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Intensive cultivation helps lose soil fertility in Asian region
BANGKOK. Dee 25: Thcp: is mote bad news for Asian countries struggling to feed their rapidly-growing populations: Intensive cultivation is causing soils throughout the region to 'lose their fertility, reports BSS.
Over-cultivation has bleed vita) nutrients from farmlands dwindling harvests and spreading misery among the continent's poorest. Excessive grazing by livestock and deforestation is also eroding precious top-soil.
Soil nutrients removed by repeated higher harvests and frequent cropping are simply not being replaced," says F J Dent, a soil specialist with the Food and Agriculture Organisations (FAO) regional ofike In Bangkok.
The Asia-Pacific region has the world's two most populous nations, China and India, and to hnme to nearly 60 per emt
of the world's 5.2 billion people. But the region was less than one-third of the arable land Jn the world.
Asia is fast running out of arable land for cultivation. But tn response lo population pressure and scarcity of .farmland, many countries are going for Bigger and more frequent harvests.
Asia's average population growth rate Is 1.9 per cent year, but Ils cereal production is still growing al three per cent . "This sounds good," Dent says. "Bui can we con-tinueto do so? Can this growth in agriculture production be sustained?"
What experts are worried about is that Asia will not only have to keep feeding more and more people on a finite area of arable land, but it will have lo do so on over-used soil that I* getting poorer and poorer In cMcrMta* nutrients
Twenty years ago, scientists developed new high-yield varieties of wheat and rice seeds that helped Asian countries with fast-growing populations avert famine.
The miracle seeds unleashed a 'green revolution.' Bui critics say the seeds had to be pampered by expensive and ecologically harmful fertilizers and pesticides to yield big harvests.
Some agronomists are worried about the bad press that artificial fertilizers have been geiting.They say chemical fertilizers are essential In replenishing nitrogen, phosphates and potash that frequently harvested soils lose.
They favour a balance between chemical and organic fertilizer's to replace nutrients lost from the soil.
The FAO has studied the removal of nutrients from soils In Bangladesh. Indonesia.
Nepal Pakistan and Sri Lanka and has found that there is serious depletion vital ingredients.
"In India analysis ... showed that a declining trend in productivity was occurring, even with the application of mineral fertilizers under modern Intensive farming conditions/ said a report.
In China's intensively cultivated farms, FAO found a big drop th the content of organic-matter in the soil,' which it said could not be remedied by topping the soil off with chemicals.
Besides nitrogen, phosphates gnd potash, which are essential for crop growth, intensive agriculture Is also taking away indispensable micronutrients like zinc and sulphur.
In Bangladesh, zinc pnd sulphcr deficienc y has hit up lo one-third of the soil And in
the last 20 years, organic matter tn the country's once-fer-tite delta farms has dropped by half.
Faced with falling productivity, impoverished farmers are moving Into forests with unsuitable soils or up steep and fragile mountain slopes. Resulting erosion caused by heavy monsoon rains Is blecd-Ihg the land, reducing agriculture yield.
The FAO office in Bangkok has been surveying land degra dation in Asia-Pacific countries. and has come out with a report that shows serious soil loss tn countries that need to grow food most.
In China , land damaged by win water erosion make up 30 per cent of the total area. Nearly half of Jndla's total arable land Is similarly de graded. Vietnam. Thailand and Nepal also have high soil
erosion rales.
In a report published earlier this year called womb of the earth' FAO says countries need to ensure balanced and efficient application of fertilizer lo compensate nutrients lost from soils that arc being used constantly to yield bigger harvests.
The report recognises that technological fixes alone will not slop soil impoverishment: "Orthodox soil conservation techniques alone cannot combat situations where degrade tion stem* from overwhelming socio-economic pressures '
It spy* high-inten*lty agri culture can have an irreversible environmental Impact on the land, and argue* that low input, mixed farming *y* tern* combined with effort* to reform land tenure law*, farm pricing and marketing could be more *u*tainablc and ensure equity