Peak Oil, Peak Water… Peak Dirt?
June 23, 2008 · Print This Article
Right now, there are proclamations of peak everything: peak oil, peak water, peak rice, peak metal, even peak guano. But would you ever have thought it possible to run out of dirt? It seems limitless, but in truth dirt is far more complicated than most people realize, and there were bound to be some consequences to the farming methods and chemicals that have been used in recent history.
From Planet Green:
Really, Peak Dirt- the world is losing soil 10 to 20 times faster than it is replenishing it. Drake Bennett in the Boston Globe tells us that dirt is complicated stuff, made from sand or silt, then years of plants adding nutrition, bugs and worms adding their excrement, dying and rotting.
“The resulting organic matter feeds a whole underground ecology that aerates the soil, fixes nutrients, and makes it more hospitable for plant life, and over time the process feeds back on itself. If the soil does not wash away or get parched by drought, it very gradually thickens. It takes tens of thousands of years to make 15 centimeters of topsoil, about 6 inches’ worth.”
Till it and plant a monoculture like corn on it and that soil gets depleted rapidly, so farmers add fertilizer, lots of it. The philosophy was “Well, if your soil’s degraded, just put some more fertilizer on, or till it another time and you can get the same crop yield,” says David Laird, a soil scientist.
So, what’s causing it? Lloyd Alter explains on Planet Green that ethanol, peak oil and meat are to blame. ‘Excessive demand for grain’, caused mainly by ethanol and meat production, has caused a huge increase in the use of fertilizer. Luckily, scientists are working on replenishing the soil with traditional farming methods, biochar and making soil from scratch. Check out the Planet Green article for the details.
Link [Planet Green]
Photo credit: Flickr user Crystl
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This is something I can relate to from personal experience. I grew up in a rural farming community. Then field next door is generally planted with alfalfa which is pretty good at not depleting nitrogen and other nutrients essential to plants. A couple of time the field was switched over to corn, which leaches nitrogen like crazy from the soil. In fact the nitrogen leaching was soo bad that when there was corn for more than one year in a row the farmers would douse the field in ammonia to boost the nitrogen content for the corn. Just something to think about next time you munch down a bowl of corn flakes, or a tasty ear of sweet corn.
Or if you’re thinking corn ethanol is somehow a “green” fuel alternative…
no so much