Latest figures suggest that approximately 20% of the world's population of six billion is malnourished because of food shortages and inadequate distrib ution systems. To make matters worse, it is estimated that some 75 billion metric tons of soil are removed annually from the land by wind and soil ero sion, much of it from agricultural land, which is thereby rendered unsuitable for agricultural purposes. Moreover, out of a total land area under cultivation 9 6 of approximately 1. 5 x 10 ha, some 12 x 10 ha of arable land are destroyed and abandoned worldwide each year because of unsustainable...