Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations - Kootenay Local Agricultural Society

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ended in 1995 when the company agreed to plead guilty to using pesticide for an unapproved purpose and pay a $10,000 fine. Now I don’t particularly like to gamble, but even I’d take my savings to Vegas anytime with a guaranteed 17 to 1 payout. After the Cenex case, other farmers in the area began to wonder whether bad fertilizer had been the cause of their failing crops. One told Martin’s friend Dennis DeYoung about a fertilizer tank that Cenex delivered to his farm and forgot about years earlier. Dennis scooped out some of the dried residue from the abandoned tank and sent it off to a soil-testing lab in Idaho. The lab found lots of arsenic, lead, titanium, and chromium—not exactly premium plant food. The lab also reported high lead and arsenic concentrations in peas, beans, and potatoes DeYoung sent in from crops fertilized by Cenex products. Samples of potatoes another friend of DeYoung’s sent in were found to have ten times the allowable concentration of lead. Washington wasn’t the only place where toxic waste was being reclassified as fertilizer. Between 1984 and 1992, an Oregon subsidiary of ALCOA (the Aluminum Company of America) recycled more than two hundred thousand tons of smelter waste into fertilizer. ALCOA saved two million dollars a year turning waste into a product marketed as a road de-icer during the winter and plant food in the summer. Companies all across America were saving millions of dollars a year selling industrial waste instead of paying to send it to toxic waste dumps. By the late 1990s, eight major U.S. companies converted 120 million pounds of hazardous waste into fertilizer each year. Strangely, nobody involved seemed too anxious to talk about the toxic waste-into-fertilizer industry. They didn’t have to worry. No rules prevented mixing hazardous waste into fertilizer, and then into the soil. No one appeared too concerned about such blatant disregard of the importance of healthy soil. Never mind that, as seems obvious, farms are about the last place we should use as a dumping ground for heavy metals. The way we treat our agricultural soils, whether as locally adapted ecosystems, chemical warehouses, or toxic dumps, will shape humanity’s options in the next century. Europe broke free from the ancient struggle to provide enough food to keep up with a growing population by coming to control a disproportionate share of the world’s resources. The United States escaped the same cycle by expanding westward. Now with a shrinking base of arable land, and facing the end of cheap oil, the world needs new models for how to feed everybody. Island societies provide one place to look; dirty business 215
216 some consumed their future and descended into brutal competition for arable land, others managed to sustain peaceful communities. The key difference appears to be how social systems adapted to the reality of sustaining agricultural productivity without access to fresh land—in other words, how people treated their soil. dirty business
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Dirt
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Dirt the erosion of civilizations D
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For Xena T. Dog, enthusiastic field
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acknowledgments This book could nev
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2 Yet what is dirt? We try to keep
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4 discovered ways to enhance soil f
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6 quent centuries, nutrient depleti
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two Skin of the Earth We know more
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villa in Gloucestershire lay undete
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When we behold a wide, turf-covered
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Soil not only helps shape the land,
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ter and mineral soil. Billions of m
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Topography also affects the soil. T
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Wind can pick up and erode dry soil
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Combinations of soil horizons, thei
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much. This leaves the issue in a po
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28 Ice Age was not a single event.
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30 For much of the last century, th
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32 Abu Hureyra sat on a low promont
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34 wheat dating from 10,000 years a
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36 Domesticated livestock not only
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38 inated the southern Mesopotamian
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40 of a high load of dissolved salt
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42 direct water to particular place
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44 by the color of dirt eroded from
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46 out the region, he concluded tha
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four Graveyard of Empires To Protec
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the constitution, proposed a ban on
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Figure 7. Parthenon. Albumen print
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est soils from hillsides disturbed
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Figure 8. Map of Roman Italy. follo
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the Roman heartland became increasi
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ically let a piece of ground lie fa
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foot thick, it probably took at lea
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into densely planted olive farms—
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families a few centuries earlier. T
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classic, supporting three editions
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on the edge of the Arabian Desert a
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When Moses and company arrived, Can
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urned before the onset of the rains
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sion in the Mayan of the Petén not
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Archaeological records from this pe
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The contrast between how the Pueblo
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84 forest soils as it went, agricul
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86 to a thousand years. Soil profil
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88 land and birch forest. Following
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90 Figure 10. Miniature from an ear
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92 the early 1300s to about two mil
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94 the Danes improved their sandy d
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96 layers, ’till we arrive to the
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98 recipe for degrading soil fertil
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100 vived on vegetables, gruel, and
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102 French Alps lost a third to mor
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104 Despite such profiteering, by 1
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106 from the smallest rill to the g
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108 A potato blight that arrived fr
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110 uries such as sugar, coffee, an
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112 Subsequent foreign investment o
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six Westward Hoe Since the achievem
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A few miles in from the forest edge
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wherein one man by his owne labour
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Particularly in the South, the read
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worn out, and washed and gullied, s
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explained that American farmers had
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marle County Agricultural Society i
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purchased a farm in the 1820s. A de
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Figure 14. Charles Lyell’s illust
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Traveling through much of the South
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Tensions came to a head after the S
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But this still doesn’t explain th
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Figure 16. North Carolina gully sys
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more than three thousand years and
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settlements for several thousand ye
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seven Dust Blow One man cannot stop
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land-hungry settlers. From 1878 to
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without the least reference to the
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Figure 18. Breaking new land with d
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Figure 19. Dust storm approaching S
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taxes, and other unavoidable expens
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Figure 21. Plowing a steep hillside
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tion of heavy machinery and agroche
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Soil erosion rapidly became a major
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egion. There are few reliable measu
Page 176 and 177: ing with the Germans, Kalmyks were
Page 178 and 179: grazing animals doubled; the human
Page 180 and 181: years. Present rates of erosion, ho
Page 182 and 183: land was being exhausted. Although
Page 184 and 185: In 1958 the Department of Agricultu
Page 186 and 187: eplacing water-holding capacity los
Page 188: ing on access to fresh land or find
Page 191 and 192: 180 our way in that the backyard wo
Page 193 and 194: 182 Figure 23. Chinese farmers plow
Page 195 and 196: 184 less, he experimented with agri
Page 197 and 198: 186 Figure 24. Lithograph of mounta
Page 199 and 200: 188 fiscated the remaining lands th
Page 201 and 202: 190 Hilgard rightly dismissed the p
Page 203 and 204: 192 important was the mix of silt,
Page 205 and 206: 194 ping would exhaust the natural
Page 207 and 208: 196 atmospheric nitrogen. On July 2
Page 209 and 210: 198 increases in crop production.
Page 211 and 212: 200 Estimates for when petroleum pr
Page 213 and 214: 202 ground—turning our dirt into
Page 215 and 216: 204 greater tonnage of machinery pe
Page 217 and 218: 206 may prove our best hope for mai
Page 219 and 220: 208 tilizers, hosts the longest ong
Page 221 and 222: 210 soil fertility and exporting po
Page 223 and 224: 212 No-till farming is very effecti
Page 225: 214 It is no secret that if agricul
Page 229 and 230: 218 Pollen preserved in lake sedime
Page 231 and 232: 220 washed off the slopes now bury
Page 233 and 234: 222 ply. So topsoil loss retarded f
Page 235 and 236: 224 different fates. Tikopia develo
Page 237 and 238: 226 where vegetation stabilizes the
Page 239 and 240: 228 0 50 100 km inhabitants. Two ce
Page 241 and 242: 230 pushes peasants from hillside s
Page 243 and 244: 232 gardens grew up throughout the
Page 245 and 246: 234 Credible scientists also disagr
Page 247 and 248: 236 notice the problem. Like a dise
Page 249 and 250: 238 asters. Larger societies, with
Page 251 and 252: 240 before plants have all they can
Page 253 and 254: 242 faster than it is replaced dest
Page 255 and 256: 244 figuring the downstream end of
Page 257 and 258: 246 Meeting this challenge would al
Page 259 and 260: 248 10. Marsh 1864, 9, 42. 11. Lowd
Page 261 and 262: 250 6. USDA 1901, 31. 7. Whitney 19
Page 263 and 264: 252 Schwartzman, D. W., and T. Volk
Page 265 and 266: 254 Beach, T., S. Luzzadder-Beach,
Page 267 and 268: 256 and human response. In Environm
Page 269 and 270: 258 Lang, A. 2003. Phases of soil e
Page 271 and 272: 260 Cronon, W. 1983. Changes in the
Page 273 and 274: 262 Bennett, H. H., and W. R. Chapl
Page 275 and 276: 264 Saiko, T. A. 1995. Implications
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266 Jackson, W. 2002. Farming in na
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268 ———. 1925. Soil and Civil
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270 and economic costs of soil eros
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272 agricultural practices (continu
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274 Columella, Lucius Junius Modera
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276 farm subsidy programs: conventi
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278 Joppa Town, Maryland, 140 Judso
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280 nitrogen fertilization (continu
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282 Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret),
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284 technological innovation (conti
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