Scary, third of arable land lost in only 40 years

[T-oddity]

I'm finding this a really interesting thread, udoubtedly modern farming practices are un sustainable and it has been going on since the end of WWII, my father was an agricultural engineer all his working life, when he saw what was being done with chemicals back in the 60's he chose to grow our own food organically, I continued with that practice and have had an allotment for the best part of 20 years, 4 years ago I moved to a no dig method of gardening, it took 3 years for the soil to really change from what was a light sandy soil over a rocky limestone sub soil that compacted in winter and readily dried out in summer, to what it is now which is like a thick damp sponge that you can work all year round and retains water far longer when it is dry in summer. It has taken many trailer loads of horse muck to get it to this state though.

Farmers are begining to wake up to their situation and are trying to find better ways to grow crops without damaging the soil, here is a small piece that I was reading recently:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-03/fu...ve/6996950