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Food officials feel the dramatic increases in food production
of the 1960s and 1970s are over.
The soil has been abused and mined. It
will
not sustain past high yields.
Trust. " All the best Iand on this
earth that could be put into produc–
tion is in production. The rest," he
observes, " is
marginal."
Especially threatening to the
world food stability is the rapid
destruction of fertile soils in the
leading food-exporting nations,
particularly North America.
Soil erosion, salt buildup, falling
or polluted water tables are strip–
ping away fertile North American
farmland at rates threatening the
future of the region as the food
granary of the world. Soils in other
leading food exporting nations–
Argentina, Australia and South
Africa- are a lso being rapidly
degraded.
In 1975, the Council for Agri–
cultura! Science and Technology,
supported by a consortium of
American universities, warned that
"a third of all U.S. cropland is suf–
fering soil losses too great to be
sustained without a gradual but
ultimately disastrous decline in
productivity."
A few years ago the U .S.
Department of Agriculture's Soil
Conservation Service estimated
that on 40 percent of the United
States' cultivated land, farmers
each year lose an average of seven
KILLED, STRIPPED, GUTTED-millions
of acres are destroyed or lose produc–
tivity every year due to human careless–
ness or neglect (see previous two
pages). Fu/1-page photo: the ons/aught
of careless urban development. From
left to right: water failure; irrigated /and
killed by salt buildup; water-erosion
stripped roots; water-/ogged, poor/y
drained citrus; productive land reclaimed
by desert alter prohibitive we/1-pumping
costs; overworked marginal /and; gullied
soil; uncontrolled creek bank erosion.
Left lo ri ghl: Ted Spiegei-Biack Star; Ted Spiege/-
8/ack Ster: Couttesy U.S. Soil Conservstíon Service;
U.$ . Soil Conservation Service; Ted Spiege/- 8/ack
Star: Herman Kokojen- Bieck Sta r: U.S. Soíl Conserva·
tion Service; U.S. Soil Conservation ServicB. Fu/1-psge
photo: Courtesy U.S. Soil Conservation Servlce
24
tons of topsoil an acre. This is well
above the amounts of soil that nat–
ural processes create each year.
"Ten years from now, Ameri–
cans will be just as worried about
the Joss of prime farmlands as they
are today over shortages of oil and
gasoline," warns one soil expert.
The productivity of Canada's
cropland is similarly being reduced.
Here much of the problem is the
continua! substitution of marginal
land for prime land. Prime land is
being lost to urbanization. The land
being added is far less productive.
Australian conservation officials
are even more worried about ways
to reverse massive soil spoilage than
North American or European offi–
cíals. Australian soils are much
more shallow. On the average they
are only four or ' five--or fewer–
inches deep.
Work done by the Queensland
Department of Primary Industry
shows that in wheat growing areas,
soil is often lost at an annual rate of
50 tons per hectare (a hectare is 2.47
acres). Ifthat rate continues many of
Queensland's grain-growing soils
will be depleted before another two
decades. Another study shows 65
percent of the pastoral and agricul–
tura! land in New South Wales
needs conservation work. Only five
percent of that area has been pro–
tected through conservation.
In Western Europe, the opportu–
nities for new Jand reclamation are
negligible. West Germany is losing
one percent of its agricultura! land
every four years. European cities
are growing at the expense of sorne
croplands.
In ltaly, two million hectares
have been abandoned in the last 1
O
years. The farming methods used
on this marginal Jand have Ied to
deterioration of the soil so that land
is consumed in the literal sense of
the word. Similar problems plague
other southern European soils.
Farmers there are struggling to
maintain productivity.
Destruction Far and Near
In the Soviet Union, attempts to
regain food self-sufficiency are not
only jeopardized by frequent bad
weather but by soils that have lost
someoftheir inherent productivity.
The United Nations Food and
Agricultural Organization (FAO)
estimates the Northern African tier
of countries-Morocco, Algeria,
Tunisia and Libya- are losing
100,000 hectares (a quarter of a
million acres) of range and crop–
land each year. The ever-growing
Sahara Desert is expanding west–
ward into Senegal and eastward
into the Sudan.
Ethiopia is literally going down
the river. A U.S. government offi–
cial reported severa! years ago:
"There is an environmental night–
mare un folding before our
eyes.... 1t is the result of the acts
of millions of Ethiopians struggling
for survival: scratching the surface
of eroded land and eroding it fur–
ther; cutting down trees for
warmth and fue! and leaving the
country denuded. ... Over one bil–
lion ... tons of topsoil ftow from
Ethiopia's highlands eacb year."
Fed by human pressures on their
fringes--overpopulat ion , overgraz–
ing, overplowing and deforesta–
tion-virtually all of the world's
major deserts are expanding. This
multiplication of human and live–
stock populations is intensifying
desert-like conditions from tbe
Middle East to northwestern India,
as well as in many parts of Africa.
The salty 'kiss of death that with–
ered many past civilizations now
threatens many irrigated lands of
the earth. FAO estimates that half
of tbe world irrigation projects
started since 1950. Many of them
are already dangerously saline.
Waterlogging and excessive sa–
linity now plague most Middle East
irrigated lands. In Iraq and Paki–
stan one can witness vast , glistening
white expanses of heavily salted
The
PLAIN TRUTH