The World's Farmers are Loosing 2,000 Hectares of Soil Daily Due to Salt

Farm soil is slowly degrading, and it could lead to some major problems in the future if steps aren't taken. Scientists have found that every day for more than 20 years, an average of 2,000 hectares of irrigated land in arid and semi-arid areas across 75 countries have been degraded by salt.

Currently, an area about the size of France is affected; that's about 20 percent of the world's irrigated lands-62 million hectares. That's up from 45 million hectares in the early 1990s.

In arid and semi-arid regions, rainfall can sometimes be too low to maintain regular percolation of rainwater through the soil. This can result in salt-degradation. In addition, irrigation practices without drainage management trigger salt accumulation in the root zone, which affects soil properties and reduces productivity.

The researchers estimate that each week, the world loses an area larger than Manhattan to salt-degradation. Needless to say, this could drastically impact the world's food production in the future.

"To feed the world's anticipated nine billion people by 2050, and with little new productive land available, it's a case of all lands needed on deck," said Manzoor Qadir, one of the researchers, in a news release. "We can't afford not to restore the productivity of salt-affected lands."

That said, there is some good news. Crop yields from irrigated areas that are not affected by salinization have increased since 1990. This is due to improved crop varieties and more efficient farm practices. Yet this yield could be increased even further if salt-affected lands were restored.

In order to reverse this degradation, farmers can plant trees, employ deep plowing, cultivate salt-tolerant varieties of crops or mix harvested plant residues into the top soil. These methods could potentially help increase yield into the future.

The findings are published in the journal Natural Resources Forum.