Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 14
Illness and Death of Soils
14.1
Can the Soil Be Ill?
The ability of soils to produce more and more foods for mankind and for animals
kept by mankind is not limitless, and the increase rate of this production appears
slower than the rise of the number of people on our planet Earth. When the two
types of increase are plotted versus future time, the two curves shall eventually cross
each other. See Fig. 14.1 .
Additionally, our humane aspects say that we have to decrease substantially the
percentage of undernourished people, and this requirement reduces the critical time
when the two curves cross each other. Our aim should be to shift the time of cross-
ing as far to the future as possible, while the percentage of undernourished and
starving people would sink to zero.
Immediately, we must ask a primary question: Are our recent attempts - or more
appropriately speaking, attempts of politicians - to produce and harvest plants for
manufacturing a portion of green energy really rational, essential, and prosperous
for mankind? With our cozy and cushy lifestyle requiring a strong rise of energy
production, a new branch of industry appeared, named green energy that we as
authors prefer to call alternative energy. The word green could be misunderstood
and thought to be identical with using plants as a source of energy production called
biofuels. However, several industry experts believe that by 2050, biofuels could
provide at least 25-35 % of the world's transport fuels. The technology is based
partly on direct burning of crop wastes and partly on biomass gasifi cation. It means
that sugar, traditionally used as a constituent of food, is converted to biodiesel.
Other types of conversion processes use yeast fermentation, bacteria for producing
biodiesel from cellulosic materials, and algae as a potential biofuel feedstock.
The production of biofuels leads the alternative or so-called green energy indus-
try into a blind alley. The misuse of soil as a medium in energy production instead
of that for feeding mankind is equivalent to a soil illness brought into the natural
process as an infection by irresponsible technologists and politicians. Their recent
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