No Easy Fix  

Oleh:

[s.n]

Jenis: Article from Bulletin/Magazine
Dalam koleksi: The Economist (http://search.proquest.com/) vol. 398 no. 8722 (Feb. 2011), page 10-12.
Topik: Environmental Reasons; Growing; Phosphorus
Fulltext: no easy fix.pdf (30.23KB)

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Perpustakaan Pusat (Semanggi) Nomor Panggil: EE29.65 Non-tandon: 1 (dapat dipinjam: 0) Tandon: tidak ada

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Since the 1960s the traditional way of growing more food--by ploughing more land--has been out of favour. That is partly for environmental reasons and partly because many countries have used up all their available farmland. So though the population has soared, the supply of land has not. However, the potential is not exhausted yet. A new study by the World Bank says the world has half a billion hectares of land with fewer than 25 people per hectare living on them. The area currently under cultivation is 1.5 billion hectares, so if all that extra land could be used it would represent an increase of one-third. The chemistry of the soil--the presence in it of phosphorus, nitrogen and so on--is being degraded. That at least can be corrected by fertilisers. But the biology of the soil is also being damaged by the loss of organic matter, which can take five to ten years to recover. Worst of all, the physical structure changes if the top soil erodes, making it harder for the land to retain water or fertiliser. Top soil can take hundreds of years to replace.

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