Re: Ideology and the Environment

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Perelman" <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

> Farming practices do create desertification, according to my
> understanding.
===========================


from the November 01, 2001 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1101/p16s1-sten.html

Farmers urged to beat plows into drills
By Noel C. Paul | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
The world's most significant environmental crisis, according to
farmers, is playing out in the very ground beneath their feet.

The earth's endowment of topsoil - a delicate seven-inch layer of
sediment and minerals built over thousands of years - is deteriorating
at an alarming rate, even by modern standards of consumption.

In the same time it takes the earth to replenish two-and-a-half tons
of soil per acre - about one year - wind and rain erode more than 43
tons per acre in most areas of the third world. It is estimated that
one-sixth of the world's soil supply has already been degraded. That
fraction will likely grow significantly as farmers turn to marginal
lands or their own outstripped fields to feed an additional 2 billion
people by 2025.

To avert a global soil crisis, policymakers are attempting to get
farmers to pick up their plows - for good.

For 7,000 years, farmers turned up ground to make troughs and seed
beds. Their plows have exposed the earth's soil to punishing wind and
rain, driving rich nutrients into river beds and untilled ground.

The alternative: A system called "no-till," which leaves the soil and
its skin of protective overgrowth undisturbed by slipping seed and
fertilizer through a small slit in the ground's surface.

The technique promises to save not only soil, but time and money as
well. Unfortunately, advocates admit, the threat posed by no-till to
common tradition and local economies could blunt its progress in the
third world.

No-till techniques were popularized in the US during the 1980s, when
farmers first took significant steps to reduce their depleted surface
soil. After harvesting their crop, many US farmers now leave leftover
leaves, husks, and grasses on their fields. The residue crowds out
weeds, decreasing herbicide costs. More importantly, it provides a
protective covering for the top soil, shielding it from punishing wind
and soaking in rain water that might otherwise escape.

Since 1982, soil erosion rates in the US have fallen 38 percent,
according to the National Resource Inventory.

"By setting the goal of retaining at least 35 percent of crop residue,
they've cut erosion to almost nothing," says Edward Deibert, professor
of soil science at North Dakota State University.

No-till methods also enable farmers to reduce their workforce and
scale back machinery. By not tilling their fields, they need take only
a few passes through each crop row, rather than five to 10.

The ecological and financial benefits have drawn the attention of
policymakers.

Later this month, officials from the World Bank, which began to
aggressively promote the technique a few years ago, will visit
successful no-till operations in South America, where Argentina and
Brazil have used the technique to plant a total of 57 million acres.

Their harvests have born an unexpected boon: Water efficiency is up 40
percent. In the Pampas region of Argentina, for example, the untilled
soil conserved an average of four inches of usable water each year.

"The cover crop absorbs raindrops and allows it to flow into the soil
rather than letting it run off," says Dan Towery, a natural resource
specialist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.

In 15 years, the water savings will be required to meet the needs of
booming populations in China, India, and Pakistan - each of which is
experiencing severe groundwater depletion after nearly 50 years of
heavy irrigation.

No-till methods might not take root outside the Americas, however.
Most farmers, many of whom still use livestock for plowing, would
require a substantial subsidy to pay for new seed drills. In many
cases, farmers would not leave crop residue on their fields,
preferring to use it for housing, animal feed, or to burn for heat.
And the need for less labor could seriously disrupt local economies.

The primary obstacle, like in all shifts in a community's way of life,
could be a simple reluctance to change.

"The basic issue is that this requires trust that what you will start
doing will work as well as previous techniques," says Raymond Hopkins,
a professor of political science at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore,
Pa.