Habitat destruction

[Stelenes at aol.com]

This seemed pretty germane to our recent discussion of farming, pesticides, 
fertilizers, GMO's, habitat destruction.  Anybody out there with a serious 
save the world suggestion?  The cycle described is: Farmland stops producing, 
loses structure and becomes desert.  New healthy habitat burned and clear 
cut.  New land gives out and becomes desert....cycle repeats

Of course, I heard that many thousands of years ago the Sahara Desert was 
lush and wet until our species learned how to farm.  The same thing happened 
and humans apparently left the fertile crescent and north of Africa for 
Europe, Asia and points south to find fresher lands to farm.  Haiti is a big 
desert now.  It didn't used to be.  Too bad people adapt so quickly.  If the 
Amazon goes, will many tears will be shed 20 years afterwards?

I was just in the Mendocino National Forest in northern California.  The 
clear cutting has definitely increased.  A very unique habitat, the kind your 
heart speeds up when you think about butterflying in, a special one I felt 
privileged to discover last spring, was infested with trucks and over logged 
this time.  Dusty and destroyed for real.  It hit me like a brick on the 
nose.  I called the Forest Service about this infestation of chainsaws and 
they acknowledged the increases (by the way the trees were hundreds of years 
old, now a rarity).  They said "they are on private land within the Forest."  
(Great, I guess that means I was trespassing and had no business there, 
although it sure looked like National Forest and was not marked private) So I 
asked why all the trucks were on the Forest Service access road, FH-7.  The 
answer "We rented the company the rights to use our road."  My reply: Is it 
the Forest Service's job to assist in the destruction of trees?"  They said, 
"Yes."  I said, "Please don't build any more roads."  They said, "Sorry."  I 
said, "Sorrier than you can believe unless you were there."

I hope the Mexico does a better job than the Americans...

Happy butterflying (While you can).  Doug Dawn.
Woodland, CA
Desertification and Overfarming Scar Mexican Land

By JULIE WATSON
.c The Associated Press 

LOS TEJOCOTES, Mexico (June 18) - Mixteco Indian farmers used to bury 
cigarettes, candy and a cactus-based brew called pulque in their cornfields 
to give thanks to the land.

Over the last few years, the age-old tradition has died out.

''There's no reason to anymore because the land no longer gives,'' said 
Policarpo Bautista Salazar, 56.

Bald hillsides scarred with deep gullies glare down at Los Tejocotes, named 
after the native fruit trees that once grew in abundance here in the southern 
state of Oaxaca. Only a few trees remain from the thick forest that blanketed 
the mountains.

All across Mexico, farmers are discovering the same thing: The land no longer 
gives.

The U.N. Environmental Program says Mexico loses an average of 870 square 
miles of arable land each year to desertification - forests or jungles 
transforming into barren land. It is caused mainly by overlogging, 
overfarming and overgrazing.

Faced with infertile soil, about 900,000 people leave Mexico's arid and 
semiarid lands every year, the U.N. program says. Many wind up in the slums 
of Mexico's overcrowded cities.

If desertification continues at its current rate along with the population 
growth, the country that introduced the world to corn may be unable to feed 
itself in 30 years, scientists say.

''If Mexico doesn't revamp its agricultural policies, we are going to face 
desertification of barbaric proportions,'' said Juan Estrada Berg Wolf, a 
scientist with Mexico's National Commission on Arid Zones.

Any change is unlikely soon. The three leading candidates in the July 2 
presidential election propose more farm production with no plans for healing 
the land, Estrada said.

More than 60 percent of Mexico's farmland is severely degraded, the National 
Institute of Geographic Statistics and Information says. An additional 30 
percent is in varying stages of ecological decay.

Down the road from Los Tejocotes, the tiny village of Guadalupe Llano Grande 
clings to the brittle earth.

Elderly farmers poke at the exhausted land as if goading a stubborn mule.

''Over there is the last field I've had to abandon,'' said Pedro Pablo 
Martinez, 70, pointing with a broken machete to an area behind the 
community's half-built church.

The village is among the poorest in Mexico. In the church's basement is a 
statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe with a dollar bill in her praying hands. 
Next to her is a crucifix of what people say is ''The Christ of Safe 
Travels.''

''We ask them to make sure nothing happens to those who've left to seek a 
better life,'' Martinez said.

Guadalupe Llano Grande is a town of elderly men, women and small children, 
its young people gone in search of better lives. Martinez's sons all went to 
California. Two wash dishes at restaurants; the third was killed five years 
ago by gang members in Los Angeles.

Decades of too much logging, farming and grazing has ruined the land, said 
Estrada, who is conducting a study analyzing the correlation between 
government policies and land degradation.

The government knew decades ago that if its farmers continued to pump the 
land with chemicals to boost production the soil would eventually collapse, 
but officials refused to consider more restrained practices, Estrada said.

''This is big business,'' he said. ''The policies have supported the 
quasi-state and multinational companies that sell the improved seeds, 
chemical fertilizers, pesticides and machinery.''

They also support the political parties, Estrada said. The government farm 
aid program, Procampo, puts local leaders in charge of distributing vouchers 
for farmers to buy the products at a discount.

''But if you don't vote for them, you're not going to see your voucher,'' 
farmer Bautista Salazar said.

Farmers have nicknamed the program ''PRIcampo,'' alluding to Mexico's 
long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI by its Spanish initials.

''The program opens the doors to a lot of manipulation to benefit those in 
power,'' Estrada said.

Pascacio Taboada, spokesman for the Agriculture Secretariat said it is 
possible irregularities occur, given that Procampo has 714 support centers 
that distribute about $1 billion to more than 3 million farmers each year. 
But he insisted such occurrences are rare since the program is monitored by 
the farmers themselves, who elect local Procampo representatives.

''The system works,'' he said. ''You can bet if someone believes they are 
getting ripped off that they report it.''

He disputed contentions that the secretariat's policies are designed to 
benefit agrochemical businesses and political powers. The government has 
reduced pesticide use and promoted organic farming wherever possible, Taboada 
said. But, he added, the bottom line is production.

''Our goal is to make use of our natural resources for the benefit of man. I 
suppose we could leave the land alone, which would be best for the 
environment, but then how would we produce?'' he said. ''I don't deny that 
the resources are running out, but the demand is growing. We can't wait.''

Alejandro Santiago Salazar, a Mixteco farmer, started using fertilizers in 
the early 1970s when officials came to this isolated region as part of the 
Green Revolution, a campaign started in Mexico in 1944 to combat world 
hunger. Sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, it promoted new seed 
varieties, fertilizers and pesticides to boost grain yields.

During the first few years, Salazar's corn production boomed. But over time, 
the Oaxacan land, which had been farmed for thousands of years, became a 
chemical junkie, requiring stronger fertilizers and more pesticides to 
produce.

Heavy fertilizer use disrupts the ecological balance. It overdoses the land 
on nitrogen, causing the soil to shut down its natural production of 
nutrients, Estrada said.

The nitrogen also kills humus, a spongy, slow-decomposing organic material 
that not only provides nutrients to soil but also increases the soil's 
ability to hold water, curbing runoff, he said.

The new plant varieties introduced under the Green Revolution also brought 
more pest invasions, requiring more pesticides.

''Fertilizer burned the land, and now we can't grow anything without it,'' 
Salazar said.

Fertilizer is a key demand of the People's Revolutionary Army, a leftist 
guerrilla group in Oaxaca and Guerrero. In April, the Campesino Organization 
of the Southern Sierra in the state of Guerrero blocked city hall in the 
state capital for a week to demand 500 tons of fertilizer.

Estrada said the answer to restoring land lies in Mexico's past, when farmers 
grew crops suited for each region's ecosystem, and in manual labor, organic 
material and longer fallow periods.

For instance, farmers grew corn with beans in the same field. Beans replace 
the nitrogen that corn depletes from the soil. Pre-Hispanic farmers also did 
not use plows, which break down the soil's structure, Estrada said.

In addition, they let fields rest for more than a decade. While that is no 
longer feasible, Estrada believes that if growers used less fertilizers and 
more organic material the land could heal with shorter fallow periods.

''It's possible the Mexican countryside can recover,'' he said. ''But it'll 
take a fight.''

Many farmers are just quitting.

The states with the greatest land degradation also have the highest rates of 
migration. In Guanajuato, 43 percent of the land is degraded, while more than 
a quarter of the land in Jalisco and Michoacan is spent.

In Oaxaca, Mexico's southernmost state, 75 percent of the towns are losing 
population. Land erosion is the principle reason, according to a report last 
October to the Mexican Senate from human rights organizations.

A leading Mixteco expert, anthropologist Michael Kearney of the University of 
California, has watched fertile Oaxacan fields turn into bedrock over the 
years - and has seen the young leave.

''They either have to migrate or starve,'' he said.

Copyright 2000 The Associated Press.