Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Dieter Brand <diebrand@yahoo.com>]

Speculators are a scourge.  There are no two ways about it.  Yet even they 
have their usefulness.  Like a virus, they attack the weakest point of a 
system and thus serve as an early warning system that needs to be heeded.  
The weakness of industrial food production is that it destroys its very 
basis: fertile soil.  

We are now loosing farming soil at a rate of several millions acres a year.  
A quarter of the remaining farming land is much degraded and risks 
desertification.  The situation is particularly bad in China and India.  It 
is no accident that China is buying up vast tracks of farming land in Africa 
and elsewhere.  At the same time, World population keeps on growing and is 
expected to reach 9 billions in 40 years time.

The industrial revolution in farming that has resulted in an increase in food 
production to feed the growth in World population during that last 50 years 
cannot be repeated because it is the very reason for the loss of soil 
fertility.

People can always agree on bashing the bankers, but nobody is prepared to 
look at the real reasons for the World food crisis.  Looks like future 
generations will have to pay a high price.

Happy Christmas,
Dieter