The consequences are measured today, decades after the mines closed, in continuing health problems and degraded land.

Restore degraded land, which slows carbon release while returning the land to agriculture or other use.

It will take decades to reclaim the degraded dry lands of Australia by such means.

Not least of the problems is that when precipitation does return to degraded land, it takes only a little rainfall to cause much erosion.

Farmers then convert the degraded land to cattle pasture, and clear more forest for crops.

He reckons that two thirds of the world's degraded land could be similarly restored.

It would be fine if PO were being grown on degraded land but most of it is not, because yields are poor.

Having no direct competition with existing farmland as it can be grown on degraded and marginal land.

Provides a means of restoring degraded land.

But he is quick to point to the hidden costs of chemically enhanced food, like degraded land.