Capitalism-Friendly Explanations of Soil Degradation

Abstract

Afeature article to a National Geographic special on soils (Mann 2008) begins with a photograph of a showcase soil conservation success story from the Coon Creek catchment, SW Wisconsin (U.S.). This is contrasted on the following page with another photograph from the loess Plateau of Northern China, a landscape ripped apart by massive gullies tens of meters deep. This is followed by images of people associated with different land uses and soil in four countries: U.S., China, Niger, and Syria. The story starts with Wisconsin farmers operating heavy equipment that tends to result in soil compaction. The next stop is Dazhai, famous for the controversial self-reliance farming campaign of the 1960s, where replacing forests with cereal crops eventuated in a soil erosion disaster. Successful counterbalancing experiences since the 1980s at Gaoxigou, not too far from Dazhai, are quickly recast as largely ineffective because of inadequate or perverse incentives imputed to centralization (cf. Ho 2003). The reader is then whisked away to the Sahel and introduced to the prolonged drought that turned huge areas into famine-provoking degradation. Thankfully, the reader is spared invectives against pastoralists (the livestock overstocking thesis) that used to pervade writings on the Sahel.