By
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: American scientists have made an unsettling discovery. Crop farming across the
Prairies since the late 19th Century has caused a collapse of the soil
microbia that holds the ecosystem together.
They do not know exactly what role is played by the bacteria. It is a new
research field. Nor do they know where the tipping point lies, or how easily
this can be reversed. Nobody yet knows whether this is happening in other
parts of the world.
A team at the University of Colorado under Noah Fierer used DNA gene
technology to test the 'verrucomicrobia' in Prairie soil, contrasting tilled
land with the rare pockets of ancient tallgrass found in cemeteries and
reservations. The paper published in the US journal Science found that crop
agriculture has "drastically altered" the biology of the land. "The
soils currently found throughout the region bear little resemblance to their
pre-agricultural state," it concluded.
You might say we already knew this. In fact we did not. There has never before
been a metagenomic analysis of this kind and on this scale. Professor Fierer
said mankind needs to watch its step. "We really know very little about
one of the most productive soils on the planet, but we do know that soil
microbes play a key role and we can't just keep adding fertilizers," he
said.
The Colorado study has caused a stir in the soil world. It was accompanied by
a sobering analysis in Science by academics from South Africa's
Witwatersrand University. They fear that we are repeating the mistakes of
past civilisations, over-exploiting the land until it goes beyond the point
of no return, and leads to a vicious circle of famine, and then social
disintegration.
