Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations - Kootenay Local Agricultural Society

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Credible scientists also disagree on Earth’s carrying capacity. Norman
Borlaug, the Nobel Prize–winning green revolution pioneer, claims that
Earth can support ten billion folks, although he acknowledges that it will
require major advances in agricultural technology. This is the same guy
who warned at his Nobel acceptance speech that the green revolution had
bought us only a few decades to deal with overpopulation. Now, more than
three decades later, he trusts scientists will pull more rabbits out of the hat.
At the other end of the spectrum are Stanford University biologists Paul
and Anne Ehrlich who maintain that we have already passed the carrying
capacity of the planet, which they put at about three billion people. In
their view, we’ve already ensured disaster.
Regardless of who is right, a key issue for any long-term scenario is
reforming agriculture in both industrialized and developing countries.
Conventional industrial farmers sacrifice soil to maximize short-term
returns to pay rent, service debt for machinery, and buy pesticides and fertilizers.
Peasant farmers mine the soil because they are trapped farming
plots too small to feed their families. While the underlying economic and
social issues are complex, sustaining agricultural productivity in both the
developed and developing world depends on retaining fertile soil.
Irreplaceable over human timescales, soil is an awkward hybrid—an
essential resource renewable only at a glacial pace. Like many environmental
problems that become harder to address the longer they are neglected,
soil erosion threatens the foundation of civilization over timescales
longer than social institutions last. Yet as long as soil erosion continues to
exceed soil production, it is only a matter of time before agriculture fails to
support a growing population.
At its peak, the Roman Empire relied on slave labor to work the plantations
that replaced the conservative husbandry of farmer-citizens in the
early republic. Before the Civil War, the American South became addicted
to similar methods that destroyed soil fertility. In both cases, soil-destroying
practices became entrenched as lucrative cash crops seduced large
landowners and landlords. Soil loss occurred too slowly to warrant societal
attention.
There are plenty of reasons to argue for smaller, more efficient government;
market efficiencies can be effective drivers for most social institutions.
Agriculture is not one of them. Sustaining our collective well-being
requires prioritizing society’s long-term interest in soil stewardship; it is an
issue of fundamental importance to our civilization. We simply cannot
afford to view agriculture as just another business because the economic
life span of civilizations