Firstly, to state my prejudices on this issue - soil erosion is an issue that I've found difficult to form a clear opinion on (you can read as far as I'd gotten in the "Soil Loss" section of this Oil Drum piece. It's clearly important in the long term, it doesn't seem to be an acute crisis globally (though it's certainly serious in some places), and it's not easy to sort out the science and decide exactly how acute a problem it is. Conventional agriculture clearly discounts the problem and is focussed on short term profit over long-term health of the soil. On the other hand, there is clearly an over-alarmist wing of the environmental movement (epitomized by people like Lester Brown) that is prone to overstating the severity and immediacy of the issue. In between these extremes, I haven't really been able to figure out the situation to my satisfaction.
