The Rural Voice, 1986-09, Page 31NEWS
taken its toll. What water isn't tak-
ing, wind is." Sparrow says that
there is only 20 years left of a
viable agricultural industry in that
province.
In Ontario, nearly every possible
form of erosion takes place.
"Wind, water, a little urban ex-
pansion, and in 30 or 40 years it'll
be all over for agriculture."
There are over seven soil
classifications, Sparrow says, and
five can be used for agricultural
purposes. Fifty per cent of #1 and
#2 land, he says, can be seen from
the CN Tower, and it produces 65
per cent of the total crop produc-
tion in Ontario.
"We are losing 3.5 -million acres
of land to urban expansion across
the country each year; that's two
and a half times the size of P.E.I.
Every hour we are losing 26 acres
of the best cropland in Ontario."
Sparrow told the audience that
only nine per cent of the land in
Canada is suitable for growth, and
only 4.5 per cent of that is suited
for agricultural crops. There's
been a 30 to 40 per cent decrease in
corn production.
In the prairies, the biggest pro-
blem is salinization, resulting in a
ten to 75 per cent loss of produc-
tion. In B.C., only four per cent of
the land is suitable for agriculture,
most of it on slopes prone to ero-
sion.
Sparrow though the federal and
provincial governments were start-
ing to recognize that conservation
was an issue. He says that more
research dollars are being appliea
to conservation, and we've got to
keep the impetus going and "bring
conservation from the back pages
of newspapers to the front page."
Questioned on how consumers
would be sympathetic to conserva-
tion issues, when the biggest pro-
blem is over -production, Sparrow
told the audience that over-
production of agricultural pro-
ducts is only a temporary
phenomenon; it's a distribution
problem, he says. "There'll be
crop failures in India, crop failures
in Texas, and there'll be crop
failures here.
In Ethiopia, it took 1,000 years
of overgrazing, overcultivating,
and de -forestation, and the land
could not sustain it. They have lost
their self-sufficiency forever. We'II
be doing the same thing in a period
of 30 to 40 years. "It isn't all green
out there," Sparrow says. ❑ SM
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