MAN’S USE OF THE EARTH

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 75, Issue 6443, 7 November 1947, Page 5

MAN’S USE OF THE EARTH

THE FARMER IS THE HOPE OF THE WOLRD REVERSAL OF AGRICULTURAL METHODS There have been two world wars within a quarter of a century. Mankind has now reached the stage where it can, for good or ill, use some of the most violent powers inherent in matter and energy, the bases of the Universe. If man uses these new found powers unwisely and selfishly, there will be no more wars, because not enough people will be left to carry on the works of destruction.

Y’et this possibility is not the greatest peril facing humanity. History, of the past and that which is being written now, day by day warns us of a greater menace. Unless methods of agriculture are everywhere reversed, mankind, in the not distant future, will not be able to grow the food it must have. Then no Atlantic or any other charter can save it from the fate it will deserve.

This broad generality applies principally to the white man, latest from the hunting stage of existence—and the unhandiest agriculturist of them all. \ He did not invent any of the grains or vegetables or fruits that lifted man from the hunting stage of life to the beginning of civilisation. And, make no mistake about it, all the useful plants are unnatural things that had to be manufactured or developed from—often—most unpromising wild originals. Natural Law Could the wild briar, ancestor of the apple, pear, and other wild fruits, of itself turn into something that is a defiance of natural law and an invitation to destruction by natural enemies unless man intervene? Could wheat—regarded by Darwin as a blend of at least a dozen wild grasses —or rice, or maize of themselves defy natural law and attempt racial suicide by clothing the germ of the next generation in a meat attractive to endless enemies ? Could the banana, once a melon-like fruit, with thousands of seeds floating in an unpleasant fluid, have become seedless and edible, of itself? The white man performed none of these plant miracles. He did capture —not develop—most of them and has grown them since—sometimes pretty badly—and used them. Upon them he has built his quarrelsome civilisation. He has tractors and milking machines and chemical fertilisers, but he is still a poor agriculturist because he must think —and act—in terms of present profit, seldom in terms of the future. These are mere statements, it may be urged. They are backed by facts. South Africa has been occupied by white men, in numbdis, for about a century. Dr J, C. Ross, Director of Soil conservation in the Union, said recently that one third of the country’s top-soil had been lost as a result of human action. This irreplaceable loss continues at about 300,000,000 tons per year and the rate is increasing.

The United States, highest example of modern mechanised farming, loses 300,000,000 tons of top-soil annually. For every 60 tons of fertile elements it so loses, it puts back the equivalent of one ton of fertility in one form or another. The United States .■Department of Agriculture has done grand work in seeking to awaken the American conscience in efforts to minimise erosion. It believes that the area of once fertile land in the United States now’ completely ruined, would to-day, if undamaged, have supported a population of over 12,000,000 prosperous food-producers. The area showing steady to rapid deterioration is very much larger. A Tragic Story History has a tragic story to tell. Abuse or neglect of the land is believed to have played a major part in the decline of civilisations now extinct. Evidence of intensive human occupation of present-day deserts is accumulating as ruined cities and other works of man are constantly being uncovered.

It is now clear that much of the Sahara and of the Central Asian and Gobi Deserts once teemed with the life of human cultivators. The ravaged, now desolate plains of Asia Minor in semi-historic times were highly cultivated. Palestine, where now is waste, did once really flow with milk and honey and the modern desert lands of Mesopotamia, were, in former times, highly productive. There is a growing body of belief that these modern deserts have been mainly man-made and are very much less the result of radical climatic change than was formerly thought. And all of these deserts were created by white men, that is to say by people who came down from the cold hunting lands of the North to loot, and then use the grasslands and fruit areas to the South.

The United States affords the best modern example of how these old deserts were made. According to a recent survey, about 414,000,000 acres are cropped to-day in the Republic. In 50 to 100 years some 282,000,000 acres have been either ruined or so severely damaged by man as now to be totally useless. An additional 775,000,000 acres have been humanly deteriorated to the extent of a loss from one-fourth to one-half of its top-soil. Much of the remaining agricultural land in the country has lost from one-tenth to one-half of its fertility since the white man took charge. Does ‘that Record justify even the shreds of hope?