Why Sadhguru Risked His Life To Save Soil

When I told Sadhguru — the Indian yogi, mystic, and founder of Conscious Planet and the Isha Foundation — that I was from Barbados, his eyes lit up.

“My first pitch was in the Caribbean,” he said, leaning forward. “They were the first ones to sign the Save Soil proclamation.”

He began listing countries: “Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, Guyana, Barbados…” Then, almost as if recalling a fond memory, he added with a smile, “Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley. What a wonderful woman she is.”

For Sadhguru, it was no small thing that small island developing states with fragile soils and outsized vulnerability had been among the first to embrace his cause.

In early 2022, Caribbean nations signed memorandums of understanding to support the #SaveSoil movement, pledging to weave soil health into policy and technical frameworks.

Their commitment helped pave the way for the official launch of Save Soil’s 100-day journey, an audacious global campaign meant to jolt the world awake to the looming threat of soil extinction.

But even as he recounted these milestones, Sadhguru’s voice carried the impatience of someone who had spent decades sounding the same alarm, only to watch the world move too slowly.

“I’ve been talking about soil for over 30 years,” he shared. “I’ve spoken to farmers who’ve done small changes in what they’re doing. I’ve spoken to bureaucrats, scientists, and ministers around the world. I have spoken to various heads of state. Everybody, without exception, generally says, ‘This is fantastic. This is something that must happen. This is great.’ All superlatives. But it looks like they use my talk as a pillow to sleep well, because no action comes forth.”

Why Soil?

Despite being the foundation for nearly 90 percent of life on Earth, soil is not a glamorous cause. It does not evoke images of polar bears or burning forests. But scientists warn that topsoil around the world is disappearing at alarming rates.

Without enough organic content — at least 3% — soil loses the ability to grow crops. Maintaining healthy organic levels not only supports food production but also plays a vital role in climate change mitigation by locking atmospheric carbon in the ground, reducing greenhouse gases and boosting soil fertility and resilience.

Globally, average soil organic content falls short of the 3% threshold.

“The shame is that not a single country has an average of 3%,” Sadhguru said. “Look at Google Earth from 2003 and compare it to 2025. You will see the brown spreading. That brown means desertification.”

Soil is the overlooked foundation of food security, climate stability and human health. “If there is no good rich soil in the world, no matter how much money we have, how much wealth we have, our children will not live well, that’s guaranteed,” he said.

In India alone, over 100,000 farmers have committed suicide in the past 20 years, many driven to despair by poor yields from degraded land. Around the world, once-fertile plains are turning to desert.

United Nations agencies warn that by 2050, soil degradation and desertification could cost the world as much as $23 trillion in lost food production, ecosystem services and income.

Why Sadhguru Made the Decision to Ride

In March 2022, Sadhguru decided to force the issue. He began in London on a motorcycle bound for southern India, passing through Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East. The journey would cover 30,000 kilometers across 27 countries in 100 days. He was 65 years old.

“I decided that before it gets too late, I need to do something drastic.” he said. “So I said I’m going to ride. People thought initially, ‘Oh, Sadhguru is going to have a fun ride from London… By the twelfth day, when they saw me riding through snow, rain and sleet, they realized it could kill me.”

In Saudi Arabia, he rode headlong into a sandstorm; in the United Arab Emirates, the heat was so fierce he swore it scorched his eyeballs. At one point during his journey, he was coughing up sand. In Europe, he battled freezing temperatures, punishing winds, rain and snow. The hardships were so great that even some of his own volunteers begged him to turn back.

“They asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?’” he recalled. “And I told them, ‘I’ve been talking for 30 years. Now it’s time you take notice.’”

The gamble paid off. Over 100 days, he met with heads of state and everyday citizens, held nearly 700 events and brought the #SaveSoil campaign to more than 3.9 billion people worldwide.

The motorcycle journey was as much about building public awareness as it was about shaping policy. In each country, it unfolded through mass rallies, spontaneous roadside gatherings, interviews with local media and private meetings with political leaders.

In Côte d’Ivoire, at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, Sadhguru stood before delegates from 193 nations and outlined a three-pronged strategy to restore soils.

Borders, he emphasized, mean nothing to soil.

“As human beings, we have divided the world in so many ways, but national borders mean nothing for soil or microbial life,” he said. “Soil is a common factor for all of us; we all come from soil and will go back to soil. It is my wish that apart from being an ecological movement, the Save Soil movement be used as a unifying force for humanity.”

By the end of the 100 days, soil had entered the global conversation in a way it never had before. Governments and media were paying attention, citizens, especially youth, were mobilized, and for the first time, soil was given formal space on the United Nations Climate Change Conference agenda.

“Never before such a thing has happened in 100 days time,” he said.

The Hardest Terrains To Travel

For all the miles he rode, Sadhguru insists the hardest terrain was never the road beneath his motorcycle. “The terrain of the human brain is harder than the terrain of the road,” he said.

The challenge, as he sees it, is not physical endurance but the struggle to shift public attention. Gossip and spectacle, he argued, have always drowned out the slower, less glamorous work of policy, and in democracies, that imbalance only deepens.

“I’ve been trying to make soil into a global gossip, and we’ve succeeded,” he said. “That kind of narrative shift matters, because democratically elected governments won’t move unless people demand it.”

Government-driven change, he argued, is built for short timelines. “Democratically elected leaders won’t do anything unless people clearly say, we want this… They have only four or five years.”

And when change does come, Sadhguru argues, it is often fragmented, dictated more by election cycles than by long-term vision.

“They try to deliver half a baby,” he said. “Then when the next person gets elected, they try to deliver the other half. Does it work like this? Can anyone deliver a baby in series? Our mother delivered us whole. Imagine if she delivered one limb and left the rest for the next generation — it wouldn’t work. Yet unfortunately that is how policies are made.”

Still, Sadhguru points to moments of progress. In India, after more than a decade of lobbying, the government amended the law to let farmers grow and harvest trees on their own land.

That change, he said, has already transformed lives. More than a quarter of a million farmers have shifted to tree-based agriculture. “Their incomes have gone up anywhere from 300 to 800% in six to seven years, and the soil organic content has risen from below 0.5% to as much as 2.5 to 3%.”

How Sadhguru Stirred Global Consciousness

Looking back, Sadhguru admits that the London-to-India ride altered him and was a great catalyst for change. “I realized: unless I say I may die, nobody will act,” he told me, his voice tinged with amusement.

He is still riding. Still pressing leaders to put soil into practical, enforceable policy. “You and I are this earth,” he said quietly. “If the soil dies, we die.”

For him, that is not philosophy. It is fact. And he is willing to risk his life to make the world hear it.

When I asked where he found the courage to risk everything for soil, he brushed the question aside. “I don’t have courage,” he said. “I don’t create fear. Only if you create fear do you need courage.”

Sadhguru may be in his late sixties, with a white beard that evokes the image of an old-world mystic, but he has become an unlikely pop culture force. Astride a motorcycle, he’s pulled off endurance feats that challenge men half his age, while online he commands millions of followers. Through his Conscious Planet foundation, he has built Save Soil into a global movement that’s finding particular traction with Gen Z.

From the Caribbean, I’ve seen how Sadhguru’s message transcends borders. In 2022 and 2023, Trinbagonian soca star Machel Montano — one of the region’s most influential artists — threw his weight behind the Save Soil campaign, amplifying it through music.

I remember following Sadhguru’s 30,000-mile motorcycle odyssey from afar and watching Montano travel to India to stand on stage before tens of thousands at Sadhguru’s Maha Shivratri celebrations.

“Leadership is in the size of your vision, not in the size of the nation,” Sadhguru said of the ability of small countries and individuals to make a big change. “This [ecological effort] is one of the most vital things we will do in our generation.”