QOf all the environmental problems emerging in ♦ recent years, which needs the most urgent attention of President George Bush? A The potential for climate change on a global scale is most ♦ worrisome. Climate change results from the rising world consumption of fossil fuels and the deforestation associated with population growth. The average man and woman will see the eventual economic consequences of these forces in terms of rising food prices. Ultimately, then, we can say the issue is food, and that in turn is rooted in climate, energy policy, and population policy. That configuration of issues, and their causes and effects, will increasingly come to dominate our worries in the 1990s. * • Art by Barbara Kreft Design by Connie Baker Q . Is it due to changes In all three countries, or is it concentrated in any one? A. All three. In the United States, we are in the process of retiring 11 percent of our cropland, converting it either to grassland or woodland under the Conservation Reserve Program. This involves 40 million acres of highly erodible land that cannot sustain cultivation indefinitely, as it ’s now being farmed. So, we’re trying to save at least some of its productive capacity that way. The Soviet Union does not have a conservation reserve program, and since 1978, they have lost 13 percent of their grain land. They don’t systematically retire it, they just keep plowing it until it ’s not worth plowing anymore. Q is this just a fluke because of ♦ drought, or a steady downtrend? A. A downtrend. Almost every year since 1978, cultivated area in the Soviet Union has decreased. Now, if they’ve actually lost 13 percent of their grain land over the last decade because of erosion, you have to assume there is a substantial additional amount that is s till being eroded, but has not yet reached the point where it ’s not worth plowing anymore. In China, the loss of cropland — about 7 percent over the last decade —is due not so much to erosion as to mounting demands from the nonfarm sector. According to the World Bank, China’s rate of industrial growth, since 1980, has been about 1214 percent per year, which means that literally thousands and thousands of new factories are being built every year. Most of China’s 1.1 billion people are in the 1,000-mile belt on the eastern and southern coasts of the country. Factories have to be built where the people are; the people are where the cropland is; and much of the land tha t’s being claimed by factories, warehouses, and access roads is good cropland. One of China’s great scarcities in recent decades has been housing. And so, as incomes have gone up, everyone and his brother in China has wanted either to add another room or two or build a new home. And again, because the people are spread throughout the countryside where the cropland is, construction has claimed cropland in most cases. So, the Chinese are losing cropland at a rate that is very difficult to offset in terms of higher yields from remaining farmland. This is one reason why China is going to be importing 20 million tons of grain this year, which puts them in third place, after Japan and the Soviet Union. Q . And the Soviet Union, according to yesterday’s news, will import something like 40 million tons? A. Something like that. And that’s about what Japan imports, also. QWhat about the water scarcity ♦ you mentioned? A. In the United States, for example, you see a decline in irrigated area of some 7 percent since 1978. That decline is the result of falling water tables, for the most part. Weak commodity prices and higher pumping costs, particularly for fuel, have also contributed. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently reported that one-fourth of all the irrigated cropland in the United States is being irrigated by drawing down the underground water table by at least a half foot a year. In some cases, the drop is as much as four feet per year. In the Soviet Union, much of its irrigated agriculture is clustered around the Aral Sea in the Asian Republics. The Aral Sea lies on the borders between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and is fed by two rivers, the Amu-Darya and the Syr-Darya. In 1960, before irrigation got seriously underway, the Aral Sea contained an estimated 10 billion tons of salt. But as the two rivers that feed the Aral Sea were diverted for irrigation, the water inflow into the sea fell below the evaporation rate. So the sea began to shrink. As a result, one fishing port, Muynak, is now thirty miles from the coast. The sea has lost 60 percent of its water and 40 percent of its area, and that process is continuing. Because much of the sea bed is now dry and covered with salt, winds blow up salt storms just like desert sand storms. As a result, a sand/salt mix is now being deposited on the land that’s being 22 Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1989-90
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