Word: topsoil
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Countless examples show that disregarding the natural balance is self-destructive. Deforestation in Southeast Asia has let the rivers wash fertile topsoil down the drain, so to speak, destroying the land and the habitat of the indigenous human population that was supposed to benefit from the cleared space. The same thing is being repeated in the Amazon...
...LISTING of the great millennia always reminds me of the cross-sections of soil levels that we learned in science class. Topsoil, sedentary soil, shale coal, diamonds, oil, primordial sludge, fire brimstone the boogey monster and the other side of the globe...
...clean swaths that farmers have plowed across the prairie are well suited to the efficient use of farm machinery. But they encourage erosion that has allowed vast amounts of topsoil to be blown away by wind or washed into the rivers and lakes. Chemical fertilizers, insecticides and weed killers have contributed to harvests that make U.S. agriculture the most productive in the ! world. But they have also leached into groundwater, contaminating wells in rural communities across the nation. "Not every well is polluted, and not every farmer has an erosion problem," says Ernest Shea, executive vice president of the National...
Five hundred miles south, you can stand on the banks of the Mississippi and watch that topsoil roll by, going down to the Gulf of Mexico. The 34 million acres of fragile cropland taken out of production over the past few years have helped stem this wash, but farmers are still losing to erosion four tons of topsoil for every ton of grain produced...
...turns out that burning corn is O.K., but that growing it, at least the way it's grown now, is not. Lovins says the erosion modern farming causes eats two bushels of topsoil for every bushel of corn produced. Agricultural strip mining. So in his view, corn stoves may make the best sense only in regions where there's lots of corn (especially if it's rotting in silos) but few trees...