Soil physicist Hillel (Univ. of Mass.) has consulted around the
world on issues of erosion, irrigation, and soil and water
management. Here, he makes clear that abuse of the environment is
nothing new. Exploitation, Hillel explains, has occurred since
earliest prehistory and took a momentous leap with the development
of agriculture: "Contrary to the idealistic vision of prophet
Isaiah, the plowshare bas been far more destructive than the
sword." The highly productive irrigated agriculture of the
Tigris-Euphrates and Nile valleys led to the insidious problem of
land degradation; environmental abuses such as deforestation,
overcultivation, and overgrazing were important contributing
factors to the fall of the Roman Empire; and intensification of
agriculture, with its consequent leaching, erosion, and silting,
might explain the Mayan collapse. Today, the old "man-induced"
scourges are repeated on a larger scale along with new problems
from pesticides and fertilizer residue; domestic and industrial
wastes, including toxic chemicals; and practices causing global
climate change and wholesale extinction of species. Among Hillel's
examples of the "unforseen yet fateful" environmental consequences
of human intervention are the saline seep phenomenon in Australia
(the delayed result of land clearing a century earlier), the
current crisis of irrigated fanning in California, the disastrous
disappearance of the Aral Sea in Soviet Central Asia, the Great
Plains "Dust Bowl" phenomenon of the 1930's and its current
counterpart in sub-Saharan Africa, where an ecological catastrophe
is in the making. Worldwide, reform is difficult when the reward of
exploitation is cash in hand but the fatal consequences are distant
and general. Worse, says Hillel, our economists have contributed to
the mismanagement by placing financial considerations over
environmental concerns. Yet sustainable agriculture is possible, he
says, and he ends on a note of "conditional optimism." An
enlightening overview from an interesting perspective. (Kirkus
Reviews)
As the crucible of life, the source and final resting place of
everything that grows, soil inspires reverence not only in the
peasant who derives his daily bread from it, but also in the
scientist who contemplates its meaning as the place where life and
death meet and exchange vital energies. "Out of the Earth" is the
culmination of the author's long career in conservation. This
history of man's use and misuse of soil and water combines a
description of the complex inner processes that form soil with a
lyrical assertion of its powers and significance.
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