For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s Environment and Climate Resource Center page and our Organic Transitions page.

The first talk to kick off the Savory Institute International Conference held in Boulder, Colorado last week was by the institute’s founder, Allan Savory.

Savory began his talk by explaining that he’s been addressing the subject of desertification for fifty years.

He rattled off soil erosion numbers. . . “our planet is losing 80-100 billion tons of soil per year,” calling that

“the most frightening statistic in the world.”

He named some of the factors related to this soil loss, which included the burning of grasslands around the world, the loss of forests, the loss of biodiversity, and the silting of continental shelves.

Then, he explained to us that because healthy soils are an important natural reservoir of water, today we have a big problem of decreased effectiveness of rainfall due to degraded and eroded soil. This is caused by agricultural practices, not by climate change. Because healthy soils sequester Carbon, large soil losses and resting soils have led to a reduced capacity to mitigate climate change.

So, agriculture is more destructive than coal mining or anything else going on in the world today.

He questioned why people aren’t more aware of these facts, and then, proceeded to answer how we got ourselves into this situation.

He explained that the change began in the grasslands of the world when early humans developed plants and animals for food which altered or eliminated the grasslands. And, he explained that humans shelve their problems for future generations.

He went on by listing three problems that are causing an acceleration of these wrong agricultural practices: population growth; exploding technological advances; and a modern educational system which divides knowledge into parts so that we no longer see the whole.

Savory was on a roll here already, when next, he said he doesn’t understand why something that makes no sense, like turning 40% of the U.S. corn crop into ethanol is a policy, and there are so few people who protest it.

He questioned a system where not one dollar is spent saving soil but we spend billions looking for new oil reserves. “The world is leaderless,” he said.

He warned that, “Worse wars will be fought over water than oil.”