WHERE HAVE ALL THE FORESTS GONE?
Deforestation has serious consequences. it leads to soil erosion which was an underlying cause of Ethiopia's famine. Crops of maize are planted on 45 degrees slopes without terraces. Within three or four seasons, the topsoil has been washed away by the torrential rains, and the hill is useless for farming.
Another consequence is more subtle forests held on to moisture and are essential factors of rainfall through transpiration. Extensive deforestation may have exacerbated the drought in Africa: fewer forests mean less rainfall and desertification.
For the key and pushed down on the lower, flatter bush country its chances of successful farming are little better. Here the soil is dry as dust; it needs careful management if it’s to produce food. But the newly arrived shamba farmers don't have the experience to farm effectively. There isn't enough rainfall down here to grow more. So, it has to be more hardy grains like millet and sorghum. In years of severe drought, even those grains do not produce a good harvest and malnutrition in these areas is an increasing problem.
The real energy crisis is in wood, not oil. Trees are falling faster than nature or man is replacing them. This drier land is really much better suited to grazing cattle or goats, but it's so easy to overgraze. When the sparse vegetation is made even sparser, the topsoil is liable to blow away. Soil erosion on the marginal land is as bad as on the hills.
```Deforestation has had serious consequences in Africa. One of such is __.