~Circulation loop around the soil and agriculture/environment~

Crops absorb all of its elements from the soil, except for carbon which is taken in from the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Therefore elements that people ingest also come from components of the soil. Lives and health of people are maintained by eating healthy crops that grew on good soil. And both plants and animals go back to the soil when they die, through workings of soil organisms. Many lives on the earth are active in the circulation loop around the soil. However, the modern civilization has brought about global scale environmental destruction; activities of human beings are harming the agricultural lands and soils that nurture life, and deteriorating water and air environments. For human beings to continue benefiting from rich blessings of the nature, the circulation loop around the soil must be maintained in a sound state. In order to carry out education and research that would be the foundation of this, soils are scienced from physical perspective, and researches such as one about maintenance of soil environment beneficial to crop growth or about soil/water/atmosphere environmental measures are carried out at Soil Conservation Laboratory.