by Raymond Alexander Kukkee

Created on: August 10, 2009   Last Updated: August 11, 2009

An environmental tragedy is occurring across North America virtually unnoticed. A fallacy, an idea seemingly fostered and encouraged by large chemical companies, is that lands used for the production of agricultural crops never have to be fallowed. North American agribusiness conglomerates insist that by using their products, artificial fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, agricultural lands can be planted and cropped annually, maximizing farm income, without any interruption in cropping each year. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Unfortunately, many farmers originally bought into this dream and applied chemicals heavily to their soils for years and wondered why the soil was deteriorating. Much wonderful and productive agricultural land has already been destroyed. When soils begin to deteriorate, use of chemicals demands that increasingly more artificial fertilizer be used every year to maintain the same production and in extended practice, accelerates the destruction of the soil.

Thinking farmers, the wise stewards of the land, are increasingly and admirably, learning of the harm done by perpetual, heavy chemical usage and have started using environmentally smarter farming methods that involve using less chemical and more natural methods which are less destructive. Similar to any drug addict with a dependency, the land must be weaned off of chemicals.

Anecdotal evidence of the harm done by chemical agriculture abounds across North America. Excessive and continual chemical use results in highly compacted, barren mineral soil no better than poor quality, silty mud containing few nutrients and has no friable tilth, or soil structure.

Such soil contains little or no organic material, tends to compact as hard as cement, and has few natural microbes or beneficial soil inhabitants such as earthworms or beetles. With no organic material remaining, the barren, chemically-overloaded soil has little capacity for holding natural moisture from rainfall. The soil is in rapid decline and dies.

Why? The industrial chemicals and fertilizers overload and systemically poison the soil, killing the natural flora and fauna. The soil subsequently loses all organic matter and packs to a layer of hardpan. The soil does not hold water, so artificial nitrates run off with rainwater into the nearest waterway, polluting tiny streams, great rivers, and lakes.

In areas of high concentrations of fertilizers, algal blooms abound in waterways, and underground aquifers are

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