BIOL 350 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Soil Retrogression And Degradation, Arable Land, Scientific American
12 Nov 2016
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The second half of the problem: the outputs. The only reason we have been able to support as many people as we can is because we have had stable, healthy soil. But the ecosystem of agriculture is different it is a monoculture which tends to support one species and nothing else. The problem with this is that soil gets lost to the wind, irrigation, leaching nutrients due to erosion and loss of nutrients to the crops. In the past farmers could just move to a fresh patch of soil and give the old space time to regenerate. Now we use fertilizers but from that we get soil nutrient loss and toxic run off. His is turn creates a loss of biodiversity. Oil came to the rescue to pump water out of aquifers, make pesticides. We will have degraded soil unable to grow crops. Ie) this is what happened in the middle east which was once so fertile.
