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African Soil Mapped For the Very First Time
vikingpower writes "A team of international experts has drawn up the Soil Atlas of Africa — the first such book mapping this key natural resource — to help farmers, land managers and policymakers understand the diversity and importance of soil and the need to manage it through sustainable use. A joint commission of the African Union and the European Union has produced a complete atlas of African soils, downloadable as three hefty PDFs (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3). The initiative was announced four years ago, and is intended 'to help farmers, land managers and policymakers understand the diversity and importance of soil and the need to manage it through sustainable use.' A digital, interactive series of maps is (still) in the making."
After reading the summary, I wonder if this could help farmers, land managers and policymakers understand the diversity and importance of soil and the need to manage it through sustainable use
I hate it when a summary repeats itself. I hate it when a summary repeats itself.
Or it could cause regional or tribal wars with people trying to get the best land for themselves.
Why should virgin forest be destroyed because of a soil map? The virgin forests are probably undisturbed because they exist in remote locations. Are there large agricultural corporations in Africa looking for land? Otherwise it would probably be too expensive for a subsistence farmer to deal with financial and other costs with clearing the land and establishing a farm.
Totally ignorant on this point, but I'm not aware of a correlation between forest land and underground minerals valued in the mining industry.
Chances are the map will point out the degraded farmlands and allow better planning for restoration. There might well be some destruction of virgin forest, but what about grasslands that are still in their native state? In the U.S., it's native prairie that's lost 99% of its area before European settlement. And most of that was to agriculture.
"To stop the terrorists."
I love virgin forests, it gives me wood
no comment
The only reason You would map someone else's soil is to decide if it's worth invading them to take it away.
This *is* about the market (and Western investors jumping onto the land/resources grab to expropriate everything of agricultural value). Imperialists coming in to map your resources is like burglars snooping around to case a joint --- "we're just peeping through the windows to help survey the quantity and location of valuables in this house."
Improving agriculture through scientific management of soil resources can be a good thing --- but the good is gained when this knowledge is *disseminated to help the people,* not *concentrated to help the wealthy.* Instead of mapping soils to fill a comprehensive UN almanac, spread resources (simple equipment and knowledge) so that *local communities* can *map their own soil,* and manage/improve their own resources (no need to centralize the information on a continental scale). Investors in London, Berlin, and New York should not be the ones to know soil conditions --- the farmers and communities *living on top of the soil* are the ones who should be empowered to collect and interpret this information.
When done as part of a long, slow cycle of rotating between different locations --- where patches of land have decades to recover between burnings --- "slash and burn" agriculture is actually a highly sustainable system (that has worked continuously for hundreds to thousands of years in some parts of the world). The problem is when slash-and-burn traditions are combined with corralling traditionally wide-ranging groups of people onto tiny demarcated sections of land ("why should those stupid peasants need all that empty forest they aren't using at all?") --- so the same parcel of land gets burned over and over, without recovery, and rapidly is turned into desolate wasteland.
Or it could cause regional or tribal wars with people trying to get the best land for themselves.
The people that live there already know where the best soil is. Something to be said for living hundreds of generations the continent.
Its probably outsiders that need these maps, you know like agribusiness or something.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Or it could cause regional or tribal wars with people trying to get the best land for themselves.
The people that live there already know where the best soil is. Something to be said for living hundreds of generations the continent.
Its probably outsiders that need these maps, you know like agribusiness or something.
you would be surprised how short the memory can be! especially how short the memory can be with ethnic cleansing of your tribe having happened in the past 50 years.
that is, many tribes don't know shit about what's 40 km away from where they live. it didn't matter to them anyways - and know practically nothing of the history of the soil 30 km away from them.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Quite incredibly they import foodstuff, in the colonial years they exported plus the local market was much better served.
Their biggest problem is the size of the subsistence plots and the lack of proper registration of land owner ship, present governments in the area are as a rule not exactly efficient on such subjects.
But maybe the Chinese can use this map to buy some national and local politicians in areas with a good prospect for large scale farming, something western companies are reluctant to do.
With proper management Africa can increase it's present food production at least five-fold, a win for the local people and the whole world.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
This map and it's resources are publicly available, any one can use it, to start with the local governments of Africa.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."