An Overview of Indonesias Soil Sickness Essays -- Agriculture Agricul

An Overview of Indonesias Soil SicknessThe proper example of the worlds soil to provide food for the worlds increasing population is becoming an progressively more important issue. In the tropical rain-forests, especially, the depletion of the natural ecological body has caused massive destruction to the rain-forests soil, thereby impeding agricultural development. One of the stereotypes which is fostered by a concern for the proper use of the rain-forest habitat is that all scold and burn agriculture -- or swidden agriculture -- is detrimental to the rain-forest habitat, and should be halted completely. bit swidden agriculture has caused large amounts of damage to the rain-forest as a whole, the problem lies non with swidden agriculture itself, but rather with the circumstances under which it is carried out. Tropical soils argon able to survive, and indeed thrive, when swidden agriculture is executed properly. In Indonesia, examples of both repair and incorrect swidden agricu lture methods hatful be found. The Indigenous peoples, who put on been utilizing reduce and burn methods of agriculture for centuries, properly burn and farm small plots of land, art object letting soils regenerate plots which have recently been farmed. The peasant population of Indonesia, on the other hand, has snatched to swidden agriculture by default, and utilizes the land only for short-run gain. The result is the depletion of the soil to an extent where it may never be utilized again. Two different methodologies of the same agriculture can have drastically different effects on the soil why this is, and the specific processes mixed in the soil which either deplete or enhance its calibre will be examined in the following pages. In conclusion, ... ...k to colonize new, agriculturally fringy lands. Severe environmental disruption results... (Goodland, 1984 183). In order to save its soils, Indonesia ineluctably major land reform policies, or social contracts which will let peasants an alternative to swidden agriculture. Until then, no amount of terracing, placing fertilizers in the soil, reducing slope, or irrigation can undo the damage to tropical soils. Unless something is done quickly, tree cover in the rain-forests may be replaced altogether by imperata savannah grass which threatens to turn Indonesia into a green desert (Geertz, 1964 24). On a larger scale, bankruptcy to address the issue of soil depletion in Indonesia may result in the insufficiency of foodstuffs for the Indonesian people. As Edmund G. Brown, Jr. said, Many past civilizations have fallen with their forests and eroded with their soils.