation.org/Takeaction/Supportourcampaigns/tabid/943/Default.aspx – how many of you did? Very few I suspect! If we’re serious about saving our soil we need to get viral!

Recently Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall set up @hughfishfight a Twitter account dedicated to: bringing to an end the practice of throwing back dead fish caught outside of EU quotas – ‘Every day far out at sea half the fish caught in the North Sea are being thrown back dead. They call it discard. Join the discard protest at www.fishfight.net’.

I recognise Hugh is a bit of a TV personality and yes, Channel 4 did dedicate, commission and show several television programmes on the subject but today (2nd February 2011) more than 634, 650 people have signed up to the campaign, celebrities like Jeremy Paxman, Ricky Gervais and Steven Fry has put their name to it, 205,066 people like Hugh’s Fish Fight on Facebook and Zac Goldsmith MP has raised the issue of Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) reform at Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons with Prime Minister David Cameron responding: “The current regime of discarding fish is not acceptable and needs to change”. All this has been achieved since the beginning of 2011.
This is a truly worthwhile cause – but so are so many associated with soil, water and groundwater – subjects close to our hearts. So if we’re serious about making a difference lets start now.

Follow us on Twitter at @vanwalt – and let’s get viral about our passions!