Topsoils, Elephants and Small-Scale Farmers

Actually, I do not know how many books have been written about the breakdown of civilizations due to the loss of topsoils, starting from the Babylonians and Assyrians and their salinization problems due to irrigation, over Phoenicians, Greek, Romans, etc. for everyone you can find resources that their fall is related to the loss of topsoil. I wonder about Somaliland, which problem was first, the governmental collapse or the loss of topsoil. I will find it out soon, especially if I would have aerial photos from the 40s, I think the British must have. What I was told at least is that they had 40 000 elephants living in Somalia around 1980, and all elephants ran away to Kenya due to the war. So probably the topsoil did the same. Anyway, now we all are related to topsoils all around the world. The topsoils which Somalis presently access are actually the topsoils which the Somali diaspora accesses in England, Netherlands or US, and the goods they access in these countries are based on access to topsoils in India, France and South America etc.. So in the age of globalization we all are dependent on all topsoils of the world. So we should care about them. Because the decline of topoils is considered as one of the greatest current threats to mankind, almost or even more than climate change. However, we don’t do. As the International Agricultural Assessment has shown, it is mostly the small-scale farmers with the highest productivity, who also care mostly for their topsoils. Most people, however, do not want to be small-scale farmers. I am not a small scale farmer, although I am an agriculturalist, but I prefer to work at a University. Others have different professions. Most farmers in Western countries are large-scale farmers. I think the problem with the finding that the small scale farmers are the most useful in combating the world food crisis is, that being a small scale farmer requires to reconcile oneself living on a very small income base. It also requires to give up realizing all other talents one has except the agricultural ones – although agriculture requires a lot of talents. I think the best idea in regard to agriculture was given by Gandhi – that one should work half a day as an agriculturalist and half a day as a lawyer, teacher, postman or whatever. Anyway, should I start every afternoon restoring the gully beside my house and removing the Parthenia weeds?