TORONTO (Thomson Reuters Foundation) — One-third of the world’s arable land has been lost to soil erosion or pollution in the last 40 years, scientists said in research published during climate change talks in Paris.
It takes about 500 years to generate 2.5 centimetres of topsoil under normal agricultural conditions, and soil loss has accelerated as demand for food rises, biologists from Britain’s Sheffield University said in the report.
Preserving valuable topsoil is crucial if the world is to produce enough food for more than nine billion people by 2050, the scientists said.
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“Soil is lost rapidly but replaced over millennia, and this represents one of the greatest global threats to agriculture,” Sheffield University biology professor Duncan Cameron said in a statement with the report.
He recommended that farmers engage in “conservation agriculture,” in which crops are rotated more frequently, organic matter is restored to the soil.
Intensive farming now maintains crop yields through the use of fertilizers, which are made by an industrial process that consumes five percent of the world’s natural gas production and two percent of the world’s annual energy supply, the report said.
French officials recently launched a plan to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Backed by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, it aims to in-crease carbon stocks to boost soil fertility.
