Arid soils, without micro-organisms, without life: in Spain, repeated droughts and industrial or agricultural overexploitation raise fears of an irreversible progression of “sterile lands”, capable of transforming the “vegetable garden of Europe” into an inhospitable territory .
“Here, before, there was a forest of holm oaks (…) Today, it is an inert landscape”, loose Gabriel del Barrio, dusty sneakers and canvas hat on his head, pointing to a hill with ravined slopes where only stunted shrubs remain.
A researcher at the Arid Zones Experimental Station (Eeza) in Almeria, Andalusia, this specialist in desertification observes the degrading landscapes in this southern region on a daily basis. Not without a hint of apprehension.
“Spain is not going to become a desert, with dunes like in the Sahara, it’s morphologically impossible,” he says. But desertification, marked by intense “soil degradation”, is no less “worrying”, insists the sexagenarian.
On the bench of the accused: global warming, at the origin of a rise in temperatures favoring the evaporation of water and the multiplication of devastating fires, but also and above all human activity – and in particular intensive agriculture .
Despite its ultra-dry climate, the province of Almeria has been transformed over the years into the “vegetable garden of Europe”, developing immense crops in greenhouses: an area known as the “sea of ??plastic”, from which thousands of tons of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers come out winter and summer alike.
However, these 40,000 hectares, irrigated thanks to a water table several thousand years old, aggravate the problem “by exhausting the aquifers”, explains Gabriel del Barrio.
Although extreme, this scenario is not an exception in Spain. According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, 75% of Spanish territory is now subject to a climate that can lead to desertification. This makes it the European country most affected by this problem.
“This places us in a complex situation, where the combination of extreme temperatures, droughts and other factors aggravates the risk of erosion, loss of soil quality”, recently warned the Minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera.
According to the Spanish Superior Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), on which Eeza depends, active land degradation has tripled in the last ten years. A phenomenon all the more problematic as it is often “irreversible on a human scale”, insists this organization.
Inability of soils to retain water and organic matter, to support crops and livestock… For Spain, which has made agriculture an economic pillar, with nearly 60 billion euros in exports per year, this situation is cause for concern.
“Soil erosion is today the main problem for most farmers in Spain,” said the Union of Small Farmers (UPA), which refers to a “serious” situation that could have a significant “economic cost”.
In Andalusia, this situation has convinced some to roll up their sleeves. “We must act at our level when possible” and not “give in to fate”, urges Juan Antonio Merlos, owner of a 100-hectare almond farm on the heights of Velez-Blanco, north of ‘Almería.
With a handful of farmers gathered within the AlVelAl association, this forty-year-old has set up new practices, called “regenerative”, by taking over his parents’ farm three years ago, now converted to organic farming. . Hoping to “stop the erosion” underway in the region.
Among these practices: the use of manure instead of chemical fertilizers, the abandonment of pesticides “which kill insects”, a limited use of plowing “which damages the soil” and the use of a vegetation cover made of cereals and legumes to conserve moisture when the rare rains fall.
“It’s a long-term job”, based on techniques “known for a long time”, details Juan Antonio Merlos, examining sprigs of barley planted at the foot of his almond trees.
This does not prevent him from being optimistic. “In theory, it takes seven years to see the results of regenerative agriculture. But I’m already starting to notice a change in the behavior of the soil and insects,” he says.
Beyond these new practices, environmental associations plead, for their part, for a change of model, with a reduction in irrigated areas and the use of less water-intensive crops. “We must adapt our requests to the resources actually available”, insists the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
An analysis shared, with a nuance, by Gabriel del Barrio. “We have to find a balance” to meet food needs without putting the soil at risk, says the researcher. Which calls for “managing the soil in the most sustainable way possible”, to avoid having “lifeless” land.
08/01/2023 05:03:07 – Almería (Spain) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
