The soils of China and Indonesia are in better shape than has been predicted, according to a new book by University of California, Davis, economic historian Peter Lindert. If the world is losing its productive agricultural soils, the damage is likely to be most severe in heavily populated developing countries, such as China and Indonesia. This could threaten food supplies in these countries. "We worry about 'losing ground,' but we had no studies that really showed what has happened to soil quality over a long period of time," says Lindert, who directs the Agricultural History Center at UC Davis. Lindert and his collaborators tracked down thousands of unpublished soil-test records, dating back to the 1930s for China and the 1920s for Indonesia, to see how soil quality has changed over time. They found a mixed picture. Soil organic matter and nitrogen tended to be run down by humans, while other indicators, such as potassium, phosphorous and pH, had not worsened. This loss of nitrogen, says Lindert, has not mattered much because it can be replaced by fertilizers. Clear examples of soil degradation came from Indonesia. As more remote islands were settled in the 1970s, forests were cleared and soil quality fell. In contrast, humans in crowded, long-inhabited areas of Java and eastern China have taken better care of the soil, says Lindert. The project has opened up a whole new field of quantitative soil history, says Lindert. Scientists in Russia, China, and California are opening up new studies of soil records to look at further changes and to test Lindert's findings. "It's fun to be part of a dawning new field," he says. "Shifting Ground: The Changing Agricultural Soils of China and Indonesia" is published by MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.