permaculture

[Harmon Seaver <hseaver@gmail.com>]

lbsaltzman@aol.com wrote:
> ?But remember those lands can be restored and made fertile again. It is 
> both a warning to us and a challenge.
> 
    Well, that depends. If you are talking about US farmland poisoned by
 ag-chemicals, yes, but it takes a few years, at the very least. If you
are talking about land poisoned by irrigation, I'm not sure that's
possible. At least nobody seems to have been successful thus far. And if
you are talking about places like Iraq -- forget it. There's no soil.
Once the soil has eroded down to bare rock, what are you going to do
with it? It takes glacial activity to turn rock into soil. Sure, you
could haul dirt in, but from where?
   The Israelis pioneered un-doing desertification, but you have to have
something to work with, not just bare rock. That's one of the main
reasons Australia never has done well with agriculture -- they never had
glaciers.
    There is also the whole cultural scenario to deal with. Often
various peoples have starved or been seriously malnourished simply
because what was available wasn't what they recognized as food. Same
thing with stopping desertification --- try getting people to get rid of
all their goats and sheep, for instance, so that they don't kill off the
trees, shrubs, and sod. Or make them stop cutting down the few remaining
trees for firewood. Or for that matter, stop driving their SUVs.

-- 
Harmon Seaver