April 6, 2010 • 22 mins
Josh and Chuck discuss the problem of desertification, from what causes serious degradation of dryland ecosystems to possible ways to repair the damage, in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Charles W. Chuck bryant Y. How's it going? Oh, you know, Josh,
(00:24):
it's Monday. I don't think recording on mondays on either.
In the stupid room that you hate. My head hurts
to Jerry's all bummed out. What a wife? What are
we doing? I don't know. This isn't a big upper
of a topic either. The desertification, Yeah, maybe it's a
good thing. We're not in like some chipper mood. Yeah.
I think you're right because, as you know, Chuck, desertification
(00:46):
is one of the overlooked I think problems crises facing
humanity right now. Yeah, man, big time, Especially here in
the cushy US, especially in the very lush Southeastern US.
It's kind of easy to overlook. And we had like
a pretty huge drought a couple of years ago. Uh,
(01:06):
and you know we're like, oh no, we have slightly
less drinking water than we did before. Right, Well, there
were some other slight issues. We had some uprooting of
trees and such. Sure there was that. Uh, there wasn't
nearly as much boating or jet skiing as usual, which
I'm sure affected a lot of the gas stations around
some of the lakes. Right. There were probably some impacts
(01:28):
here and there that we didn't think about. Um, And
you're probably right. But it's also even easier to overlook
some of the impacts that take place during desertification in
some of the more marginalized societies in the world, right
for sure, So what are we looking at? I think
it's like of the people who live in areas that
(01:50):
are at risk of desertification are um, the poor under
the undeveloped countries, right right, Josh, it's about two billion people,
and for these people there's a kind of a slightly
more problems than not being able to jet ski as
much as one would like. Um. I think the infanmortality
rate is about ten times that of an industrialized nation, um,
(02:14):
and something like twenty four thousand people die every day
from starvation. A lot of these people are found in
desertified areas, right right, Let's get to the nitty gritty
of this, Chuck. What is desertification. I'm just gonna say
it in my words, desertification is when um uh natural
(02:39):
things take place and then man made things take place
to cause essentially what is the degradation of the soil
itself to where it will erode, things won't grow there,
and basically you're left with a barren desert landscape. That's
Chuck's definition. That's a good definition, Chuck. It's dead on.
(03:00):
The two chief processes that hasten desertification are um poor
soil management right and overuse of the land. Right. This
land is not meant to have lots and lots of
people and cattle grazing, not people grazing obviously, people farming
(03:21):
grazing right, and um with the land we're talking about
specifically or Sarai semi arid regions right right, And we
have one of those here in the United States. You
wouldn't think of it because it's artificially managed, but the
Great Plains are semi arid um And because of those
uh man made interventions like over use UM and intensive
(03:45):
farming techniques that didn't and not observing soil conservation, we
actually did experience desertification a century. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly
what happened. We got all these new fangled farming equipment
and said, hey, we're kind of poor because the depression
is coming up, and um, we need to use all
(04:05):
this stuff to really farm a lot. And that's what happened.
And then the dust bowl happened, and uh, but we
got it back well there there, Well, there was this
perfect storm that happened actually in the in the Midwest
in the late twenties. Since there was the Roaring twenties,
everybody was making tons of cash and farmers um started
borrowing heavily. Uh, and then the depression hit, much like today,
(04:28):
UM values of land dropped, the prices of UM commodities,
including agricultural products dropped, and people started having trouble making payments,
banks foreclosed. At the same time, the farmers were hit
really really hard financially. They were also hit really really
hard naturally because as they tried to step up farming
(04:52):
to increase yields, UM all they did was stripped the
land of its nutrients. And it became the this vicious
cycle where the harder they tried to cold stuff from
the land, the worse off it got. And then all
of a sudden, nothing would grow will bringing a drought,
which is the second component mother nature lending a hand,
(05:14):
and well, not a hand, a backhand. And uh, that's
when the dust bowl occurred, and we were in bad
shape in the Great Plains for a long time. Yeah.
Apparently these things were like the dust storms that came up.
Like trains would miss their stops in the middle of
these things because they couldn't see. Um. It's static electricity
is easily generated by these particles. So cars would stall. Um.
(05:38):
So people started dragging chains behind them to ground the
cars to keep them from stalling. Um. People would put
wet sheets up over their windows and like you would
have drifts of dust, like in your house with all
the doors and windows closed, it would still get in.
It was everywhere. Yeah, it was bad, bad news, bad times. Right,
So we got it back, we did it. Yeah, the
(06:01):
Great Plains farming once again, rich soil once again. And
that's a little teaser because we can we can combat this,
but we'll we'll get to that at the end. Right.
So it's happened here, it's happening in other places. It's
actually happening at a pretty rapid pace, isn't it. Chuck, Yes,
Josh stats are you calling for stats? Uh? New deserts
are growing at a rate of twenty thousand square miles
(06:22):
a year. And when you consider that half of the
total land mass of the Earth is dry land, intend
that land is already degraded, then it's not looking good. No,
it's not. And there's not a lot of processes in
place right now that are going to stop this. Although
we have a pretty clear picture of what's causing this, right,
(06:44):
like we said, poor soil conservation. Yeah, it's pretty easy
actually when you look at it's not like the most
complicated problem. Well, let's talk about the problem first, like,
what's what's going on? What's what causes desertification. Well, if
you're talking ecosystems like the human by and like any
living thing, you're looking for balance. What's the word we
used in the so an ecosystem wants balance as well,
(07:08):
and anything to throw it out of balance is not good,
which is what happens with desertification. When you get in
frequent rainfall, you lose um, what's called humus, which is
the really good organic top soil you want that plant
and animal material. Right, So, bobcats walking along gets struck
(07:30):
by lightning, falls over under the ground. What's going to
degrade and and be eaten by microbes and then turned
into humus which supports soil. Yeah, we're talking carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus,
all these things that make your top soil really fertile. Right,
And there's nothing wrong with the semi arid region like it.
It's not a desert. You don't want to confuse the two.
(07:53):
The problem is when humans come in and say we
really need this land, this semi arid land, and we're
going to over use it, then it does become a desert.
And it becomes overused, um by not rotating crops, um,
by not using or over using chemical fertilizers, not composting
like you should, right exactly, and um kind of irresponsible
(08:16):
irrigation techniques right, allowing for runoff that kind of stuff.
The problem is is, like you said, humus is so
essential that if you if you strip the soil of
its humus, no matter how much rainfall comes along, it's
not going to restore that balance. Even worse, the rainfalls
is going to carry the soil away, just eroads it further,
(08:39):
which is the problem. So what are some of the
things that we're doing to to the semi arid regions.
Let's say a bunch of people suddenly come to a
semi arid region and say, we're gonna start farming here.
What are some of the uses of this land that
that can be problematic, well, grazing, grazing of cattle, like
(08:59):
irris sponsible grazing. What happens is a lot of poor
people might migrate to an area because their area has
been degraded. So you have a mass migration of people
that will bring in all their cows, so they're over
using the land. All of a sudden, the cows are grazing,
and you know, you can't fault them for saying it's
irresponsible grazing because they're trying to survive and they eat
(09:19):
all the grass. Let's say grasses is in trees are
essential for holding that top soil together, so once that's gone,
or firewood was another one, right, yeah, because if they're
looking for firewood, right, if you're using that fuel, then
they do like crazy, You're gonna cut down trees because
there's your fuel right there. And when you cut down
a bunch of trees, you actually um make the land
(09:41):
much more reflective, which dries out the atmosphere. It causes
more evaporation UM. And also once you lose that the
anchor for the soil, the soil gets kicked up as dust.
So the combination of that more UM, that drier climate,
plus the dust in the air means it's harder for
putation to form, making the the area even more arid. Yeah,
(10:03):
like compounds on itself. Sure, I got I got a
stat I was telling you that the mass migration of
people UH in the ninety nineties, dry land regions UM
grew eighteen point five percent in population. I mean, these
are places that shouldn't have that many people there anyway,
they're probably already overtaxed. Then mass migration happens, and it's
just a recipe for disaster, right, And the problem is
(10:25):
humans migrate a lot faster than land can be restored. Right.
So you you're you move from one place to another,
use that place up, you move to the next one. There,
there's you're eventually going to run out of places to move. Yeah, right,
that's what's happening. It is, And it's easy to overlook
here in the US, although I don't think we should,
(10:47):
because we we do have very um, we have really
good irrigation techniques in the Great Planes these days. But
if you look at it, it's we're not there's not
a bunch of people living on the Great Plains. It's
pretty sparsely populated. But humans in the US are virtually
represented on the Great Plains because you've got one percent
(11:08):
of Americans farming for the rest of America, right, So
there's like a virtual demand on that land through farming
because it produces the food we eat. So we may
not be living there, but we're using that land just
as if we were indigenous people all living on the
Great Plains. And the water that's used there actually is
virtually exported elsewhere, right, So we're we're putting in water
(11:33):
inputs there, it's growing, and we're taking that that water
basically and exporting it to the places where we eat
that food because we don't have to use the water here.
So it's like a virtual export of water. Interesting. Well,
the other thing to being American is we import a
lot of our food because we can afford to do so,
so we get food from all over the world. One
of the things that exacerbates the desertification is these migrating
(11:57):
poor people. They're rying on the natural ecosystem around them
pretty much only right, they can't afford to. Sometimes you
in regents where they just can't import anyway. Plus they
can't afford to because prices are skyrocketing for like wheat
and soy, So they need to use the grass that's
behind them and the cow that's eating it, and the
(12:19):
little tiny river full of dirty water. Because if you're
cutting down trees for fuel, you're probably not exporting a
lot of stuff. I got another staff for you. You're
ready to be creeped out. Uh, fifty million people will
be displaced by desertification in the next ten years and
I saw that, so says people in planet dot net.
That's a lot of people. That's a lot of people,
(12:41):
and they're going to places like we said, that's not
aren't necessarily you know, fertile oasis anyway. So it's just
making everything worse. And again, if you don't have the
money to import food, you don't have the money to
virtually import water. Hence the thousand people that die every
day of starvation, yeah every day. Wow, it's very sad.
(13:03):
Stat Like you said, the chuck um, So just let's
provide a quick recap, right, you've got a semi arid
region that looks kind of lush, you know, it doesn't
look like a desert. You come in, you start planting,
you use too much chemical fertilizer, you overgraze, you cut
down trees for fuel. You're and you're making a living.
(13:26):
A few people can do this and it can be sustainable,
but when too many people start doing it, then the
the humus is lost in the soil and uh, the
land starts reflecting back into the sky. So precipitation goes down,
the soil is loose, storms blow in and you've got nothing.
You have desert, erosion and desert. Yeah, how do you
(13:47):
combat this? Well, Josh, it's not easy. It's actually fundamentally easy,
but it's hard because not enough people are taking part,
and it's such a it needs to be done in
such a massive scale, right, Exactly what you have to
do is start at a grassroots level, That's what they say,
and you need to go in there with people like
the u N I know as a group will plug
(14:08):
them in a second. And you go in and you
teach these people long term benefits, teaching them to think
long term as far as rotating crops terracing the land
proper irrigation techniques so they're not so shortsighted and just
trying to get the crops this year. You gotta teach them.
That's hard to do. That's what we did in the
UM late thirties and early forties. The federal government UM
(14:31):
was like, wow, we our nation's bread basket is a desert.
Now we have to do something. But they determined that
they couldn't constitutionally force farmers to use improve soil techniques.
So they turned to the states to basically force them
to and they created soil conservation districts UH and made
it virtually free to farm and and undertake these soil
(14:55):
conservation techniques. So they're like, we're gonna provide you with
everything you need. Just do this right. UM. Use contour
plowing to to trap water better when you arrogate. UM.
The federal government also planted between nineteen thirty five and
nineteen forty two hundred and eighty five thousand miles of trees. Yeah.
That's a huge one because trees not only do they
(15:17):
help keep the soil together with the root system, but
they block the wind, and the wind causes a lot
of erosion Yeah, this is all easier done in America. Obviously,
you got we got our work cut out against us
for developing nations. Well yeah, and but China, I mean,
they're they're starting to get a little more cash in
their pocket than they have before. And they have a
huge problem with desertification. Is the Gobi is creeping closer
(15:40):
and closer towards Beijing. Apparently dust storm from the Gobi
that covers Beijing are some of them are so enormous
that they can be detected in the States. Yeah, big
dust storm. It is. China is taking action though. They
built a or there in the process of planning a
three thousand mile long belt of trees along the edge
(16:02):
of the Gobi, which is gonna help. And um, I
think what other countries doing that? And uh oh along
the Sahara Desert they're gonna they're trying to build a
similar like they're calling it a green wall, right, And
there's a German company, actually it's not a company, they're
out of Bremen University. Um. They figured out that if
you take coffee sacks like jute sacks, um fill them
(16:24):
with this uh this kind of gel that can hold
like a thousand times it's wede in water or something
like that. Seeds compost and uh it is it's like
a huge seed bomb. You can drop them out around
the desert and they will or at least a semi
arid region and they will take root, uh after just
(16:46):
a few rainfalls. You can also put them in between
trees and just leave the trees and those trees will grow.
I think they had success rate with the type of
holly tree that they were trying to grow. They plant
two of them and then put one of these bags
in between them. Yeah, that's awesome. Um. The other thing
I thought was cool in the article was that the
(17:08):
writer talked a little bit about sometimes the old traditional techniques,
the ancient techniques, they were like really on target with
what they were doing, and sometimes a modern way doesn't
work as well. So in Spain, uh, and a British
company has been renovating in a one thousand year old
Moorish irrigation system. Yeah. How cool is that? It's just
cool that there's a thousand year old irrigation systems. Yeah, Chuck,
(17:32):
there's um. I mean, unless you feel like going to
China or subs are in Africa and plant trees, there's
not a lot you could do. Is like the stuff
you should know listener, right, except yeah, Um, one of
the one of the key ways of preventing desertification or
(17:53):
slowing it, I guess is encouraging um indigenous societies to
look for alter native means of sustaining themselves. I guess
besides farming and agriculture, right, and you know there's things
like growing herbs and uh things you can make oil
extracts from and using them soaps and stuff like that.
(18:15):
So I guess if you wanted to do something here
in the States or in Norway, you would maybe kind
of look for something like that and start buying them
on mass online. Does your does Emily sell those on
Love Your Mama? Well, she sells around soaps, but she doesn't.
Does she use oils from the Gobi or anything? No,
she tries to buy local. Actually, right, that's not local. No, No,
(18:37):
it's not that local. I'm gonna shame her for not
shipping in her essential oils from the Guppy consort. Right.
You got anything else on desertification? Yeah, just if you
want to read a little bit more on how you
can participate or at least support and write letters that
kind of thing. Uh. The u n has a cool site,
the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, and that is
u N C C D DOT I N T and
(19:01):
you can click on action programs and that's programs spelled
with two ms and any. Yeah, British, they're silly that way,
so it's pretty cool. You can click on action programs
and they have it. There isn't one action program because
it's got to be very specific to the land. So
you click on that and you can go to Africa
and you can go to a subregion of Botswana and
find out like you can download a pdf to see
(19:23):
exactly what they're trying to do. So cool, it's kind
of cool just to educate yourself. Or you can start
collecting juke coffee bags and mail them to Bremen University.
Here you go if you want to know more about desertification,
arguably the greatest crisis humanity faces. Right now, you can
type that word and remember just one s in the
handy search bar at how stuff worst dot com, which
(19:45):
means it's time for a listener mail. Indeed, Josh, I'm
gonna call this those crazy wacky Aussies. Okay, we have
a lot of AUSI listeners. We hear from them quite
a bit, and uh, they're they're wacky people and we
need to make it down there at some point, although
I don't think you could ever stomach that flight, could you.
(20:08):
I'm going to Japan. It's fourteen hours. Good luck. Uh.
This comes from Chris from Australia. I listen to your
podcasts all the time. I'm sure it's a clinical addiction.
And I thought you needed to know about cow pat latto.
You know what a cow pad is. It's poop, yeah,
cow pie, cow poop. Cow pat latto is recognized but
(20:28):
certainly not common event in rural Australia where a paddock
is plotted into sections. I don't know what you would
call it. I don't know, an area of land. Maybe
you call it a paddock. That's what he says. That's
what I've always called So they split it into sections.
That's all done on paper like a Cartesian coordinate. Gamblers
will bet their money on a particular portion of said paddock.
(20:49):
When it's decided that it's time to get on with
the game, a farm animal, traditionally bovine you know what's coming,
is thrown in the paddock gamblers and other locals and
sit around, eating and drinking and generally making merry and
wait for said bovine to take a crap. So when
the aforementioned cow has uh taking his poopoo, its coordinates
(21:10):
are taken and the winner is whoever's plot the poopoo
has landed in. Obviously, prizes I don't know, maybe the money.
Maybe they wait for a second and third prize, although
this would indicate an unhealthy cow. It keeps going, and
maybe they get a turkey or a meat tray, or
a slab of beer or something where I get confused. Wait,
(21:32):
a slab of beer is that a case? I don't know.
Maybe it's Australian for cakes right. Anyway, it's generally used
as a fundraiser, like a local raffle, so it's like
a fundraising thing. And then she said there's like ladies
having baked sales and the guys are all sitting around
getting hammered. Basically, generally it's a great excuse for us
suck more And that is an Australian synonym for a
(21:55):
shin dig, a hoot nanny, a party, or a booze up.
They call it a suck more Okay, so that's from
Chris Australia red Hair. Nice. Thanks Chris. So now we
know about desertification and suck mors. Yes, if you have
an interesting term you wanna introduce chucking eye too, chucking
me to one of those two? Uh? Send it in
(22:17):
an email to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house. Stuff works dot
Com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two
(22:41):
thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Charles W. Chuck bryant Y. How's it going? Oh, you know, Josh,
(00:24):
it's Monday. I don't think recording on mondays on either.
In the stupid room that you hate. My head hurts
to Jerry's all bummed out. What a wife? What are
we doing? I don't know. This isn't a big upper
of a topic either. The desertification, Yeah, maybe it's a
good thing. We're not in like some chipper mood. Yeah.
I think you're right because, as you know, Chuck, desertification
(00:46):
is one of the overlooked I think problems crises facing
humanity right now. Yeah, man, big time, Especially here in
the cushy US, especially in the very lush Southeastern US.
It's kind of easy to overlook. And we had like
a pretty huge drought a couple of years ago. Uh,
(01:06):
and you know we're like, oh no, we have slightly
less drinking water than we did before. Right, Well, there
were some other slight issues. We had some uprooting of
trees and such. Sure there was that. Uh, there wasn't
nearly as much boating or jet skiing as usual, which
I'm sure affected a lot of the gas stations around
some of the lakes. Right. There were probably some impacts
(01:28):
here and there that we didn't think about. Um, And
you're probably right. But it's also even easier to overlook
some of the impacts that take place during desertification in
some of the more marginalized societies in the world, right
for sure, So what are we looking at? I think
it's like of the people who live in areas that
(01:50):
are at risk of desertification are um, the poor under
the undeveloped countries, right right, Josh, it's about two billion people,
and for these people there's a kind of a slightly
more problems than not being able to jet ski as
much as one would like. Um. I think the infanmortality
rate is about ten times that of an industrialized nation, um,
(02:14):
and something like twenty four thousand people die every day
from starvation. A lot of these people are found in
desertified areas, right right, Let's get to the nitty gritty
of this, Chuck. What is desertification. I'm just gonna say
it in my words, desertification is when um uh natural
(02:39):
things take place and then man made things take place
to cause essentially what is the degradation of the soil
itself to where it will erode, things won't grow there,
and basically you're left with a barren desert landscape. That's
Chuck's definition. That's a good definition, Chuck. It's dead on.
(03:00):
The two chief processes that hasten desertification are um poor
soil management right and overuse of the land. Right. This
land is not meant to have lots and lots of
people and cattle grazing, not people grazing obviously, people farming
(03:21):
grazing right, and um with the land we're talking about
specifically or Sarai semi arid regions right right, And we
have one of those here in the United States. You
wouldn't think of it because it's artificially managed, but the
Great Plains are semi arid um And because of those
uh man made interventions like over use UM and intensive
(03:45):
farming techniques that didn't and not observing soil conservation, we
actually did experience desertification a century. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly
what happened. We got all these new fangled farming equipment
and said, hey, we're kind of poor because the depression
is coming up, and um, we need to use all
(04:05):
this stuff to really farm a lot. And that's what happened.
And then the dust bowl happened, and uh, but we
got it back well there there, Well, there was this
perfect storm that happened actually in the in the Midwest
in the late twenties. Since there was the Roaring twenties,
everybody was making tons of cash and farmers um started
borrowing heavily. Uh, and then the depression hit, much like today,
(04:28):
UM values of land dropped, the prices of UM commodities,
including agricultural products dropped, and people started having trouble making payments,
banks foreclosed. At the same time, the farmers were hit
really really hard financially. They were also hit really really
hard naturally because as they tried to step up farming
(04:52):
to increase yields, UM all they did was stripped the
land of its nutrients. And it became the this vicious
cycle where the harder they tried to cold stuff from
the land, the worse off it got. And then all
of a sudden, nothing would grow will bringing a drought,
which is the second component mother nature lending a hand,
(05:14):
and well, not a hand, a backhand. And uh, that's
when the dust bowl occurred, and we were in bad
shape in the Great Plains for a long time. Yeah.
Apparently these things were like the dust storms that came up.
Like trains would miss their stops in the middle of
these things because they couldn't see. Um. It's static electricity
is easily generated by these particles. So cars would stall. Um.
(05:38):
So people started dragging chains behind them to ground the
cars to keep them from stalling. Um. People would put
wet sheets up over their windows and like you would
have drifts of dust, like in your house with all
the doors and windows closed, it would still get in.
It was everywhere. Yeah, it was bad, bad news, bad times. Right,
So we got it back, we did it. Yeah, the
(06:01):
Great Plains farming once again, rich soil once again. And
that's a little teaser because we can we can combat this,
but we'll we'll get to that at the end. Right.
So it's happened here, it's happening in other places. It's
actually happening at a pretty rapid pace, isn't it. Chuck, Yes,
Josh stats are you calling for stats? Uh? New deserts
are growing at a rate of twenty thousand square miles
(06:22):
a year. And when you consider that half of the
total land mass of the Earth is dry land, intend
that land is already degraded, then it's not looking good. No,
it's not. And there's not a lot of processes in
place right now that are going to stop this. Although
we have a pretty clear picture of what's causing this, right,
(06:44):
like we said, poor soil conservation. Yeah, it's pretty easy
actually when you look at it's not like the most
complicated problem. Well, let's talk about the problem first, like,
what's what's going on? What's what causes desertification. Well, if
you're talking ecosystems like the human by and like any
living thing, you're looking for balance. What's the word we
used in the so an ecosystem wants balance as well,
(07:08):
and anything to throw it out of balance is not good,
which is what happens with desertification. When you get in
frequent rainfall, you lose um, what's called humus, which is
the really good organic top soil you want that plant
and animal material. Right, So, bobcats walking along gets struck
(07:30):
by lightning, falls over under the ground. What's going to
degrade and and be eaten by microbes and then turned
into humus which supports soil. Yeah, we're talking carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus,
all these things that make your top soil really fertile. Right,
And there's nothing wrong with the semi arid region like it.
It's not a desert. You don't want to confuse the two.
(07:53):
The problem is when humans come in and say we
really need this land, this semi arid land, and we're
going to over use it, then it does become a desert.
And it becomes overused, um by not rotating crops, um,
by not using or over using chemical fertilizers, not composting
like you should, right exactly, and um kind of irresponsible
(08:16):
irrigation techniques right, allowing for runoff that kind of stuff.
The problem is is, like you said, humus is so
essential that if you if you strip the soil of
its humus, no matter how much rainfall comes along, it's
not going to restore that balance. Even worse, the rainfalls
is going to carry the soil away, just eroads it further,
(08:39):
which is the problem. So what are some of the
things that we're doing to to the semi arid regions.
Let's say a bunch of people suddenly come to a
semi arid region and say, we're gonna start farming here.
What are some of the uses of this land that
that can be problematic, well, grazing, grazing of cattle, like
(08:59):
irris sponsible grazing. What happens is a lot of poor
people might migrate to an area because their area has
been degraded. So you have a mass migration of people
that will bring in all their cows, so they're over
using the land. All of a sudden, the cows are grazing,
and you know, you can't fault them for saying it's
irresponsible grazing because they're trying to survive and they eat
(09:19):
all the grass. Let's say grasses is in trees are
essential for holding that top soil together, so once that's gone,
or firewood was another one, right, yeah, because if they're
looking for firewood, right, if you're using that fuel, then
they do like crazy, You're gonna cut down trees because
there's your fuel right there. And when you cut down
a bunch of trees, you actually um make the land
(09:41):
much more reflective, which dries out the atmosphere. It causes
more evaporation UM. And also once you lose that the
anchor for the soil, the soil gets kicked up as dust.
So the combination of that more UM, that drier climate,
plus the dust in the air means it's harder for
putation to form, making the the area even more arid. Yeah,
(10:03):
like compounds on itself. Sure, I got I got a
stat I was telling you that the mass migration of
people UH in the ninety nineties, dry land regions UM
grew eighteen point five percent in population. I mean, these
are places that shouldn't have that many people there anyway,
they're probably already overtaxed. Then mass migration happens, and it's
just a recipe for disaster, right, And the problem is
(10:25):
humans migrate a lot faster than land can be restored. Right.
So you you're you move from one place to another,
use that place up, you move to the next one. There,
there's you're eventually going to run out of places to move. Yeah, right,
that's what's happening. It is, And it's easy to overlook
here in the US, although I don't think we should,
(10:47):
because we we do have very um, we have really
good irrigation techniques in the Great Planes these days. But
if you look at it, it's we're not there's not
a bunch of people living on the Great Plains. It's
pretty sparsely populated. But humans in the US are virtually
represented on the Great Plains because you've got one percent
(11:08):
of Americans farming for the rest of America, right, So
there's like a virtual demand on that land through farming
because it produces the food we eat. So we may
not be living there, but we're using that land just
as if we were indigenous people all living on the
Great Plains. And the water that's used there actually is
virtually exported elsewhere, right, So we're we're putting in water
(11:33):
inputs there, it's growing, and we're taking that that water
basically and exporting it to the places where we eat
that food because we don't have to use the water here.
So it's like a virtual export of water. Interesting. Well,
the other thing to being American is we import a
lot of our food because we can afford to do so,
so we get food from all over the world. One
of the things that exacerbates the desertification is these migrating
(11:57):
poor people. They're rying on the natural ecosystem around them
pretty much only right, they can't afford to. Sometimes you
in regents where they just can't import anyway. Plus they
can't afford to because prices are skyrocketing for like wheat
and soy, So they need to use the grass that's
behind them and the cow that's eating it, and the
(12:19):
little tiny river full of dirty water. Because if you're
cutting down trees for fuel, you're probably not exporting a
lot of stuff. I got another staff for you. You're
ready to be creeped out. Uh, fifty million people will
be displaced by desertification in the next ten years and
I saw that, so says people in planet dot net.
That's a lot of people. That's a lot of people,
(12:41):
and they're going to places like we said, that's not
aren't necessarily you know, fertile oasis anyway. So it's just
making everything worse. And again, if you don't have the
money to import food, you don't have the money to
virtually import water. Hence the thousand people that die every
day of starvation, yeah every day. Wow, it's very sad.
(13:03):
Stat Like you said, the chuck um, So just let's
provide a quick recap, right, you've got a semi arid
region that looks kind of lush, you know, it doesn't
look like a desert. You come in, you start planting,
you use too much chemical fertilizer, you overgraze, you cut
down trees for fuel. You're and you're making a living.
(13:26):
A few people can do this and it can be sustainable,
but when too many people start doing it, then the
the humus is lost in the soil and uh, the
land starts reflecting back into the sky. So precipitation goes down,
the soil is loose, storms blow in and you've got nothing.
You have desert, erosion and desert. Yeah, how do you
(13:47):
combat this? Well, Josh, it's not easy. It's actually fundamentally easy,
but it's hard because not enough people are taking part,
and it's such a it needs to be done in
such a massive scale, right, Exactly what you have to
do is start at a grassroots level, That's what they say,
and you need to go in there with people like
the u N I know as a group will plug
(14:08):
them in a second. And you go in and you
teach these people long term benefits, teaching them to think
long term as far as rotating crops terracing the land
proper irrigation techniques so they're not so shortsighted and just
trying to get the crops this year. You gotta teach them.
That's hard to do. That's what we did in the
UM late thirties and early forties. The federal government UM
(14:31):
was like, wow, we our nation's bread basket is a desert.
Now we have to do something. But they determined that
they couldn't constitutionally force farmers to use improve soil techniques.
So they turned to the states to basically force them
to and they created soil conservation districts UH and made
it virtually free to farm and and undertake these soil
(14:55):
conservation techniques. So they're like, we're gonna provide you with
everything you need. Just do this right. UM. Use contour
plowing to to trap water better when you arrogate. UM.
The federal government also planted between nineteen thirty five and
nineteen forty two hundred and eighty five thousand miles of trees. Yeah.
That's a huge one because trees not only do they
(15:17):
help keep the soil together with the root system, but
they block the wind, and the wind causes a lot
of erosion Yeah, this is all easier done in America. Obviously,
you got we got our work cut out against us
for developing nations. Well yeah, and but China, I mean,
they're they're starting to get a little more cash in
their pocket than they have before. And they have a
huge problem with desertification. Is the Gobi is creeping closer
(15:40):
and closer towards Beijing. Apparently dust storm from the Gobi
that covers Beijing are some of them are so enormous
that they can be detected in the States. Yeah, big
dust storm. It is. China is taking action though. They
built a or there in the process of planning a
three thousand mile long belt of trees along the edge
(16:02):
of the Gobi, which is gonna help. And um, I
think what other countries doing that? And uh oh along
the Sahara Desert they're gonna they're trying to build a
similar like they're calling it a green wall, right, And
there's a German company, actually it's not a company, they're
out of Bremen University. Um. They figured out that if
you take coffee sacks like jute sacks, um fill them
(16:24):
with this uh this kind of gel that can hold
like a thousand times it's wede in water or something
like that. Seeds compost and uh it is it's like
a huge seed bomb. You can drop them out around
the desert and they will or at least a semi
arid region and they will take root, uh after just
(16:46):
a few rainfalls. You can also put them in between
trees and just leave the trees and those trees will grow.
I think they had success rate with the type of
holly tree that they were trying to grow. They plant
two of them and then put one of these bags
in between them. Yeah, that's awesome. Um. The other thing
I thought was cool in the article was that the
(17:08):
writer talked a little bit about sometimes the old traditional techniques,
the ancient techniques, they were like really on target with
what they were doing, and sometimes a modern way doesn't
work as well. So in Spain, uh, and a British
company has been renovating in a one thousand year old
Moorish irrigation system. Yeah. How cool is that? It's just
cool that there's a thousand year old irrigation systems. Yeah, Chuck,
(17:32):
there's um. I mean, unless you feel like going to
China or subs are in Africa and plant trees, there's
not a lot you could do. Is like the stuff
you should know listener, right, except yeah, Um, one of
the one of the key ways of preventing desertification or
(17:53):
slowing it, I guess is encouraging um indigenous societies to
look for alter native means of sustaining themselves. I guess
besides farming and agriculture, right, and you know there's things
like growing herbs and uh things you can make oil
extracts from and using them soaps and stuff like that.
(18:15):
So I guess if you wanted to do something here
in the States or in Norway, you would maybe kind
of look for something like that and start buying them
on mass online. Does your does Emily sell those on
Love Your Mama? Well, she sells around soaps, but she doesn't.
Does she use oils from the Gobi or anything? No,
she tries to buy local. Actually, right, that's not local. No, No,
(18:37):
it's not that local. I'm gonna shame her for not
shipping in her essential oils from the Guppy consort. Right.
You got anything else on desertification? Yeah, just if you
want to read a little bit more on how you
can participate or at least support and write letters that
kind of thing. Uh. The u n has a cool site,
the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, and that is
u N C C D DOT I N T and
(19:01):
you can click on action programs and that's programs spelled
with two ms and any. Yeah, British, they're silly that way,
so it's pretty cool. You can click on action programs
and they have it. There isn't one action program because
it's got to be very specific to the land. So
you click on that and you can go to Africa
and you can go to a subregion of Botswana and
find out like you can download a pdf to see
(19:23):
exactly what they're trying to do. So cool, it's kind
of cool just to educate yourself. Or you can start
collecting juke coffee bags and mail them to Bremen University.
Here you go if you want to know more about desertification,
arguably the greatest crisis humanity faces. Right now, you can
type that word and remember just one s in the
handy search bar at how stuff worst dot com, which
(19:45):
means it's time for a listener mail. Indeed, Josh, I'm
gonna call this those crazy wacky Aussies. Okay, we have
a lot of AUSI listeners. We hear from them quite
a bit, and uh, they're they're wacky people and we
need to make it down there at some point, although
I don't think you could ever stomach that flight, could you.
(20:08):
I'm going to Japan. It's fourteen hours. Good luck. Uh.
This comes from Chris from Australia. I listen to your
podcasts all the time. I'm sure it's a clinical addiction.
And I thought you needed to know about cow pat latto.
You know what a cow pad is. It's poop, yeah,
cow pie, cow poop. Cow pat latto is recognized but
(20:28):
certainly not common event in rural Australia where a paddock
is plotted into sections. I don't know what you would
call it. I don't know, an area of land. Maybe
you call it a paddock. That's what he says. That's
what I've always called So they split it into sections.
That's all done on paper like a Cartesian coordinate. Gamblers
will bet their money on a particular portion of said paddock.
(20:49):
When it's decided that it's time to get on with
the game, a farm animal, traditionally bovine you know what's coming,
is thrown in the paddock gamblers and other locals and
sit around, eating and drinking and generally making merry and
wait for said bovine to take a crap. So when
the aforementioned cow has uh taking his poopoo, its coordinates
(21:10):
are taken and the winner is whoever's plot the poopoo
has landed in. Obviously, prizes I don't know, maybe the money.
Maybe they wait for a second and third prize, although
this would indicate an unhealthy cow. It keeps going, and
maybe they get a turkey or a meat tray, or
a slab of beer or something where I get confused. Wait,
(21:32):
a slab of beer is that a case? I don't know.
Maybe it's Australian for cakes right. Anyway, it's generally used
as a fundraiser, like a local raffle, so it's like
a fundraising thing. And then she said there's like ladies
having baked sales and the guys are all sitting around
getting hammered. Basically, generally it's a great excuse for us
suck more And that is an Australian synonym for a
(21:55):
shin dig, a hoot nanny, a party, or a booze up.
They call it a suck more Okay, so that's from
Chris Australia red Hair. Nice. Thanks Chris. So now we
know about desertification and suck mors. Yes, if you have
an interesting term you wanna introduce chucking eye too, chucking
me to one of those two? Uh? Send it in
(22:17):
an email to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house. Stuff works dot
Com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two
(22:41):
thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you
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