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 Around the world, fertile soil is rapidly washing away or becoming
 dust in the wind.  So goes a global assessment of soil conditions
 released last month by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and hailed
 by the Washington, D.C., think tank as the first of its kind.  Said
 WRI president Gus Speth at a press conference releasing "Toward
 Sustainable Development," this "confirms our worst fears" about the
 degradation of arable land since World War II.

 The data were produced from a 3-year-study sponsored by the United
 Nations Environmental Program, in which hundreds of experts compared
 contemporary conditions with those tracked over the last 45 years.
 The report concludes that more than 3 billion acres of fertile land --
 an area the size of China and India combined -- have been seriously
 degraded, mainly because of overgrazing, damaging agricultural
 practices, and deforestation.  In the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh in
 the Ganges Valley, for example, alkalinity, salinity, and waterlogging
 have squeezed 29% of cropland out of production.

 Speth calculates that the world's nations may have to triple food
 production in the next 50 years to keep up with population growth.
 Crop rotation and other on-farm practices will remedy mild soil
 degradation, but national programs are needed, the report says, for
 large-scale soil conservation and watershed management projects.
 Supporting its sense of urgency, WRI printed its report early in hopes
 of influencing the negotiations over worldwide environmental treaties
 that are preceding the United Nations Conference on the Environment
 and Development, to be held in Rio de Janeiro in June.
Re: Double digging
Subject: Re: Square-foot Gardening
Date: 26 Jan 92 07:23:49 GMT

This is a very important gardening technique.  Basically it is the corner-stone
to the French-intensive/Bio-dynamic methods prescribed by Alan Chadwick and
applied by gardeners like John Jeavons, Mel Bartholmew?, Tom Cumbithson, etc...
It is  an effective technique to enrich, arreate, and improve soil, while
building your raised beds, without the disruption of the natural layering that
occurs in top-soils, supposedly.

The double-digging technique is described in good detail in John Jeavons, 1974
Classic "How to Grow More Vegetables than you ever thought possible on less
land
than you can imagine."  This is  a $15.00 book that has been revised and
has been in print for nearly twenty years, from Ten Speed Press.

You can order Ten Speed Press' revised 192 page guide to double digging,
companion planting, family garden planing, and practical compost techniques
directly from the publisher:

        Ten Speed Press
        P.O. Box 7123
        Berkely, California  94707
        (415) 845-8414

This is by far one of the most practical and informative gardening guides,
I have been exposed to.  It seems like the foundation that many of today's
gardening books are preaching from -- titles like "Grow Bed Gardening" and
"Square-Foot Gardening".
If you are really interested in Double Digging, you should find the book at a
library or buy it at a book store.  If you can get thorugh all the hippie
b.s. about slugs and rabbits and weeds being adorable lovable garden
companions,
you'll understand double-digging.  Althoug it is simple once you have seen it
done or tried it your-self, It seems very difficult to describe correctly.
John Jeavons provides clever pictures.

Oh yeah, another great guide to Double-digging is "Alan Chadwick's Enchanted
Garden."  This is co-written by a bunny rabbit and lacks the illustrations, or
complete index of seed-sources, but describes the gentle practices of
raised-bed gardening.