Posted on 04/15/2021 11:31:07 AM PDT by RomanSoldier19
eth Watkins has been farming his family’s land in southern Iowa for decades, growing pasture for his cows as well as corn and other row crops. His great-grandfather founded the farm in 1848. “He came in with one of John Deere’s steel plows and pierced the prairie,” Watkins recounted. With its rolling hills and neat lines of corn stretching to the horizon, broken by clumps of trees, it’s a picturesque scene.
But centuries of farming those hills have taken their toll on the soil. Now, farmers like Watkins are facing widespread soil degradation that can lower their crop yields and incomes. “In 150 years or so, we’ve lost over half of that rich topsoil—if not all in some places.”
Crops hunger for the carbon-packed composition of rich topsoil. They need the nutrients and water that it stores, unlike the compacted, infertile soils that decades of conventional farming create.
The baseline for soil in Iowa is visible on land owned by Jon Judson, a sustainable farmer and conservation advocate. His farm hosts a rare plot of original prairie grasses and wildflowers. Under the prairie, the soil is thick and dark, with feet of organic matter built up and plenty of moisture. The next field over is a recovering conventional field like Watkins’ farm, and the effect of years of conventional practices is obvious. The soil is pale and compacted, with only a few inches of organic carbon, much less soil moisture, and a lot more clay.
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
Allow me be the first to comment with an Ag degree......BU!!SH!T.
So, untold billions of ton of topsoil just vanished?
Or, are farmers in the cornbelt now paying the price of not using the “crop rotation” plan that has been popular in the midwest for over 100 years?
There is a reason you don’t plant corn in the same field, year after year.
http://cnrc.agron.iastate.edu/
Yes Bull Shit
A modern dat grapes of wrath?
This is not a problem.
Remember, “Better life through Chemicals”....or something.
I'm no farmer, but seems to me that the corn goes in one of the cow and out the other end. You put that back where came and it builds up over time. You also grow soy to put nitrogen back into the soil.
Seems like I’ve been reading this same article for the last 47 years...
But, but, it's mandated and subsidized by the Government to make Gasoline less Efficient and more Polluting, and we must obey.
I know the area he is talking about.
The soil was always pretty bad. They used to ship old hay bails down for compost.
Funny thing is I live in east central Iowa, in a place that was farmed for hundreds of years. Top soil is pretty good.
I will say the bits of prairie here are there is pretty interesting. Davenport has some original prairie in the Fairmount Cemetery, and we volunteer there. Digging made me appreciate why sod houses were a thing. The roots were amazing.
Yep! Certified BS.
On our family farm in Wisconsin, we rotated CORN-—Alfalfa-—GREEN PEAS FOR DEL MONTE-—Oats.
Corn farmers typically don’t raise cows anymore.
And there are places in West Texas that went from red dirt to black because of cattle.
I remember we were losing an inch of topsoil a year, back in the 1970's.
Well, we still have lots left, obviously. And where exactly is it going, since we haven't had a dustbowl?
The church of perpetual panic, still at it 50 years later.
No more food for fuel
Biblical Sabbaths might have helped the land.
It's why my field is no-till and carefully controlled for erosion. The US is light years ahead of most countries in care for our soil.
Two pull quotes:
“But now it’s at the point where it could use more funding and some improvement.”
“We need a government program that would pay farmers not to farm. We need incentives and regulation.”
Always the case—more money, laws and government.
Pay farmers to sit on their sofa. How does that translate at the produce isle?
In Wisconsin, cow manure is NO LONGER ALLOWED to be put back onto the land. It is put into tanks as slurry & trucked AWAY from the farm...... INSANITY
Don’t forget the corn lobby’s addiction to pushing corn syzurp
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