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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Save the Dirt (Part Two)
  • Date: Sun, 06 Apr 2008 07:01:01 -0600


Save the Dirt (Part Two)
http://www.pulsethebook.com/index.php/index.php?tag=farming

As populations of soil organisms crash they retain less moisture. With that,
the large-crumb structure that lets air and water permeate soil breaks down
into fine granules that easily wash away. The toxic destruction of delicate
root structures and fungi networks accelerates that effect. Dying soil
compacts more easily, so new roots can’t penetrate as deeply. And with time,
there are fewer nutrients for food crops to absorb.

On many industrial farms, repeated chemical dosing has caused a plight
underground like that aboveground in industrial forests—the decline of
diversity is paralleled by a decline in resilience and stability. Where farms
are irrigated, that effect is exaggerated by salinization, in which
evaporating water concentrates destructive salts in the soil. Some 20 percent
of irrigated farmland worldwide has been damaged by salinization.

All this has contributed to soil loss on unprecedented scales. Around the
world, erosion is now carrying topsoil away far more quickly than nature can
replace it. Even with real improvements in conservation methods since the
1980s, the U.S. still loses nearly six tons of soil with every ton of grain
it harvests. One-third of its original topsoil is gone, and much of what
remains has been degraded.

The loop of plants, decomposers, and new soil is the foundation of our
civilization. All we are and all we have emerge from that. Harvests today
surpass any the world has known, but in the constant effort to raise more
crops, we’re pulling the rug from under our feet. The soil that our crops
need for growth is gradually slipping away.

In his book Grassland, Richard Manning described what he called “pedestals
carved by the plow.” These remnants of unfarmed, original prairie exist as
raised areas scattered throughout the farmlands of the American Great Plains.
The crowns of those pedestals were once level with the plowed ground. Now
that ground lies several feet below them. As one of the more thoughtful
critics of industrial farming, the geneticist Wes Jackson, has said, “Modern
agriculture has failed to produce a system that sustains its own capital.”




  • [Livingontheland] Save the Dirt (Part Two), Tradingpost, 04/06/2008

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