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Introduction:

Unsustainable agriculture and animal husbandry are, together with the cutting down of forest and destruction of vegetation in general are main reasons for erosion all over the world. The nutrients in the fertile topsoil are either washed or blown away, creating a huge problem of impoverished soils.<br />
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Erosion leads to huge amounts of soil being washed out in rivers and streams. This leads to floods in rainy seasons, as the river beds further downstream are raised by the sediments piling up. When there are excess rains, then the rivers burst their banks and create havoc in the surrounding river plains.<br />
The lifetime of hydropower plants is also being shortened because the water reservoir gets filled up with sediments much faster than expected.<br />
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A number of farmers are seeing that it is not sustainable in the long run to deplete the soils and have turned to various forms of minimum tillage systems. In the USA and Brazil about half of the agricultural crop land is now tilled with systems that use no or little plowing. This is good for the soil, because the soil is not constantly being turned around, but gets a chance to build up the amount of organic material.<br />
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The tillage method has reduced the amounts used of some of the most dangerous herbicides. Some farmers have learned to use minimum tillage systems without the use of poisons - by intercropping, using crop rotation and biological systems to fight pests. However most farmers using the reduced tillage systems use large amounts of Monsanto&#39;s product Roundup. This works by killing any plants touched by some drops. Monsanto has genetically engineered crops such as soy beans and wheat so they are not affected. This means that the farmer can plant the crop in the stubble of the old crop, and when the seeds have germinated, the Roundup is sprayed all over, leaving only the crops to quickly cover the field.<br />
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Minimum tillage has been good in reducing erosion. Like any of the other agricultural practices that build up carbon stores in the soil, such as all kinds of organic farming, this reduces the amount of carbon that ends in the atmosphere that would otherwise contribute to global warming. The problem is that no one knows what damages the toxic Roundup does to soils, and to waters to where it is washed, and especially how organisms react in the long run to this poison in mixture with the many others out there.<br />
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So, again we see one of the short-term solutions of the current capitalist system.<br />
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It is possible to produce the same amount of food per hectare without using the poisons. It would create so many more jobs, would improve health to unimaginable levels and would reduce costs of treating all the people getting sick of handling pesticides or from consuming unhealthy food.

Directive:

<div style="margin-left: 40px;">1.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Read the following pages in "Erosion Control in the Tropics": p. 6 - 27.<br />
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2.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Train yourself to be able to demonstrate the effects of erosion at a public event or to other people &ndash; for example by comparing the water running off from a container with bare soil and one with soil covered with a layer of straw, when you shower the containers with water.<br />
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3.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Select one of the agricultural practices that can be used to reduce soil erosion and train yourself to be able to explain the following:</div>

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a) the damaging effects of erosion<br />
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b) the benefits of using this specific method you have selected<br />
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c) what is needed to use this agricultural practice</div>

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4.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Try out your demonstration and explanations on some colleagues, and improve if necessary.<br />
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5.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Write a summary of your explanations and descriptions, and send to your tutor, together with an indication of when and where you plan to use these.<br />
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Files:

<div style="margin-left: 40px;">F1.&nbsp; Erosion Control in the Tropics excerpts, Agrodok-series No. 11, by Hil Kuypers, Anne Mollema, Egger Topper,<br />
content: control erosion, reduce erosion, ecological benefit, sustainable agriculture, animal husbandry, cutting down forest, destruction of vegetation, nutrients in soil, crop, land, organic material, herbicides, biological system, pests, Monsanto, toxic, Roundup, tillage, organic farming</div>
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