Basic HTML Version
Green Revolution-more about
that later- have enabled India to
build up nationwide grain sur–
pluses. But now, India, especially in
its southern states, is in the throes
of a new drought.
Nalni Jayal , adviser to lndia's
Planning Commission, said at the
general assembly of the Interna–
tional Union for the Conservation
of Nature and Natural Resources:
' 'We are on the verge of an enor–
mous ecological disaster. What is
happening in Afr ica is going to
happen in India within ten years."
Mr. Jayal believes the primary rea–
son for the crisis is the felling of for–
ests. "Wherever the forests have been
left intact there is water," he told the
conference. "Wherever they have
been cut down there is a crisis."
Other experts estímate that 60
percent of l ndia's cropland is erod–
ing excessively.
The looming crisis in India is also
compounded by worsening social
conditions. What would happen to
India's food supplies in the event of
anticipated turmoil over an indepen–
dent Sikh "Khalistan" in the agri–
culturally rich Punjab? The farmers
in the Punjab-the state is called
India's lowa- produce 60 percent of
all the food in India, including 90
percent of the nation's wheat!
West to the Rescue
As the Ethiopian cns1s again
proved , Western nations- specifi–
cally the United States, Britain and
the European Community (whose
reserves are largely the result of
artificially high price supports paid
to farmers)-made the difference
between life and death for millions
of Ethiopians.
The emergency relief effort,
however, only masks Africa's day
in and day out dependence upon
foreign food sources.
"Al though an agrarian conti–
nent," reported Lester
R.
Brown
and Edward Wolf in the June 1984
issue of
Natural History,
"Africa
is slowly losing the capacity to feed
itself. Between 1970 and 1983, net
grain imports quadrupled, climbing
.. from .five million to twenty million
tons. Grain fronrabroad' now feeds
about one-fourth of the continent's
-s
13 ' mili ion · people, and all indica–
tions are that imports will climb
still higher in 1984."
4
Simply put: too few are feeding
too many.
Much of the world's population
is precariously dependent upon a
shrinking number of food (princi–
pally grain) exporter nations such
as the United States, Canada, Aus–
tralia, New Zealand, South Africa,
Argentina and Thailand (and this
year, China also became a net grain
exporter) . More than 100 nations
depend to one degree or another
upon just one producer- the
Uni ted States- for grain supplies!
Should drought seriously impact
any of the major exporters for any
length of time, the lives of millions
of people in the Third World would
be imperiled.
Disaster Looms in U.S.
Exports to food-short regions are
placing additional straiQs on agri–
culture in the developed countries.
One of the effects is accelerating
erosion, a consequence of encour–
agement given to farmers to plant
their fields from "fence row to
fence row."
Erosion is developing into a serious
crisis, in American agriculture in par–
ticular. "America is washing out and
blowing away," warns Senator Wil–
liam L. Armstrong of Colorado.
Roger W. Jepsen of Iowa, former–
ly the chairman of the Soil and
Water Conservation subcommittee,
explains that unless policy changes
are made, "in sorne areas we won't
have any topsoi l left to conserve."
Mr. Jepsen said that after years of
heavy erosion of lowa's rich corn–
fields , "where we had 8 to 12 inches,
right now
1
can show you places with
a quarter inch of topsoil left."
Norman Berg, former head of
the USDA's Soil Conservation Ser–
vice, now an adviser to the prívate
American Farmland Trust, is
equally concerned. He says: "It is
an urgent situation when one-third
of our really good cropland is suf–
fering net soil loss, with sorne soil
eroding at twice or three or even
1
O
times the tolerable limit [of five
tons per acre per year] ."
Experts trace part of the prob–
lem to often contradictory govern–
mental policies that , wbile en–
couraging soil conservation, also
encourage overproduction through
price-support programs. The gov–
ernment often unwittingly pays for
the idJing of good farmland while
simultaneously paying farmers to
"sodbust" low quality, highly ero–
sive land.
Other experts are alarmed at the
falling into disuse of erosion-control
practices, such as tree windbreaks
and terraces, which helped break the
back of the infamous Dust Bowl of
the 1930s. Windbreaks are too often
viewed as obstacles which hinder the
larger tractors and other implements
used today.
Overall, the picture is not good
for sustained U .S. food produc–
tion-Iiow so critica) to the entire
world. R . Neil Sampson wrote in
tbe November /December 1983
issue of
Sierra
magazine:
"We are losing farmland produc–
tivity at startling rates-rates that
will bring us to the limit of our
supply of good land sometime
befare 2000. At the same time,
farm debt loads are soaring, bank–
ruptcies are on the rise, and the
spectre of a complete economic col–
lapse in the farm sector is being
raised ·¡n many quarters...."
Modero agribusiness, as every–
one realizes, is critically dependent
upon a good economy and the
steady, uninterrupted access to fas–
sil fuels (for energy, fertilizer and
transport to market), electricity
and abundant water. Never has the
food production supply chain-to a
largely urban population-been
more vulnerable to disruption.
"Genetic Wipeout"
In the long run far more serious
than erosion to the basis of modern
agriculture is the shrinking genetic
base of most major crops-and
even livestock.
Dr. Majar M. Goodman, a statis–
tical geneticist at North Carolina
State University, states that "if this
process continues unabated, we
place man's future in jeopardy."
The end result, he says, could be
"genetic wipeout."
Extinction of hundreds of grain
varieties and the loss of their inher–
ited traits has made future crop
failures certain.
One has only to look to the devas–
tation wrought by the 1970 southern
corn leaf blight to see such an effect.
This epidemic wiped out 20 percent
of the U.S. corn crop (which also
(Continued on page 30)
The
PLAIN TRUTH