Save Soil - Living Record

On 21 March 2022, Sadhguru was flagged off at Trafalgar Square in London on a lone motorcycle journey planned for 100 days and 30,000 kilometres, through 27 nations, from the United Kingdom across Europe and the Middle East into India.[1] Conscious Planet’s impact report describes the ride as completed on that scale: 100 days, 30,000 km, 27 countries, from London to southern India, across Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, and India.[2]

The same London day, he unveiled the Conscious Planet movement to Save Soil, framed as an urgent effort to reverse and halt soil degradation.[1]

An Isha Foundation page dated 21 February 2022 says the public movement grew from a seed planted 24 years earlier. It states that in 1998, environmental agencies predicted that by 2025, 60 percent of Tamil Nadu would become a desert, and that what Sadhguru saw on the land was worse than that prediction.[3] The date this record uses for the launch of the movement itself is 21 March 2022.[1]

The Food and Agriculture Organization’s 2015 Status of the World’s Soil Resources said that 33 percent of land was moderately to highly degraded because of erosion, salinization, compaction, acidification, and chemical pollution of soils.[4]

On 26 April 2022, just before UNCCD COP15, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification released Global Land Outlook 2. It warned that up to 40 percent of the planet’s land is degraded, that this directly affects half of humanity, and that it puts at risk roughly half of global GDP, about US$44 trillion.[5] If business as usual continued through 2050, the report projected a further 16 million square kilometres of land showing continued degradation, an area it compared to the size of South America.[5]

FAO’s Status of the World’s Soil Resources 2026, launched on 27 August 2026 at UNCCD COP17 in Ulaanbaatar, says soils produce more than 95 percent of the food we eat.[6] Of the regional and subregional assessments reviewed, 58 percent report a deteriorating trend since 2015, and only around 10 percent report improvement.[6]

Save Soil was initiated by Sadhguru. The movement’s site describes him as a yogi, mystic, and visionary.[7] Conscious Planet’s about page says he has received the Padma Vibhushan and, in 2010, the Indira Gandhi Paryavaran Puraskar, which that page calls India’s highest environmental award.[8] The same page says his foundations are supported by over 16 million volunteers.[8]

The about page traces earlier ecological work that the movement presents as the path into Save Soil: Vanashree in the 1990s, a tree-planting drive in the Velliangiri Hills; Project GreenHands, a Tamil Nadu campaign in the first decade of the 2000s; Rally for Rivers in 2017, which the page says was supported by 162 million people in India; and Cauvery Calling, described there as hands-on work to restore soil and rivers.[8]

Conscious Planet describes its aim as a planet where ecological questions become election questions, and where governments are chosen with that in view.[8]

Save Soil’s site states the purpose in one line: unite people to stand up for soil health, and support leaders of all nations in policies that increase organic matter in agricultural soil.[7]

The 21 March 2022 launch statement set the scale of the ask: reach 3.5 billion people, which it called 60 percent of the world’s electorate, so governments would have a visible public mandate for soil policy.[1] The movement’s primary recommendation, restated at the launch of the journey’s impact account, is a minimum of 3-6 percent organic content in agricultural soil, set according to regional conditions.[2]

The about page lists three lines of work: turn the world’s attention to dying soil; inspire about 4 billion people, which it counts as 60 percent of a world electorate of 5.26 billion, to support policies that safeguard soil; and drive national policy in 193 nations so that organic content is raised and kept at a minimum of 3-6 percent.[8]

On 11 May 2022, during the motorcycle journey, Sadhguru addressed representatives of 197 nations at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UNCCD in Abidjan. The movement’s account of that address names one objective: a minimum of 3-6 percent organic content in agricultural soil.[9] Its site says that if governments act, the crisis can be turned, and that policy in every nation is what makes citizen support add up.[7]

At that Abidjan session he set out a three-part policy plan. The official site summarizes it as: incentivize farmers to increase organic matter; make carbon credits accessible to farmers; and give preferential marketing to produce grown in soil with higher organic matter.[7]

The 11 May 2022 text of the address is more specific.[9]

1. Make the 3-6 percent threshold something farmers want to reach, with incentives strong enough to start a race toward it. The address describes a phased program: inspiration first, incentives next, and later some disincentives.
2. Open carbon-credit incentives to farmers, and simplify a process the address calls too complex.
3. Create a mark for food grown in soil that has reached the 3-6 percent organic-content level, so that produce can be told apart by the soil it came from.

To help governments write those policies, the address said the movement was preparing a handbook of recommendations for each of 193 countries, with the detail kept at savesoil.org.[9]

These figures are the movement’s own accounting, from its impact report and launch papers. They are not an independent audit.

The impact report says Save Soil reached over 4 billion people, and that 81 nations have expressed a commitment to regenerate soil and are in the process of framing soil policies.[2] It counts 691 events and interviews by Sadhguru during the motorcycle journey, 8,970 media stories, and support from 1,150 companies.[2] It says around 3 million children in 63 countries wrote to their national leaders, including 1.5 million children in India who wrote to the Prime Minister.[2]

In the week before the London flag-off, six Caribbean nations signed memorandums of understanding with Conscious Planet.[1] The launch statement names Dr. Jane Goodall, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum among public supporters.[1]

The impact report says mayors of over 50 cities in North America, including New York City, Washington, D.C., and Edmonton, proclaimed 21 March as Save Soil Day, and that 50 iconic locations were lit for the movement.[2] On World Soil Day, 5 December 2022, it says 155 soil experts from 31 countries joined Sadhguru for a digital roundtable on policy.[2]

The same report says the government of Guyana will set aside 100 square kilometres and, with the Save Soil team, work with farmers toward 3-6 percent soil organic matter as a demonstration. It says Nepal’s ministries of environment and agriculture presented a letter of solidarity and pledged to plant 30,000 trees. It also says Save Soil was a Webby People’s Voice Winner in Social Media for Sustainability and Environment.[2]

The movement’s site states that the UNCCD partnered with Save Soil and invited Sadhguru to COP15, that the FAO welcomed the movement, and that UNEP’s Faith for Earth initiative partnered with it.[7] The impact report quotes Ibrahim Thiaw, then Executive Secretary of the UNCCD, saying the convention would collaborate.[2]

The movement says individual acts are not enough on their own. Its site asks people to back policies, in every nation, that safeguard soil and raise organic matter.[7]

Support goes through the official Save Soil site, not through Khard Hridaya Inc.

Save Soil - the official site

Masterpiece 005 is this house’s Save Soil sit seat: a round carpet that reproduces the Save Soil emblem, SAVE in white and SOIL in deep blue on a green disc, with a thin white ring and a deep blue rim. It is Khard Hridaya Inc’s own carpet, made in support of the movement. It is not a Conscious Planet or Isha Foundation product.

Special Edition

A gift. Carpet 005 is a one-of-a-kind Special Edition, handwoven and offered by Khard Hridaya Inc as a gift for Sadhguru's 70th birthday. It is not for sale.

Masterpiece 005 · Save Soil · Special Edition