Since the beginning of agriculture-based civilization, soil loss has been a major issue. In the book Dirt: the erosion of civilization, the author and geologist David Montgomery provides detailed descriptions of several civilizations from the past 10,000 years that because of social and economic influences developed poor agricultural practices that diminished the productivity of their soil. This knowledge is particularly relevant today, given the rapid loss of topsoil cause by our current predominant agricultural practices, Plato in 427 B.C. describes the Greek landscape during the last days of the Greek Empire:

“What now remains of the once rich land is the skeleton of a sick man, all the fat and soft earth having wasted away, only the bare framework is left.  Formerly, many of the present mountains were arable hills, the present marshes were plains full of rich soil, hills were once covered with forest and produced boundless pasturage that now produce only food for bees.  Moreover, the land was enriched by yearly rains which were not lost, as now, by flowing from the bare land into the sea; the soil was deep, it received the water, storing it up in the retentive loamy soils; the water that soaked into the hills produced abundant springs and flowing streams in all districts.  Some of the now abandoned shrines, at spots where former fountains existed, testify that our description of the land is true.”