AFRICA DRYING UP!

Hokitika Guardian, 14 May 1920, Page 4

AFRICA DRYING UP!

March SO

As (jeneral Smuts does not fail to remind us, the agricultural industry of South Africa is progressing by leaps and bounds. The export trade of the I Union—largely agricultural—has ex- | pandted from £3,800,000 in 1893 to £17,600,000 in 1918. Wonderfully encouraging and our only statesman is just the .man to remind us of it. But there is always a fly in the ointment. And the fly in this case extends beyond our own particular ointment. Dr Pieter Clinlmers jVfitcheU seer2>-.iry of the Zoological Society of Loudon, and a well-known scientist:, was one of those aboard the 'London “Times” aeroplane that attempted, unsuccessfully with others, the Cairo-Cape flight. Dr Mitchell has given to the world his views on Africa from Cairo to below the Great Lakes. He considers that the country is drying up, that places apparently fertile are unwholesome and “living on their own corruption,” and that it would need a colossal uplieavaj to remedy existing conditions. On the top of this we have the following from our own East Griquabmd on the subject of soil erosion:—“As (including natives) there are fifty farmers who are encouraging soil erosion to one who is checking it, South Africa is dying Up. Without afforestation and irrigation on a scale that has hitherto been only dreamt of, this fair land is destined to become a desert the same as Mongolia, huge tracts of Persia and Thibet, and, to come nearer home, the Western Karroo.” ' ' .