The global loss of topsoil

Excerpt

BETWEEN 1950 and 1973, world demand for grain doubled, spurred by both population growth and rising affluence. It will double again by the end of the century if the projected growth in population and income materializes. This unprecedented quadrupling in world food demand within 50 years is putting more pressure on many of the world's soils than they can sustain.

In the face of this continuously expanding world demand for grain and the associated, relentless increase in pressures on land, soil erosion is accelerating. In effect, mounting economic pressures are degrading the resource base. In 1980 Anson R. Bertrand, a senior U.S. Department of Agriculture official, described the situation in the United States: “The economic pressure—to generate export earnings, to strengthen the balance of payments, and thus the dollar—has been transmitted more or less directly to our natural resource base. As a result, soil erosion today can be described as epidemic in proportion.” Bertrand's linkage between economic pressures and resource deterioration applies elsewhere as well. In most countries, however, demand pressures come from domestic rather than foreign sources.

Grave though the loss of topsoil may be, it is a …