ABSTRACT
Reality testing is in order. World population grows by eighty million annually, fast approaching a total eight billion. Sixty years of humanitarian interventions that included best contraception and family planning technology plus information and supplies barely slowed, if at all, the momentum of growth. Many humans survive by living on resources that are virtually nonrenewable. Clean fresh water and energy grab headlines, but the fragile bit of dirt covering our planet, the topsoil, is equally essential to life. Iowa topsoil, twelve feet deep when intensive agriculture began, is now measurable in those same places in inches.
