Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Some figures on topsoil loss and freshwater depletion. This is what
intensive organic no-till can deal with.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
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Topsoil, transportation, energy, water costs
1/3 of US topsoil is gone. 90% of US farmland is losing topsoil 17 times
faster than new topsoil is being formed
Hidden Infrastructure Costs
• Transportation Costs - Hidden taxpayer subsidies in support of highway,
rail and port systems (average dinner travels 1300 miles from farm to
table)
• Energy Costs - US food industry consumes 10% - 15% of all energy:
mostly for packaging, processing, and distribution
• Water Costs - 75% to 80% of water is used for agriculture. Drinking and
Ag water management costing a fortune
http://www.ecotrust.org/foodfarms/SustainableFoodSystems.pdf

With an estimated 36 percent of the world's cropland now losing topsoil at
a rate that is undermining its productivity, our food security is also at
risk if this trend continues.50 As pressures to expand food production have
climbed, farmers have been forced into marginal areas, plowing land that is
too dry or too steeply sloping to sustain cultivation. At some point
probably within the last century, the long-term accumulation of topsoil was
reversed as erosion losses surpassed new soil formation, leading to a
gradual depletion of this basic natural capital.
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Eco/EEch3_ss5.htm

Each year the gap between world water consumption and the sustainable water
supply widens. Both aquifer depletion and the diversion of water to cities
will contribute to the growing irrigation water deficit and hence to a
growing grain deficit in many water-short countries.

Because overpumping to satisfying growing food demand virtually guarantees
a future drop in food production when aquifers are depleted, many countries
are in essence creating a “food bubble economy”-one in which food
production is artificially inflated by the unsustainable mining of
groundwater.
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Seg/PB2ch03_ss6.htm

- Seventy years ago there were nearly 7 million American Farmers. Today
there are only 2 million. Less than one million of those farmers claim
farming as their primary occupation. The remaining half rely on a secondary
income. Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture. Edited by
Andrew Kimbrell.

- Farming uses 12% of the total U.S. Petroleum supply, more than any other
single industry. Northeast Farm to Food: Understanding Our Region’s Food
System. Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group. 2002