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U.S. Pays Farmers Billions to Save Soil, But It's Blowing Away

121 points by happy-go-lucky 9y ago

desdiv 9y ago
>His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbours sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. "As ye sow, so shall ye reap," he counselled one and all, and everyone said "Amen." -Joseph Heller, Catch-22
- canadian_voter 9y ago
  > Many currently profitable conventional farming methods would become uneconomical if their true costs were incorporated into market pricing. Direct financial subsidies, and failure to include costs of depleting soil fertility and exporting pollutants, continue to encourage practices that degrade the land. - David R. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations
  - contingencies 9y ago
    Predatory capitalism is based on the privatisation of profit and the externalisation of cost. It is an extension of the fencing of the commons, of enclosures, along with the criminalisation of prior common customs and rights. What we need is a system that fully accounts for all costs. Whether we call that capitalism or not is irrelevant to me. But doing so would fundamentally transform the dynamic of present day capitalism, by making capital open source. - Robert David Steele, The Guardian, 2014-06-19 The point is ... this is indeed symptomatic of a system in which only certain things are valued with money, and everything else (the environment, the future, health, social wellbeing) is left largely unaccounted for. So what's the solution? We tried carbon credits, but they were apparently insufficiently profitable or liquid as an asset class to attract investment, and perhaps the issue was that if country A implemented harsh environmental laws and nobody else did, all the industries left, which resulted in watering down the environmental commitments. While most developed world governments do OK at solving or at least limiting the effect of serious environmental issues locally, the issues that exceed national jurisdiction tend to grow unchallenged. Interesting times.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Random idea: we need to work on more efficient governance and even faster transportation. Both of that to enable a global government to form, so that when an industry doesn't like environmental regulation, the only place it can move to is Mars.
  - chrismealy 9y ago
    That is one of my favorite books ever. Anybody who's interested in history or ecology or civilization would love it.
spraak 9y ago
There's an episode [1] of Bill Mollison's Global Gardener series that addresses this well. [1] I don't know of a link to watch it, but this blog post explains it well enough: https://permaculturenews.org/2014/10/11/discovering-oasis-american-desert/ https://permaculturenews.org/2014/10/11/discovering-oasis-am...
- schiffern 9y ago
  Came here to post this. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xx078x_global-gardener-2-arid-lands_lifestyle http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xx078x_global-gardener-2-ar... Bill's work often gets overlooked because it's "low tech," but that's a feature, not a bug.
  - spraak 9y ago
    Thanks for sharing that!
  - forgotpwtomain 9y ago
    Because you can't feed NY or SF with 'hippy-feel-good-low-tech'.
    - spraak 9y ago
      You really could. Permaculture is much more productive in the long term than the current dominant agriculture methods.
      - forgotpwtomain 9y ago
        At $9 per pound of tomatoes? I think the claim that it can, and do so affordably needs a reference to somewhere it actually does.
        spraak 9y ago
        Then please reference what you mean by $9 per pound for tomatoes and the connexion to permaculture. Most likely you're mistaking permaculture for something else (e.g. "organic") or drawing unsubstantiated conclusions
projectorlochsa 9y ago
Too much subsidies in farming business. No true capitalism. When I see how much of EU money goes to farmers, it's ridiculous. It funds the destruction of rainforests all around the world, ecosystems, oceans etc. Yes, the food wouldn't be as cheap, but at least there would be a huge incentive for people to find cheaper ways (maybe finally someone will make an effort to improve hydro/aeroponics). Of course, capitalism is greedy, not globally optimal, so it is necessary that certain restrictions are made by law. Complex issue I guess, EU is on a good path IMO.
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  On the other hand subsidies can be used to enforce ecologically sound practices. A completely free market just leads to the tragedy of the commons.
  - duncan_bayne 9y ago
    How do you figure that? Tragedy of the commons happens in the absence of ownership.
    - chicob 9y ago
      You are right, but that is just the case of rivers, phreatic water and the deep subsoil. It must be the State reclaiming ownership of those commons, making people that benefit from them pay for their maintenance.
      - duncan_bayne 9y ago
        Why must the State own them in order for that to happen? History - especially that of the USSR in recent times - suggests that there are better alternatives.
        chicob 9y ago
        The State owning them is a proxy for shared responsibility. Because in democracies, the people controls the State by means of parliaments/senates/etc. Besides, the State doesn't have to own everything. There's a middle ground between the flexibility of private ownership and the rigorousness of public management. In the USSR everything was controlled by the State, and the State wasn't accountable by means of democracy. I must say that from were I come, I have some pretty good examples of good public management, like healthcare and water management.
bryanlarsen 9y ago
Tillage is a far more destructive method for weed control than herbicides. If environmentalists really cared about the land, they'd pay a premium for crops grown using zero-till methods rather than tillage-heavy organic crops.
- Angostura 9y ago
  Weed control is perfectly possible using either mulching or superficial hoeing. Those are both techniques much used in British organic farming. Zero-dig is quite a popular method. However, if you're going to sow seed, you're going to need a decent tilth.
  - bryanlarsen 9y ago
    Sure, everybody tries to minimize tillage because it uses a lot of expensive diesel, destroys mulch and internal organic matter, causes erosion, et cetera. It's just that conventional farmers have "more tools in their toolbox" that makes it far easier for them to avoid tillage. As far as seeding without a tilth, that's very common practice over here in Canada. For example: https://www.deere.com/en_US/products/equipment/planting_and_seeding_equipment/box_drills/1590_no_till_drill/1590_no_till_drill.page https://www.deere.com/en_US/products/equipment/planting_and_...
  - searine 9y ago
    >Weed control is perfectly possible using either mulching or superficial hoeing. We are talking about farming, not gardening.
    - bryanlarsen 9y ago
      To be fair farmers do use those techniques. We'd normally use the terms "harrowing" or "shallow depth tillage" instead of hoeing though.
mauvehaus 9y ago
Wendell Berry writes extensively on the subject of soil conservation, among other things. One observation he makes is that as fewer people are involved in farming, fewer people are knowledgeable enough to identify the signs of bad farming. His specific example is a river flowing tan from soil erosion; people who haven't been involved in farming don't necessarily know that the farming is the source of the erosion. I think it's also implied that as fewer people are involved in farming, vastly fewer have been exposed to farming methods that don't cause so much erosion. Lest you think that Berry puts the "good old days" on a pedestal, he does not. He acknowledges the existence of wise and foolish farming practices dating back to when his parents were farming. He argues, however, that mechanization and the externalization of the costs of foolish practices have led to their increasing adoption. His bibliography is extensive; if you're looking for a good intro to his work, I'd recommend Our Only World.
- JBReefer 9y ago
  Your point holds, but some rivers are also just naturally muddy - like the Missouri, which is shallow and wide and travels through that exquisite Midwestern soil.
chicob 9y ago
This is happening not only in the US but around the globe. I struggle with it myself. I find there are 4 main problems associated with erosion where I work (Portugal): 1) Herbicides overkill leads to the death of useful grasses that help hold soil structure. Some fungicides may kill mycorrhizae which are fundamental in soil maintenance (http://mycorrhizae.com/wp-content/uploads/Effects-of-Fungicides-on-Mycorrhizal-Fungi-PDF.pdf http://mycorrhizae.com/wp-content/uploads/Effects-of-Fungici...) 2) Tillage avoidance is recommended, and in some cases prohibited. But people do it nevertheless... The consequences are obvious. 3) Dams built with irrigation in mind often accumulate mineral salts at a rate larger than what Nature would drain towards the sea. Since water is used in places with lower rain levels, drainage in those places is low as well, which leads to salination (Sometimes it also leads to lower levels of mineral salts in river mouths, thus a decline in phytoplankton and as as consequence fish populations). 4) Global warming means tougher draughts and heavier rains, which means more erosion. We're headed to some serious problems if we don't take these issues seriously.
- Gravityloss 9y ago
  Let's play a game. First, assume you're correct and these soil issues really exist. I'm sure there are entities who have a short or long term interest to not do anything about it. For example, somebody might be selling land (because they know such issues will get worse in the future), and if farming will be prohibited, they will get a worse price for the land. Hence best to deny, or at least question the existence of soil problems. If these entities have a lot of money, they can create their own journals and publish science that says "there is no problem with the soil". They can also bribe scientists and reviewers with high status. They can lobby politicians. And lastly, the media can be caught too, you have to frame it as a political issue so you have 50% of the media in your pocket. Now look at it from a politician's point of view. If you really get the signal that it's not a real problem, then it certainly doesn't make sense to spend resources on it.
  - chicob 9y ago
    Ok. In agriculture, people tend to ignore the problem because it leads to lesser profits in the short term. The food industry, one of the major clients of agrobusiness is very competitive. The phyto pharmaceutical industry keeps pushing their products just like the pharmaceutical companies in hospitals. In fact, they're the same corporations most of the time. In this case, lobbying happens in the Union level, i.e. the European Parliament. The pressure is to great for small farmers to deal with. That is also happening with the construction/concrete lobby (and I presume that sometimes the land price rises if you plan to build housing around cities in the countryside). Construction companies build regardless of erosion or flooding problems. It's not their problem once they finish the job. That happens a lot around here. Politicians only think in the short term. "Yeah, sure there's the problem of seasonal fires, draughts and floods. We'll make use of some catastrophe fund. But you can't forget jobs in construction and tourism infrastructure!" Result: concrete all over.
Pxtl 9y ago
This will be Organic farming's legacy - while generally the benefits of organic farming are between "dubious" and "complete woo-woo", their soil management techniques will eventually take over the world. Better water retention, better soil structure, etc.
- DaggerDagger 9y ago
  I guess you like eating apples that taste like wood chips then. Organic is how farmers have been doing it for 10,000+ years of farming, the in-organic kind was invented in the last century by RoundUp and MiracleGro and friends. Pouring industrially produced chemicals into fields of neatly rowed (and erosion prone) staple monocrops is a recipe for failure and more dustbowls and global nutrient debt. Please don't sell organic farming down the river it's going to save us all.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - reilly3000 9y ago
    The smart money is on biodynamic farming. It's a 100+ year old system that leverages natural synergy to maximize sustainable, quality output.
- bryanlarsen 9y ago
  What soil management techniques? Where I'm from organic farmers generally use tillage for weed control instead of herbicides, and tillage is what's destroying the soil and letting it erode. Remember that anything an organic farmer can do a conventional farmer can do as well, and probably is.
  - Pxtl 9y ago
    > Remember that anything an organic farmer can do a conventional farmer can do as well, and probably is. Different incentives exist. The organic certification process of soil is very expensive (in terms of time, not cash), which creates a big incentive for organic farmers to protect it from erosion. Organic practices involve a lot more living matter being put into the soil that helps to retain water, a lot more mulching to protect it from erosion. Conventional farmers, with access to cheaper fertilizers and the like, lack the extra incentive to protect their existing soil. I expect as global warming shifts incentives (like the need for carbon-neutral fertilizers, drought-tolerant soil, etc) organic farming practices for soil management will get adopted by conventional farmers. Proving these techniques out will be how organic farmers are remembered, not the nonsense about GMOs.
JoeAltmaier 9y ago
My Dad used to say soil is overrated. Once nitrogen fertilizer was invented, soil largely quit mattering. He got the best yields on eroded clay hillsides. See, they were well-drained which matters more than all the 'soil structure' talk. Could be that Iowa soil is so good already that our eroded clay hillsides are better than other states' best soil. I guess. But I'm thinking no.
- freehunter 9y ago
  Dirt itself is overrated, sure. Soil has a little different connotation. It's not the sand or clay or any kind of dirt in particular, but rather the nutrients that are in it. If you have great soil, you won't need to add those nutrients. If you don't have great soil, you need to add them in. If you have fertilizer, you don't need good soil. But it's better to have good soil and not need fertilizer. For one, good soil doesn't leak into waterways and destroy fish habitats the way nitrogen fertilizers do.
  - bluGill 9y ago
    good soil creates nitrogen on its own that leaks into waterways and destroys fish habitats. The first settlers in Iowa (European - I don't know about the natives before them) learned the hard way that water in Iowa is high enough in nitrates to kill babies.
- existencebox 9y ago
  The worrying issue for me largely isn't nutrient based, it's that widespread erosion is cyclic, and no matter how "well drained" it is, there's very little you can grow in sand. Additionally, dust storms have well known health consequences when they get large/common enough. I'm not a meteorologist, so I can't speak to the likelihood of something on this scale, but there's still a strong cultural memory back to the 1930s to keep a handle on runaway erosion.
  - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
    Iowa (my part anyway?) has a hundred feet of clay before reaching rock. We've lost, reportedly, inches of topsoil in the last century. Maybe we have a millennia or two before that's a problem.
strainer 9y ago
"Overall, organic farms tend to store more soil carbon, have better soil quality, and reduce soil erosion. Organic agriculture also creates less soil and water pollution and lower greenhouse gas emissions." Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2016-02-agriculture-key-world-sustainably.html#jCp https://phys.org/news/2016-02-agriculture-key-world-sustaina...
- exclusiv 9y ago
  On the flipside it's not all rosy for organic and evidence points towards a blend of organic/conventional as a best practice. "The results show that organic farming practices generally have positive impacts on the environment per unit of area, but not necessarily per product unit. Organic farms tend to have higher soil organic matter content and lower nutrient losses (nitrogen leaching, nitrous oxide emissions and ammonia emissions) per unit of field area. However, ammonia emissions, nitrogen leaching and nitrous oxide emissions per product unit were higher from organic systems" [1] "In order to reduce the environmental impacts of farming in Europe, research efforts and policies should be targeted to developing farming systems that produce high yields with low negative environmental impacts drawing on techniques from both organic and conventional systems." [1] This research was included in Science Vs Organic podcast [2] which was a pretty good episode and discusses the hybrid approach at the end which is apparently more common than people realize. Most debate on the topic seems to flare as if we must be either completely organic or just go conventional as if a balanced, combined approach is not an option. [1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301479712004264 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301479712... [2] https://gimletmedia.com/episode/5-organic-food/ https://gimletmedia.com/episode/5-organic-food/
  - strainer 9y ago
    A wide ranging organic system without areas of contention and without room for improvements is a practical impossibility - but there should not be any genuine argument that the major legislated systems of organic agriculture developed across the World, currently represent the most mature and well researched alternatives we have to legacy standards. To be dismissive of the biggest organised effort in the world to improve agricultural practice, and argue past it is really to miss out on the biggest opportunity to do so.
EGreg 9y ago
What if there is great wisdom in letting the land lie fallow every seven years!
- bluGill 9y ago
  there is, and it is commonly used in places by modern farmers. In North Dakota my uncle leaves his fields fallow every third year. Some of his neighbors leave their land fallow for 2 years then farm for one. (this lets them grow crops that need a lot of water in a desert, the two fallow years recharges the ground water) However as I've said repeatedly, the best farming practice isn't the same even on the scale of one field. When you go to a larger scale it gets worse. (in a field the right practice is at least similar, as you move to the next field it often is very different)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
fenwick67 9y ago
Easements and contracts are not the right way to do this. Easements mean that the US taxpayers are further subsidizing farmers by paying farmers to literally do nothing. The government needs to actually buy the land and make it into parks / preserves. This way it stays a natural resource, and can be sold (for a profit) later if it's no longer needed.
devrandomguy 9y ago
I know a few hobby farmers who are big on aquaponics; one of them actually makes most of his profit by selling the live trout to stock lakes, from ~1 acre of land. Is there some reason that this is not taking off on an industrial scale? Sure, the traditional farmers won't pivot overnight, but why are there not legions of startups farming in the desert, eating the traditional industrial farmer's lunch? Water is tightly conserved, the main loss is through plant respiration, but even that could be reduced in a greenhouse. Then the main water loss would be either the occasional emergency flushing, when a tank of fish get sick, or through exporting the product itself. Nutrients are greatly simplified by the fish and insect side of the system. Many of the vegetable byproducts can be converted into feed pellets, or used to grow grubs as feed. Some input may still be needed, beyond atmospheric CO2, in the form of supplemental fish feed. Automation in aquaponics is unheard of, but it should be much cheaper, because the plants are not embedded in soil. The presence of healthy, voracious predators (fish, frogs, geckos) reduces the insect-related problems. A tolerance for insects reduces fungus problems. There is little or no need to spray the crops. Are we not scaling up because of a lack of research? Are there just too many unknowns for anyone to invest in the $100M range? Have there already been large scale failures where we were unable to analyze the root cause, due to the biological complexity of the system? This all looks so good on a small scale.
- MrFantastic 9y ago
  Large scale aquaponics would have the same antibiotic problem that farmed fish have. I'd also be concerned that the produce would lack micro nutrients because the system is artificial. That said, I think aquaponics will be part of the solution.
  - swsieber 9y ago
    I would love to get into aquaponics (or even hydroponics), but that is my main concern - the micro nutrient make up. Is there any way to mitigate any issues arising from the artificialness of it all?
    - devrandomguy 9y ago
EGreg 9y ago
Apparently we shouldn't have been killing all those elephants and herds!! https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-livestock-grazing-stop-desertification/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-livestock-gra...
orasis 9y ago
1) Expose black soil as little as possible - ideally with no-till. 2) Implement key line design to improve water holding and infiltration

>His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbours sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. "As ye sow, so shall ye reap," he counselled one and all, and everyone said "Amen." -Joseph Heller, Catch-22

canadian_voter 9y ago
> Many currently profitable conventional farming methods would become uneconomical if their true costs were incorporated into market pricing. Direct financial subsidies, and failure to include costs of depleting soil fertility and exporting pollutants, continue to encourage practices that degrade the land. - David R. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations
- contingencies 9y ago
  Predatory capitalism is based on the privatisation of profit and the externalisation of cost. It is an extension of the fencing of the commons, of enclosures, along with the criminalisation of prior common customs and rights. What we need is a system that fully accounts for all costs. Whether we call that capitalism or not is irrelevant to me. But doing so would fundamentally transform the dynamic of present day capitalism, by making capital open source. - Robert David Steele, The Guardian, 2014-06-19 The point is ... this is indeed symptomatic of a system in which only certain things are valued with money, and everything else (the environment, the future, health, social wellbeing) is left largely unaccounted for. So what's the solution? We tried carbon credits, but they were apparently insufficiently profitable or liquid as an asset class to attract investment, and perhaps the issue was that if country A implemented harsh environmental laws and nobody else did, all the industries left, which resulted in watering down the environmental commitments. While most developed world governments do OK at solving or at least limiting the effect of serious environmental issues locally, the issues that exceed national jurisdiction tend to grow unchallenged. Interesting times.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Random idea: we need to work on more efficient governance and even faster transportation. Both of that to enable a global government to form, so that when an industry doesn't like environmental regulation, the only place it can move to is Mars.
- chrismealy 9y ago
  That is one of my favorite books ever. Anybody who's interested in history or ecology or civilization would love it.

spraak 9y ago

There's an episode [1] of Bill Mollison's Global Gardener series that addresses this well. [1] I don't know of a link to watch it, but this blog post explains it well enough: https://permaculturenews.org/2014/10/11/discovering-oasis-american-desert/ https://permaculturenews.org/2014/10/11/discovering-oasis-am...

schiffern 9y ago
Came here to post this. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xx078x_global-gardener-2-arid-lands_lifestyle http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xx078x_global-gardener-2-ar... Bill's work often gets overlooked because it's "low tech," but that's a feature, not a bug.
- spraak 9y ago
  Thanks for sharing that!
- forgotpwtomain 9y ago
  Because you can't feed NY or SF with 'hippy-feel-good-low-tech'.
  - spraak 9y ago
    You really could. Permaculture is much more productive in the long term than the current dominant agriculture methods.
    - forgotpwtomain 9y ago
      At $9 per pound of tomatoes? I think the claim that it can, and do so affordably needs a reference to somewhere it actually does.
      - spraak 9y ago
        Then please reference what you mean by $9 per pound for tomatoes and the connexion to permaculture. Most likely you're mistaking permaculture for something else (e.g. "organic") or drawing unsubstantiated conclusions

projectorlochsa 9y ago

Too much subsidies in farming business. No true capitalism. When I see how much of EU money goes to farmers, it's ridiculous. It funds the destruction of rainforests all around the world, ecosystems, oceans etc. Yes, the food wouldn't be as cheap, but at least there would be a huge incentive for people to find cheaper ways (maybe finally someone will make an effort to improve hydro/aeroponics). Of course, capitalism is greedy, not globally optimal, so it is necessary that certain restrictions are made by law. Complex issue I guess, EU is on a good path IMO.

tonyedgecombe 9y ago
On the other hand subsidies can be used to enforce ecologically sound practices. A completely free market just leads to the tragedy of the commons.
- duncan_bayne 9y ago
  How do you figure that? Tragedy of the commons happens in the absence of ownership.
  - chicob 9y ago
    You are right, but that is just the case of rivers, phreatic water and the deep subsoil. It must be the State reclaiming ownership of those commons, making people that benefit from them pay for their maintenance.
    - duncan_bayne 9y ago
      Why must the State own them in order for that to happen? History - especially that of the USSR in recent times - suggests that there are better alternatives.
      - chicob 9y ago
        The State owning them is a proxy for shared responsibility. Because in democracies, the people controls the State by means of parliaments/senates/etc. Besides, the State doesn't have to own everything. There's a middle ground between the flexibility of private ownership and the rigorousness of public management. In the USSR everything was controlled by the State, and the State wasn't accountable by means of democracy. I must say that from were I come, I have some pretty good examples of good public management, like healthcare and water management.

bryanlarsen 9y ago

Tillage is a far more destructive method for weed control than herbicides. If environmentalists really cared about the land, they'd pay a premium for crops grown using zero-till methods rather than tillage-heavy organic crops.

Angostura 9y ago
Weed control is perfectly possible using either mulching or superficial hoeing. Those are both techniques much used in British organic farming. Zero-dig is quite a popular method. However, if you're going to sow seed, you're going to need a decent tilth.
- bryanlarsen 9y ago
  Sure, everybody tries to minimize tillage because it uses a lot of expensive diesel, destroys mulch and internal organic matter, causes erosion, et cetera. It's just that conventional farmers have "more tools in their toolbox" that makes it far easier for them to avoid tillage. As far as seeding without a tilth, that's very common practice over here in Canada. For example: https://www.deere.com/en_US/products/equipment/planting_and_seeding_equipment/box_drills/1590_no_till_drill/1590_no_till_drill.page https://www.deere.com/en_US/products/equipment/planting_and_...
- searine 9y ago
  >Weed control is perfectly possible using either mulching or superficial hoeing. We are talking about farming, not gardening.
  - bryanlarsen 9y ago
    To be fair farmers do use those techniques. We'd normally use the terms "harrowing" or "shallow depth tillage" instead of hoeing though.

mauvehaus 9y ago

Wendell Berry writes extensively on the subject of soil conservation, among other things. One observation he makes is that as fewer people are involved in farming, fewer people are knowledgeable enough to identify the signs of bad farming. His specific example is a river flowing tan from soil erosion; people who haven't been involved in farming don't necessarily know that the farming is the source of the erosion. I think it's also implied that as fewer people are involved in farming, vastly fewer have been exposed to farming methods that don't cause so much erosion. Lest you think that Berry puts the "good old days" on a pedestal, he does not. He acknowledges the existence of wise and foolish farming practices dating back to when his parents were farming. He argues, however, that mechanization and the externalization of the costs of foolish practices have led to their increasing adoption. His bibliography is extensive; if you're looking for a good intro to his work, I'd recommend Our Only World.

JBReefer 9y ago
Your point holds, but some rivers are also just naturally muddy - like the Missouri, which is shallow and wide and travels through that exquisite Midwestern soil.

chicob 9y ago

This is happening not only in the US but around the globe. I struggle with it myself. I find there are 4 main problems associated with erosion where I work (Portugal): 1) Herbicides overkill leads to the death of useful grasses that help hold soil structure. Some fungicides may kill mycorrhizae which are fundamental in soil maintenance (http://mycorrhizae.com/wp-content/uploads/Effects-of-Fungicides-on-Mycorrhizal-Fungi-PDF.pdf http://mycorrhizae.com/wp-content/uploads/Effects-of-Fungici...) 2) Tillage avoidance is recommended, and in some cases prohibited. But people do it nevertheless... The consequences are obvious. 3) Dams built with irrigation in mind often accumulate mineral salts at a rate larger than what Nature would drain towards the sea. Since water is used in places with lower rain levels, drainage in those places is low as well, which leads to salination (Sometimes it also leads to lower levels of mineral salts in river mouths, thus a decline in phytoplankton and as as consequence fish populations). 4) Global warming means tougher draughts and heavier rains, which means more erosion. We're headed to some serious problems if we don't take these issues seriously.

Gravityloss 9y ago
Let's play a game. First, assume you're correct and these soil issues really exist. I'm sure there are entities who have a short or long term interest to not do anything about it. For example, somebody might be selling land (because they know such issues will get worse in the future), and if farming will be prohibited, they will get a worse price for the land. Hence best to deny, or at least question the existence of soil problems. If these entities have a lot of money, they can create their own journals and publish science that says "there is no problem with the soil". They can also bribe scientists and reviewers with high status. They can lobby politicians. And lastly, the media can be caught too, you have to frame it as a political issue so you have 50% of the media in your pocket. Now look at it from a politician's point of view. If you really get the signal that it's not a real problem, then it certainly doesn't make sense to spend resources on it.
- chicob 9y ago
  Ok. In agriculture, people tend to ignore the problem because it leads to lesser profits in the short term. The food industry, one of the major clients of agrobusiness is very competitive. The phyto pharmaceutical industry keeps pushing their products just like the pharmaceutical companies in hospitals. In fact, they're the same corporations most of the time. In this case, lobbying happens in the Union level, i.e. the European Parliament. The pressure is to great for small farmers to deal with. That is also happening with the construction/concrete lobby (and I presume that sometimes the land price rises if you plan to build housing around cities in the countryside). Construction companies build regardless of erosion or flooding problems. It's not their problem once they finish the job. That happens a lot around here. Politicians only think in the short term. "Yeah, sure there's the problem of seasonal fires, draughts and floods. We'll make use of some catastrophe fund. But you can't forget jobs in construction and tourism infrastructure!" Result: concrete all over.

Pxtl 9y ago

This will be Organic farming's legacy - while generally the benefits of organic farming are between "dubious" and "complete woo-woo", their soil management techniques will eventually take over the world. Better water retention, better soil structure, etc.

DaggerDagger 9y ago
I guess you like eating apples that taste like wood chips then. Organic is how farmers have been doing it for 10,000+ years of farming, the in-organic kind was invented in the last century by RoundUp and MiracleGro and friends. Pouring industrially produced chemicals into fields of neatly rowed (and erosion prone) staple monocrops is a recipe for failure and more dustbowls and global nutrient debt. Please don't sell organic farming down the river it's going to save us all.
- deleted 9y ago
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- reilly3000 9y ago
  The smart money is on biodynamic farming. It's a 100+ year old system that leverages natural synergy to maximize sustainable, quality output.
bryanlarsen 9y ago
What soil management techniques? Where I'm from organic farmers generally use tillage for weed control instead of herbicides, and tillage is what's destroying the soil and letting it erode. Remember that anything an organic farmer can do a conventional farmer can do as well, and probably is.
- Pxtl 9y ago
  > Remember that anything an organic farmer can do a conventional farmer can do as well, and probably is. Different incentives exist. The organic certification process of soil is very expensive (in terms of time, not cash), which creates a big incentive for organic farmers to protect it from erosion. Organic practices involve a lot more living matter being put into the soil that helps to retain water, a lot more mulching to protect it from erosion. Conventional farmers, with access to cheaper fertilizers and the like, lack the extra incentive to protect their existing soil. I expect as global warming shifts incentives (like the need for carbon-neutral fertilizers, drought-tolerant soil, etc) organic farming practices for soil management will get adopted by conventional farmers. Proving these techniques out will be how organic farmers are remembered, not the nonsense about GMOs.

JoeAltmaier 9y ago

My Dad used to say soil is overrated. Once nitrogen fertilizer was invented, soil largely quit mattering. He got the best yields on eroded clay hillsides. See, they were well-drained which matters more than all the 'soil structure' talk. Could be that Iowa soil is so good already that our eroded clay hillsides are better than other states' best soil. I guess. But I'm thinking no.

freehunter 9y ago
Dirt itself is overrated, sure. Soil has a little different connotation. It's not the sand or clay or any kind of dirt in particular, but rather the nutrients that are in it. If you have great soil, you won't need to add those nutrients. If you don't have great soil, you need to add them in. If you have fertilizer, you don't need good soil. But it's better to have good soil and not need fertilizer. For one, good soil doesn't leak into waterways and destroy fish habitats the way nitrogen fertilizers do.
- bluGill 9y ago
  good soil creates nitrogen on its own that leaks into waterways and destroys fish habitats. The first settlers in Iowa (European - I don't know about the natives before them) learned the hard way that water in Iowa is high enough in nitrates to kill babies.
existencebox 9y ago
The worrying issue for me largely isn't nutrient based, it's that widespread erosion is cyclic, and no matter how "well drained" it is, there's very little you can grow in sand. Additionally, dust storms have well known health consequences when they get large/common enough. I'm not a meteorologist, so I can't speak to the likelihood of something on this scale, but there's still a strong cultural memory back to the 1930s to keep a handle on runaway erosion.
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  Iowa (my part anyway?) has a hundred feet of clay before reaching rock. We've lost, reportedly, inches of topsoil in the last century. Maybe we have a millennia or two before that's a problem.

strainer 9y ago

"Overall, organic farms tend to store more soil carbon, have better soil quality, and reduce soil erosion. Organic agriculture also creates less soil and water pollution and lower greenhouse gas emissions." Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2016-02-agriculture-key-world-sustainably.html#jCp https://phys.org/news/2016-02-agriculture-key-world-sustaina...

exclusiv 9y ago
On the flipside it's not all rosy for organic and evidence points towards a blend of organic/conventional as a best practice. "The results show that organic farming practices generally have positive impacts on the environment per unit of area, but not necessarily per product unit. Organic farms tend to have higher soil organic matter content and lower nutrient losses (nitrogen leaching, nitrous oxide emissions and ammonia emissions) per unit of field area. However, ammonia emissions, nitrogen leaching and nitrous oxide emissions per product unit were higher from organic systems" [1] "In order to reduce the environmental impacts of farming in Europe, research efforts and policies should be targeted to developing farming systems that produce high yields with low negative environmental impacts drawing on techniques from both organic and conventional systems." [1] This research was included in Science Vs Organic podcast [2] which was a pretty good episode and discusses the hybrid approach at the end which is apparently more common than people realize. Most debate on the topic seems to flare as if we must be either completely organic or just go conventional as if a balanced, combined approach is not an option. [1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301479712004264 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301479712... [2] https://gimletmedia.com/episode/5-organic-food/ https://gimletmedia.com/episode/5-organic-food/
- strainer 9y ago
  A wide ranging organic system without areas of contention and without room for improvements is a practical impossibility - but there should not be any genuine argument that the major legislated systems of organic agriculture developed across the World, currently represent the most mature and well researched alternatives we have to legacy standards. To be dismissive of the biggest organised effort in the world to improve agricultural practice, and argue past it is really to miss out on the biggest opportunity to do so.

EGreg 9y ago

What if there is great wisdom in letting the land lie fallow every seven years!

bluGill 9y ago
there is, and it is commonly used in places by modern farmers. In North Dakota my uncle leaves his fields fallow every third year. Some of his neighbors leave their land fallow for 2 years then farm for one. (this lets them grow crops that need a lot of water in a desert, the two fallow years recharges the ground water) However as I've said repeatedly, the best farming practice isn't the same even on the scale of one field. When you go to a larger scale it gets worse. (in a field the right practice is at least similar, as you move to the next field it often is very different)

deleted 9y ago

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fenwick67 9y ago

Easements and contracts are not the right way to do this. Easements mean that the US taxpayers are further subsidizing farmers by paying farmers to literally do nothing. The government needs to actually buy the land and make it into parks / preserves. This way it stays a natural resource, and can be sold (for a profit) later if it's no longer needed.

devrandomguy 9y ago

I know a few hobby farmers who are big on aquaponics; one of them actually makes most of his profit by selling the live trout to stock lakes, from ~1 acre of land. Is there some reason that this is not taking off on an industrial scale? Sure, the traditional farmers won't pivot overnight, but why are there not legions of startups farming in the desert, eating the traditional industrial farmer's lunch? Water is tightly conserved, the main loss is through plant respiration, but even that could be reduced in a greenhouse. Then the main water loss would be either the occasional emergency flushing, when a tank of fish get sick, or through exporting the product itself. Nutrients are greatly simplified by the fish and insect side of the system. Many of the vegetable byproducts can be converted into feed pellets, or used to grow grubs as feed. Some input may still be needed, beyond atmospheric CO2, in the form of supplemental fish feed. Automation in aquaponics is unheard of, but it should be much cheaper, because the plants are not embedded in soil. The presence of healthy, voracious predators (fish, frogs, geckos) reduces the insect-related problems. A tolerance for insects reduces fungus problems. There is little or no need to spray the crops. Are we not scaling up because of a lack of research? Are there just too many unknowns for anyone to invest in the $100M range? Have there already been large scale failures where we were unable to analyze the root cause, due to the biological complexity of the system? This all looks so good on a small scale.

MrFantastic 9y ago
Large scale aquaponics would have the same antibiotic problem that farmed fish have. I'd also be concerned that the produce would lack micro nutrients because the system is artificial. That said, I think aquaponics will be part of the solution.
- swsieber 9y ago
  I would love to get into aquaponics (or even hydroponics), but that is my main concern - the micro nutrient make up. Is there any way to mitigate any issues arising from the artificialness of it all?
  - devrandomguy 9y ago

EGreg 9y ago

Apparently we shouldn't have been killing all those elephants and herds!! https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-livestock-grazing-stop-desertification/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-livestock-gra...

orasis 9y ago

1) Expose black soil as little as possible - ideally with no-till. 2) Implement key line design to improve water holding and infiltration