• HOME
  • SECTION 1
    • Beef Exports Up 44% In 4 Years
    • Transforming A Nation With The Lowest Meat Consumption In The World
    • Massive Nationwide Drive - To Establish New Slaughterhouses And Modernize Existing Ones
    • Pink Revolution - A Historic Policy Shift, Unprecedented In India’s History
    • Subsidies And Tax Rebates - On Meat Processing And Export
    • Rail Minister Signs Order To Resume Cow Carriage Trains
    • White Lies And Blatant Cover-ups
    • Factory Farms Coming To India In A Big Way
    • Government’s Push For Livestock Business - Killing The Soul Of The Nation
    • Promoting Export Of Meat Will Kill Livestock-Driven Farming
    • Rant To Legalize Cattle Smuggling On Bangladesh Border
    • India-Pak Livestock Export Deal
    • Recognition And Awards To Meat Exporters
    • Locking Horns Over Culture And Business
    • The New Livestock Policy - A Policy Of Ecocide Of Indigenous Cattle Breeds And A Policy Of Genocide For India’s Small Farms
    • Cow Raids The Most Lucrative Profession In India
  • SECTION 2
    • Culture of Animal Killing And Meat Consumption - Lying At The Heart of Resource Depletion And Environmental Destruction
    • ‘32% Of Land Affected By Degradation In India’ And A Fourth Of India Turning Into Desert: ISRO Study
    • Report On Land Degradation
    • India’s Vanishing Groundwater
    • Lessons From China - For India’s Mao Zedongs On The True Cost of Livestock Farming
    • Causes Of Land Degeneration
    • Agrochemical Degeneration Of Land
    • GE Crops Help Destroy Soil Fertility
    • Global Soil Change - As Serious As Climate Change
    • World’s Land Turning to Desert at Alarming Speed, United Nations Warns
    • 38% of World’s Land in Danger of Turning into Desert
    • Soil Depletion - Plant, Animal And Human Health Deterioration
  • SECTION 3
    • Civilizations - Founded On Soil, Erosion Destroys Civilizations
    • Soil Replenishment And Survival of Civilization
    • Soil Conservation - Deserves The Highest National Priority
    • Soil - The Earth’s Capital
    • Nature’s Methods Of Soil Management
    • Transformation Of A Farmer Into A Bandit
    • The Agriculture Of The Nations Which Have Passed Away
    • The Practices Of The Orient
    • The Agricultural Methods Of The West
    • Death Of Soil - A Result Of The Policy Failure
    • What Romans Could Teach Us About Soils And Climate Change
  • SECTION 4
    • Living In Harmony With The Web of Life
    • Life With Animals - The Ultimate Survival Strategy
    • One Old Man With A Bucket Of Cow Dung - On A Mission To Save India’s Soil
    • Cow Represents Earth And Life
    • Vital Role Of Cattle Manure In Maintaining Soil’s Organic Matter
    • Organic Matter In Soil - Best Defense Against Erosion And Water Shortages
    • Earthworm - Our True Friend
    • The Importance Of Farmyard Dung - In The Beginning Days, Even Fertilizer Companies Admitted It
    • Importance Of Humus In Soil Preservation - And Role Of Farmyard Dung In Humus creation
    • Land Restoration In India’s Conflict Zones
    • Grazing - A Time-Honored Agricultural Practice
    • Zero Budget Farming - All You Need Is One Cow
    • The Fragrance Of Nature In Balance
    • Story Of Life And Death - A Tale Of Two Farmers
    • Cow Dung On The Face Of Monsanto And Its Agents In The National Capital
  • SECTION 5
    • National Policies - Made In Boardrooms As Parliament Takes A Backseat
    • Dynamics Of World Hunger
    • Rush To Control India’s Food Supply
    • Too Powerful - For Being Just A Firm
    • Profit - The Only Thing That Matters
    • Countries On Sale - Gold Rush For The Lands In The Third World
    • Making A ‘Banana Republic’ Of India
    • Why Fears Of A Foreign Hand Are Real
    • India’s Tryst - With Multinational Corporations
    • MNCs - Bigger Than Their Assets
    • Globalisation Of Corruption - Further Case Studies
    • Manipulating Public Opinion - Public Relations, Marketing and Advertising
    • Corporations - The Centrally Planned Economies
    • Corporations - Bringing About Inequality And Unemployment
    • Corporate Welfare - Publicly Funded
    • Patenting The Life
    • Lobbying - The Prime Corporate Pastime
  • SECTION 6
    • Food Emergency - How The World Bank And IMF Have Made African Famine Inevitable
    • Africa - Food Crisis Is A Policy Crisis
    • Financial Terrorism - Americans Milk Africa To Death
    • A Heartbreaking Journey - Through The Famine-Stricken Territories
  • SECTION 7
    • India - A Genocide In Progress
    • Displacing Farmers - India Will Have 400 million Agricultural Refugees
    • Eugenics - And Foul Smelling Government Policies
    • Eugenics in the United States - A Dark Chapter Of Corporate History
    • Nazi Eugenics -Under The Able Tutelage of Uncle Sam
    • Life Unworthy Of Life
    • Eugenics After World War II
    • The ‘Problematic’ Countries
    • USDA Funded Project - To Create A GM Corn That Sterilizes People
    • Unethical Human Experimentation In The United States
    • U.N. - Complicit in Forced Sterilizations
    • Social Darwinism
    • Vaccines Can Help Reduce World Population: Bill Gates
    • The Population Control Agenda
    • India - Poisoning of A Nation
    • Food Fascism - When It Is A Crime To Produce Your Own Food
    • You Can Be Jailed - For Selling And Drinking Farm Fresh Milk
    • Judge: Americans Don’t Have Right to Drink Cow Milk, No “Fundamental Right to Produce and Consume Foods”
    • GM Crops Only Answer To Nation’s Food Security - Indian Government’s Affidavit To Supreme Court
    • Organic Farmers’ Kick On Big Ag’s Face - And Government’s Deliberate And Criminal Ignorance Of Indigenous Technologies
    • Exit The Cows, Enter The Monsanto
    • In Praise Of Cowdung
    • Isavasya (God-centered) Farming
  • AUTHOR
  • OTHER BOOKS
India Against Meat Export

30.
Soil Replenishment
And Survival of Civilization


         The history of preceding civilizations and cultures indicate the imbalances that have developed when minerals have been permanently transferred from the soil. There are only a few localities in the world where great civilizations have continued to exist through long periods and these have very distinct characteristics.
         It required only a few centuries, and in some profligated systems a few decades to produce so serious a mineral depletion of the soil that progressive plant and animal deterioration resulted. In such instances, regular and adequate replenishment was not taking place.
         In nature’s program, minerals are loaned temporarily to the plants and animals and their return to the soil is essential. In the case of a forest system, this replenishment is made by its plant and animal life automatically. But in case of agriculture, we have to make a conscious effort to do it. A few intelligent civilizations have done it but the balance of the cultures have largely failed at this point.
         Another procedure for the replenishing of the depleted soils is by the annual overflow of great river systems which float enrichment from the highlands to the lower plains. This is illustrated by the history of the rivers like the Ganges or the Nile which have carried their generous blanket of fertilizing humus and rich soil over their long course and thus made it possible for the plains to sustain a very dense population. Where human beings have deforested vast mountainsides at the sources of these great waterways, the whole situation has reversed.
         For example in China, its two great rivers, the Yangtze and the Yellow River have their source in the isolated vastness of the Himalayas in Tibet and through the centuries have provided the replenishment needed for supporting the vast population of the plains. Because of this natural replenishment, the Chinese have been exceedingly efficient in returning to the soil the minerals borrowed by the plant and animal life. Their efficiency as agriculturists has exceeded that of the residents of many other parts of the world.
         But this is no longer so. Under the pressure of industrial progress, more and more of the highlands have been denuded. The forests have been ruthlessly cut down. Vast areas that nature had taken millenniums to forest have been denuded and the soil has been washed away in a few decades. These mountainsides have become a great menace instead of a great storehouse of plant food material for the plains.
         The heavy rains now find little impediment and rush madly toward the plains, carrying with them not the rich vegetable matter of the previous era, but clay and rocks. This material is not good. Instead of replenishing the soil, it covers the plains with a layer of silt many feet deep, making it impossible to utilize the fertile soil underneath.
         We have only to look over the departed civilizations of historic times to see the wreckage and devastation caused by these processes. The rise and fall in succession of such cultures as those of Greece, Rome, North Africa, Spain, and many districts of Europe, have followed the pattern which we are now pursuing with great pride, under the illusion of progress.
         The complacency with which the mass of the people as well as the politicians view this trend is not unlike the drifting of a merry party in the rapids over a great water fall. There seems to be no sense of impending doom.
The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from great courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again to bondage and into oblivion.
-Sir Alex Fraser Tytler

         It is apparent that the present and past one or two generations have taken more than their share of the minerals and have done so without duly returning them back. Thus they have handicapped, to a serious extent, the succeeding generations. It is not easy to replenish the minerals in the soil and it practically takes many centuries to accumulate another layer of topsoil.
         This constitutes one of the serious dilemmas. A program that does not include maintaining this balance between population and soil productivity must inevitably lead to disastrous degeneration. Over-population means strife and wars.
         The history of many civilizations has recorded a progressive rise while civilizations were using the accumulated nutrition in the topsoil, and a progressive decline when these civilizations were destroying these essential sources of life. Their cycle of rise and fall is strikingly duplicated in our present industrial culture.
‘The most successful and long lasting human cultures are those which have lived on nature’s income rather than nature’s capital.’
Picture
  • HOME
  • SECTION 1
    • Beef Exports Up 44% In 4 Years
    • Transforming A Nation With The Lowest Meat Consumption In The World
    • Massive Nationwide Drive - To Establish New Slaughterhouses And Modernize Existing Ones
    • Pink Revolution - A Historic Policy Shift, Unprecedented In India’s History
    • Subsidies And Tax Rebates - On Meat Processing And Export
    • Rail Minister Signs Order To Resume Cow Carriage Trains
    • White Lies And Blatant Cover-ups
    • Factory Farms Coming To India In A Big Way
    • Government’s Push For Livestock Business - Killing The Soul Of The Nation
    • Promoting Export Of Meat Will Kill Livestock-Driven Farming
    • Rant To Legalize Cattle Smuggling On Bangladesh Border
    • India-Pak Livestock Export Deal
    • Recognition And Awards To Meat Exporters
    • Locking Horns Over Culture And Business
    • The New Livestock Policy - A Policy Of Ecocide Of Indigenous Cattle Breeds And A Policy Of Genocide For India’s Small Farms
    • Cow Raids The Most Lucrative Profession In India
  • SECTION 2
    • Culture of Animal Killing And Meat Consumption - Lying At The Heart of Resource Depletion And Environmental Destruction
    • ‘32% Of Land Affected By Degradation In India’ And A Fourth Of India Turning Into Desert: ISRO Study
    • Report On Land Degradation
    • India’s Vanishing Groundwater
    • Lessons From China - For India’s Mao Zedongs On The True Cost of Livestock Farming
    • Causes Of Land Degeneration
    • Agrochemical Degeneration Of Land
    • GE Crops Help Destroy Soil Fertility
    • Global Soil Change - As Serious As Climate Change
    • World’s Land Turning to Desert at Alarming Speed, United Nations Warns
    • 38% of World’s Land in Danger of Turning into Desert
    • Soil Depletion - Plant, Animal And Human Health Deterioration
  • SECTION 3
    • Civilizations - Founded On Soil, Erosion Destroys Civilizations
    • Soil Replenishment And Survival of Civilization
    • Soil Conservation - Deserves The Highest National Priority
    • Soil - The Earth’s Capital
    • Nature’s Methods Of Soil Management
    • Transformation Of A Farmer Into A Bandit
    • The Agriculture Of The Nations Which Have Passed Away
    • The Practices Of The Orient
    • The Agricultural Methods Of The West
    • Death Of Soil - A Result Of The Policy Failure
    • What Romans Could Teach Us About Soils And Climate Change
  • SECTION 4
    • Living In Harmony With The Web of Life
    • Life With Animals - The Ultimate Survival Strategy
    • One Old Man With A Bucket Of Cow Dung - On A Mission To Save India’s Soil
    • Cow Represents Earth And Life
    • Vital Role Of Cattle Manure In Maintaining Soil’s Organic Matter
    • Organic Matter In Soil - Best Defense Against Erosion And Water Shortages
    • Earthworm - Our True Friend
    • The Importance Of Farmyard Dung - In The Beginning Days, Even Fertilizer Companies Admitted It
    • Importance Of Humus In Soil Preservation - And Role Of Farmyard Dung In Humus creation
    • Land Restoration In India’s Conflict Zones
    • Grazing - A Time-Honored Agricultural Practice
    • Zero Budget Farming - All You Need Is One Cow
    • The Fragrance Of Nature In Balance
    • Story Of Life And Death - A Tale Of Two Farmers
    • Cow Dung On The Face Of Monsanto And Its Agents In The National Capital
  • SECTION 5
    • National Policies - Made In Boardrooms As Parliament Takes A Backseat
    • Dynamics Of World Hunger
    • Rush To Control India’s Food Supply
    • Too Powerful - For Being Just A Firm
    • Profit - The Only Thing That Matters
    • Countries On Sale - Gold Rush For The Lands In The Third World
    • Making A ‘Banana Republic’ Of India
    • Why Fears Of A Foreign Hand Are Real
    • India’s Tryst - With Multinational Corporations
    • MNCs - Bigger Than Their Assets
    • Globalisation Of Corruption - Further Case Studies
    • Manipulating Public Opinion - Public Relations, Marketing and Advertising
    • Corporations - The Centrally Planned Economies
    • Corporations - Bringing About Inequality And Unemployment
    • Corporate Welfare - Publicly Funded
    • Patenting The Life
    • Lobbying - The Prime Corporate Pastime
  • SECTION 6
    • Food Emergency - How The World Bank And IMF Have Made African Famine Inevitable
    • Africa - Food Crisis Is A Policy Crisis
    • Financial Terrorism - Americans Milk Africa To Death
    • A Heartbreaking Journey - Through The Famine-Stricken Territories
  • SECTION 7
    • India - A Genocide In Progress
    • Displacing Farmers - India Will Have 400 million Agricultural Refugees
    • Eugenics - And Foul Smelling Government Policies
    • Eugenics in the United States - A Dark Chapter Of Corporate History
    • Nazi Eugenics -Under The Able Tutelage of Uncle Sam
    • Life Unworthy Of Life
    • Eugenics After World War II
    • The ‘Problematic’ Countries
    • USDA Funded Project - To Create A GM Corn That Sterilizes People
    • Unethical Human Experimentation In The United States
    • U.N. - Complicit in Forced Sterilizations
    • Social Darwinism
    • Vaccines Can Help Reduce World Population: Bill Gates
    • The Population Control Agenda
    • India - Poisoning of A Nation
    • Food Fascism - When It Is A Crime To Produce Your Own Food
    • You Can Be Jailed - For Selling And Drinking Farm Fresh Milk
    • Judge: Americans Don’t Have Right to Drink Cow Milk, No “Fundamental Right to Produce and Consume Foods”
    • GM Crops Only Answer To Nation’s Food Security - Indian Government’s Affidavit To Supreme Court
    • Organic Farmers’ Kick On Big Ag’s Face - And Government’s Deliberate And Criminal Ignorance Of Indigenous Technologies
    • Exit The Cows, Enter The Monsanto
    • In Praise Of Cowdung
    • Isavasya (God-centered) Farming
  • AUTHOR
  • OTHER BOOKS