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Prosopis cineraria) go down upto 50 metres depth to utilise inexhaustible store house of nutrients. The yields will also be not significantly affected by droughts or excess rains as in case of agriculture. There will be no need of costly irrigation dams and channels, fertilisers, pesticides etc., which are all polluting and degrading. Whereas agricultural crops can be raised successfully only on one-tenth of earth surface, there are trees and shrubs for good and bad soils, slopes and sand dunes, waterlogged and saline areas, degraded and eroded lands, hills and plains, sea-costs and marshes etc. The polyculture forest is permaculture which will be self-sustaining economically also and there will be no need for huge subsidies as for agriculture. Even in U.S.A. there are subsidies totalling 21 billion dollars for agricultural produce valuing 22 billion dollars (1984). If all direct and indirect subsidies are taken into account agriculture is not at all an economic proposition in the present context of skyrocketing input costs.
Human ingenuity has constantly been developing technologies to make life more and more comfortable by obviating the drudgery involved in execution of various works. Recently the progress has been phenomenal as a result of spectacular advances in electronics particularly in its sophisticated fields of computronics, robotry etc. It is surprising that man has not thought of doing away the cumbersome drudgery involved in agriculture. The point is as to why go for all the drudgery of raising agricultural crops when the same can be done by nature in polyculture forest more efficiently and economically without inherent hazards of agriculture. The polyculture forest will provide enough food to cater to ten times present population and in addition numerous other products for various industries, village, small and big. Being labour intensive it will create unlimited job opportunities for young and old, men and women, infirm and strong, able and disabled, skilled and unskilled.
This project will go a long way to evolve and promote a
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