Dust to Dust: a man-made Malthusian crisis

[GliderGuider]

Dust to Dust: a man-made Malthusian crisis

The Colorado study has caused a stir in the soil world. It was accompanied by a sobering analysis in Science by academics from South Africa's Witwatersrand University. They fear that we are repeating the mistakes of past civilisations, over-exploiting the land until it goes beyond the point of no return, and leads to a vicious circle of famine, and then social disintegration.

Once the top soil crosses a crucial threshold, the recovery rate plunges. Chemicals can keep crop yields high for a while but the complex ecology beneath is being abused further. Yields have already fallen 8pc across Africa as a whole. The paper calls for a complete change of course as the "only viable route to feeding the world and keeping it habitable."

Professor Robert Scholes, one of the authors, said there comes a point when terrified governments make a Faustian pact, sacrificing their future to stop their people starving today. "We're seeing a massive arc of deforestation in Africa," he said.

"We're running out of new agricultural frontiers and we don't have the freedom to make errors any more. We are using up our nutrient capital and face a looming food crisis over the next 30 to 40 years. There is a risk that we are going to paint ourselves into a corner. Famine is a very real possiblity," he said.

OK, things feel like they're getting serious now.

[Democracyinkind]

1. They call us doomers, and I wish "we" were...

[CRH]

2. A couple of comments, ...

throughout the tropics the life expectancy of the green revolution on a piece of land is about sixty years, Much of the deforested land that was put into agriculture in the fifties is barely farmable now, no matter how many chemicals you use. The bananas, coffee, and sugar cane plantations, are seriously depleted, and now stuck in the mono culture meme. To turn the land back in something imitating natural growing conditions takes huge amounts of organic matter, decades of time, and large expenditure of capital. What ends up happening, is the land is often subdivided and sold as subdivisions.

The second point is the rape of Africa. Not enough calamity the deforestation and change of climate promises for the future. Some of the most promising locations for expanding agriculture are experiencing foreign agribusiness control of water rights and the land, leaving many indigenous who depend on the water shed, high and dry. For the foreign investor what's not to like. Near slave labor, no environmental protection laws, the promise of food for eurasia, and no need to maintain the infrastructure for indigenous poverty.

We are sure to see the first wave of migratory climate crisis, on the forgotten continent. It is already starting now, and I await the global community's actions, when crisis becomes catastrophe. It will probably mimic the response at the Warsaw conference.

[pscot]

3. Haiti and the D.R. offer a preview

Haiti has roughly the same population as the D.R. on half the acreage. People are it's chief export. 53% of it's GDP is remittances from overseas. The D.R. now is refusing to accept any more Haitians and is expelling those already there. The message seem to be leave or die. Several million Haitians are living in America.

If the tropics heat up as dramatically as recent predictions suggest, we could be looking at a hundred million climate refugees streaming toward our southern border. You can bet that our military already has contingency plans for such. What happens in Africa is going to even further down on our list of things to worry about.