Soil crisis is holding back African recovery

The fertility of Africa’s soil is being depleted at a rate that threatens to undermine the continent’s attempts at eradicating hunger with sustainable agricultural development.

..”With little access to fertilisers, the farmers are forced to bring less fertile soils on marginal land into production, at the expense of Africa’s wildlife and forests.” Julio Henao and Carlos Baanante of the non-profit International Centre for Soil Fertility and Agricultural Development in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, found that during 2002 to 2004 about 85 per cent of African farmland was haemorrhaging mineral nutrients at an annual rate greater than 30kg per hectare, and 40 per cent of farmland was losing nutrients at the higher rate of 60kg per hectare a year.

The Independent