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This is a romanticized view of the small family farm. Our farmibg practices in the US were imported from Europe and were not adapted to our climates. Settlers

This is a romanticized view of the small family farm. Our farmibg practices in the US were imported from Europe and were not adapted to our climates. Settlers spread like locusts across land that was so fertile that even if they didn't know what to do, the soil would rescue them. Until it was finally so used up that it couldn't support crops.

dijit 5y ago
This is a weird take on history, it contradicts directly what I was taught and understood to be true. The dust bowl was pretty bad but as far as I understood it there was very little fertility to much of the land in what we now call the USA, which is why life was difficult for the early European settlers.
- supernovae 5y ago
  I saw something recently that showed the dustbowl was from loss of native grasses that had deep roots to crops that couldn't contain the soils and hold the bio-mass... Eventually without the root mass of the native grasses, it withered away... The treatment of the soil as if it is infinite and something purely to be extract is exactly like oil and mineral mining no matter the scale... Regardless of the dust bowl and the types of farmers that caused it, the hopes are that we learned how to farm within the ecology of the region(s) we live in and how those regions may vary from one another and we should build adaptive farms that work in harmony...
- failrate 5y ago
  Can you explain all of the people who were living and farming here prior to the European invasion? The land in the US is fertile. The prairies were incredibly fertile.
  - dijit 5y ago
    The reason I brought it up was because most farms in Native American USA were largely unproductive, and even agriculturally heavy tribes had to supplement their farms with hunting in winter.
ljm 5y ago
Settlers didn't intuitively know how to farm the land at home, whether that was in the Mediterranean climate of the south of Europe or the temperate one in central Europe, or the colder one further north. And it's certainly not as if the European continent is somehow especially farmable without knowing anything about farming. The wikipedia article on crop rotation[1] explains quite plainly that this has been evolving over eight thousand years, with a recent development pre-WW2 being in the southern US, and the most recent one being a shift to stopping crop rotation and instead switching to chemicals. That last particular update should be setting the alarm bells ringing. The evidence doesn't really support your claim unless you think the entirety of Northern America had no concept of farming until colonialism arrived a few hundred years ago. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_rotation#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_rotation#History
- failrate 5y ago
  The settlers had every opportunity to learn local farming practices from the Native Americans. Instead, they did everything in their power to force their farming practices onto the land where they occupied. Native Americans farmed. They farmed different crops that were actually suited to the local biome.
  - Melting_Harps 5y ago
    > The settlers had every opportunity to learn local farming practices from the Native Americans. > Native Americans farmed. They farmed different crops that were actually suited to the local biome. But many didn't. and those that did were often captured and conquered by those that didn't. The Comanche were the best known ones, but their were others. [0] That omission alone is what allows for many people to romanticize the horrible warfare and slavery that took place amongst the native people's perpetual state of warfare. Also, it's kind of hard to learn from a people who once exposed to European diseases were wiped out in absurd numbers long before the settlers and colonizers would actually arrive. Colonialism happens in waves, and can span long periods; it's worth reminding that the the first wave were people not interested in establishing a homestead lifestyle and a family farm but abject conquest, for that required the more disenfranchised and honestly peasant/pleb classes to be able to get to the 'New World' much later. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nomadic_peoples#Americas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nomadic_peoples#Americ...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
titzer 5y ago
I think you're being ungenerous to settlers from Europe; my ancestors were some of them. Soil conditions varied a lot! In Indiana, where my ancestors settled, there was largely forest, and great soil for farming, but the plains weren't that way. But regardless, yes, humans have very radically changed not only the soil ecology, but the entire ecology of North America over our entire time. But it's really picked up in the last 50 years. We're way past sustainability now. The practices of 100 or 200 years ago were much more sustainable than what we have now. They had no pesticides or fertilizers, and they couldn't till the soil so thoroughly. Farms were smaller and the increased biodiversity of "pests" was actually better for the soils, if not for yields. What has really tipped the balance is the "amazing" 4x crop yield increase over the last century. It came at the expense of literally every other living thing associated with the land: pests, grasses, trees, animals, birds, you name it. And it required juicing everything up on steroids, genetically modifying and breeding different crop varieties, and carpet-bombing an entire phylum of life with chemical warfare.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  We are not past sustainability.
  - titzer 5y ago
    Maybe in the broadest possible sense that it may yet be possible to live sustainably, but we are currently in overshoot, and it's not even close. https://www.overshootday.org https://www.overshootday.org
- bluGill 5y ago
  The practices of 150 years ago destroyed the soil. Farmers had to stop those in the 1930s. Since then plows have gone out of style and reduced soil loss greatly. Farmers who get 4x the yields are actually building soil, they have to because the soil they were left with by the 1980s wouldn't support those yields without doing things to build up the soil. It is years to build up though, if you can add 1mm of soil in a decade that is good. However you can also make what is left better without adding more.
Spooky23 5y ago
Not at all. My respect for my late friend and employer may sound romanticized, but the business was a real and practical thing. I think a farm being a vital business since the 1670s qualifies as adapted to the local climate. In my region of the country, water and topsoil is abundant. But you can’t compete with massive western operations.

dijit 5y ago

This is a weird take on history, it contradicts directly what I was taught and understood to be true. The dust bowl was pretty bad but as far as I understood it there was very little fertility to much of the land in what we now call the USA, which is why life was difficult for the early European settlers.

supernovae 5y ago
I saw something recently that showed the dustbowl was from loss of native grasses that had deep roots to crops that couldn't contain the soils and hold the bio-mass... Eventually without the root mass of the native grasses, it withered away... The treatment of the soil as if it is infinite and something purely to be extract is exactly like oil and mineral mining no matter the scale... Regardless of the dust bowl and the types of farmers that caused it, the hopes are that we learned how to farm within the ecology of the region(s) we live in and how those regions may vary from one another and we should build adaptive farms that work in harmony...
failrate 5y ago
Can you explain all of the people who were living and farming here prior to the European invasion? The land in the US is fertile. The prairies were incredibly fertile.
- dijit 5y ago
  The reason I brought it up was because most farms in Native American USA were largely unproductive, and even agriculturally heavy tribes had to supplement their farms with hunting in winter.

ljm 5y ago

Settlers didn't intuitively know how to farm the land at home, whether that was in the Mediterranean climate of the south of Europe or the temperate one in central Europe, or the colder one further north. And it's certainly not as if the European continent is somehow especially farmable without knowing anything about farming. The wikipedia article on crop rotation[1] explains quite plainly that this has been evolving over eight thousand years, with a recent development pre-WW2 being in the southern US, and the most recent one being a shift to stopping crop rotation and instead switching to chemicals. That last particular update should be setting the alarm bells ringing. The evidence doesn't really support your claim unless you think the entirety of Northern America had no concept of farming until colonialism arrived a few hundred years ago. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_rotation#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_rotation#History

failrate 5y ago
The settlers had every opportunity to learn local farming practices from the Native Americans. Instead, they did everything in their power to force their farming practices onto the land where they occupied. Native Americans farmed. They farmed different crops that were actually suited to the local biome.
- Melting_Harps 5y ago
  > The settlers had every opportunity to learn local farming practices from the Native Americans. > Native Americans farmed. They farmed different crops that were actually suited to the local biome. But many didn't. and those that did were often captured and conquered by those that didn't. The Comanche were the best known ones, but their were others. [0] That omission alone is what allows for many people to romanticize the horrible warfare and slavery that took place amongst the native people's perpetual state of warfare. Also, it's kind of hard to learn from a people who once exposed to European diseases were wiped out in absurd numbers long before the settlers and colonizers would actually arrive. Colonialism happens in waves, and can span long periods; it's worth reminding that the the first wave were people not interested in establishing a homestead lifestyle and a family farm but abject conquest, for that required the more disenfranchised and honestly peasant/pleb classes to be able to get to the 'New World' much later. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nomadic_peoples#Americas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nomadic_peoples#Americ...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

titzer 5y ago

I think you're being ungenerous to settlers from Europe; my ancestors were some of them. Soil conditions varied a lot! In Indiana, where my ancestors settled, there was largely forest, and great soil for farming, but the plains weren't that way. But regardless, yes, humans have very radically changed not only the soil ecology, but the entire ecology of North America over our entire time. But it's really picked up in the last 50 years. We're way past sustainability now. The practices of 100 or 200 years ago were much more sustainable than what we have now. They had no pesticides or fertilizers, and they couldn't till the soil so thoroughly. Farms were smaller and the increased biodiversity of "pests" was actually better for the soils, if not for yields. What has really tipped the balance is the "amazing" 4x crop yield increase over the last century. It came at the expense of literally every other living thing associated with the land: pests, grasses, trees, animals, birds, you name it. And it required juicing everything up on steroids, genetically modifying and breeding different crop varieties, and carpet-bombing an entire phylum of life with chemical warfare.

datavirtue 5y ago
We are not past sustainability.
- titzer 5y ago
  Maybe in the broadest possible sense that it may yet be possible to live sustainably, but we are currently in overshoot, and it's not even close. https://www.overshootday.org https://www.overshootday.org
bluGill 5y ago
The practices of 150 years ago destroyed the soil. Farmers had to stop those in the 1930s. Since then plows have gone out of style and reduced soil loss greatly. Farmers who get 4x the yields are actually building soil, they have to because the soil they were left with by the 1980s wouldn't support those yields without doing things to build up the soil. It is years to build up though, if you can add 1mm of soil in a decade that is good. However you can also make what is left better without adding more.

Spooky23 5y ago

Not at all. My respect for my late friend and employer may sound romanticized, but the business was a real and practical thing. I think a farm being a vital business since the 1670s qualifies as adapted to the local climate. In my region of the country, water and topsoil is abundant. But you can’t compete with massive western operations.