Top Soil
Plants and animals reproduce and die -> Dead plants and animals get broken down by soil micro life into nutrients -> nutrients nourish children of previous generation of plants and animals
We've all been eating our ancestors all along.
It all happens in 5–10 inches of soil. A handful of top soil has more microorganisms than there are people on Earth. They're the back-end of life on the planet. It takes hundreds of years to create an inch of soil — but to lose one inch, it won't take a minute. Today we're losing topsoil 10 to 40 times faster than it's being formed. With no top soil left, there would be no micro life to convert the dead into nourishment. Life will end.
That's not the problem though, the problem is nobody's talking about it! Imagine the the Milky Way newspaper: The "most intelligent" species on Earth extinct because it couldn't figure out how life works. 🤡