The ever Growing Desserts of the World! The Earth is about to become Mars Like!

By, Uwe Paschen.

An Old saying states, “that forests came before human beings, deserts followed them.” Desertification is becoming a major problem as more and more of the world's land surface is turned into desert. The new deserts, which are being created, are not necessarily hot, dry sandy places, but are instead any areas where the soil has been so mistreated by humans that it is now useless for growing crops. You may think that this does not affect us in the Western World after all; it is too wet and cold for a desert to be formed here. That may be true, but Desertification does still happen and this at an alarming fast pace. Just think about it and put two and two together. If our soil is not conserved, then our food supply and all our lives are threatened.

Through out History Humanity has contributed and caused desertification, by abusing and mismanaging the Earth resources and disturbing the at times rather fragile balance of Nature.

The Incas and Aztecs have caused desertification due to monocultures and especially due to the fact they grow Corn or also called Maize in large quantities, a crop the by it self depletes the top soil and does not give any thing back, not the sort of plant one should be planting in great numbers and on large surfaces! We do repeat the Incas mistake today even though we should know better!

Yet after the Second World War we where left with large quantities of Bomb and ammunition, that now one really knew what to do with, so we made fertilizer with it and convinced the Farmer to use it to grow Corn, since Corn does require a rather large amount of nutrients to grow. Now with all that Corn we needed to find new applications for it and started making sugar, starch, flower, syrup and even fuel from it!

All to keep the Chemical industry and Corn production alive! Yet, at the same time this sort of agriculture does deplete our soils and even causes obesity and other illnesses in the Population because Corn is actually rather unhealthy as a food for Humans and Animals alike! Yet, with in 60 years it is fund just about anywhere and everywhere! Contributing to the desertification of our great land and slowly bringing us down as it did with the Aztecs and Incas!

However, this is only one aspect of modern desertification and the expansion of old and new desserts! The second would be our Life stocks and choice of Life stock, Cattle, Horses and Pigs as well as Chicken are by far the worth contributor to the destruction of already fragile top soils and eco systems! The demand for meat and meat products is causing great stress on the eco system and contributes to the desertification of South America as well as North America and Australia!

North America and the Amazon will most likely be total dessert with in the next 20 to 40 years and look more like Mars then the Earth that we know today! UN studies have been warning of this now for over 20 Years! Yet, the Money machine does seem to matter more than the survival of the next Generations and Life on Earth!

Other Desserts such as the African Sahara and the Arabian Dessert have been around for many Thousands of years, yet, have been expending mainly due to Human activity and abuse of an already delicate eco system! Once even the Sahara Dessert was a futile land and rich as well as Bio diverse! Yet a delicate eco system that could not survive Human expansion nor domesticated animals trampling the land and preventing new growth in an area of the World could not heal fast enough for the damage inflicted by Human and climatic activity!

The next cause of modern desertification is Pollution and climate change again due to Human activity and abuse. Those changes are so drastic in some areas that the eco system has no time nor the means to adapt, especially since we have already strained it to the maximum!

So just how big a problem is desertification? Estimates suggest that 35% of the earth's land surface is at risk, and the livelihoods of 850 million people are directly affected. 75% of the world's drier lands - 45,000,000 square kilometers are affected by desertification, and every year 6,000,000 hectares of agricultural land are lost and become virtual desert. The Sahara is thought to be advancing southwards by about 5-10 kilometers per year, which is a very considerable amount, when you remember that the Sahara is 5,150 kilometers across at its widest point

We do strive to reach Mars and make the Planet Mars Earth Like, yet in the mean time we make the Earth Mars like! It may be easier a more effective to preserve the Earth and change our ways instead!

Who knows maybe we or some like us did to Mars what we are doing to the Earth today! Our knowledge is rather limited and small at best, It may very well have been Humanoid’s that like a cancer have destroyed Mars as we are now destroying the Earth!

Next: How to fight Desertification!