Soil Erosion: Threat to Food Supply

Archive Report

Worldwide Problem

Extent of Erosion in U.S., Other Nations

A List of the most pressing problems confronting modern civilization certainly would include the threat of nuclear war, worsening air and water pollution, overpopulation in Africa, Asia and Latin America and the depletion of worldwide supplies of fossil fuels. Agriculture experts add another candidate to that list: the potentially catastrophic consequences of soil erosion. “[T]he loss of soil is in some ways the most serious of the threats civilization faces…,” writes Lester R. Brown, president of Worldwatch Institute. “[T]here are no widely usable substitutes for soil in food production. Civilization can survive the exhaustion of oil reserves, but not the continuing wholesale loss of topsoil.”1.

Soil erosion is absolutely a tragedy of mounting proportions in some of the ...

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