22 January 2011

Food Crisis as World's Soil 'Vanishes in 60 Years'

...but we can innovate? Right? Use technology? Who needs soil anyway?

Excerpt from The Telegraph, 21 January 2011

'Fertile soil is being lost faster than it can be replenished and will eventually lead to the “topsoil bank” becoming empty, an Australian conference heard.

Chronic soil mismanagement and over farming causing erosion, climate change and increasing populations were to blame for the dramatic global decline in suitable farming soil, scientists said.

An estimated 75 billion tonnes of soil is lost annually with more than 80 per cent of the world's farming land "moderately or severely eroded", the Carbon Farming conference heard.

A University of Sydney study, presented to the conference, found soil is being lost in China 57 times faster than it can be replaced through natural processes.

In Europe that figure is 17 times, in America 10 times while five times as much soil is being lost in Australia...

Latest forecasts predict the world's population will grow from 6.8 billion to more than 9 billion by 2050, placing even further pressure on food production and farming.

The world last year faced a cereal crisis as wheat stocks dropped to a 30-year low after demand for wheat and rice outstripped supply for the past six out of the previous seven years.

This resulted in grain prices rocketing, which sparked civil unrest in many countries...'

1 comment:

  1. It can all disappear in the twinkling of an eye when natural disasters strike. Many or most farmers are actually farming soil and couldn't care less while the money keeps rolling in to feed their overlord banksters. You should see what they're doing to the planet's rivers! Plenty of laws are in place to stop these rorts but they're never enforced - unless a bold member of the public makes a complaint about an individual malefactor. Governments prefer to look the other way until they're forced to act.
    Force them!

    ReplyDelete

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