8 ms·

Deeper roots tend to make for healthier soil. This is why dandelions are such a boon for someone with poor soil. Their deep roots break up poorly aerated soil a

by foxyv 5y ago

Deeper roots tend to make for healthier soil. This is why dandelions are such a boon for someone with poor soil. Their deep roots break up poorly aerated soil allowing aerobic bacteria to produce nutrients for plants. Modern farmers are keenly aware of soil quality and spend a lot of time and money to keep their farms running at top efficiency. The thing that worries me the most about modern farming is the use of petrochemicals for fuel and fertilizers as well as runoff into water sources.

yosito 5y ago
Presumably if you have more productive crops, the ratio of petrochemicals to food output improves.
- dwiel 5y ago
  Why assume that more output doesn't come with more input? It doesn't seem presumable to me one way or the other.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    > Why assume that more output doesn't come with more input? It doesn't seem presumable to me one way or the other. It isn't. There is such a thing as too much. Inputs that wash off in the rain is wasted money. Inputs beyond what the plant needs are best sit around (or wash off - see above), but sometimes will make the plant grow taller instead of grow more food - or worse will kill the plant from too much. There is a lot of room though. Today we can target small areas of land with different amounts of each input. 100 years ago you tried to give each field the same amount of every input since you didn't know what it really needed, and didn't have the ability to do anything about it even if you did.
RosanaAnaDana 5y ago
>Modern farmers are keenly aware of soil quality and spend a lot of time and money to keep their farms running at top efficiency. You sure about that? When I was ARS, sure there were 3-4 farmers I met who took SOC and and soil health seriously; individuals who wanted to think about their soil as an ecosystem and grow their soils as they did their crops. Then there were the other 96-97 farmers you would meet who could give two wiffs of stinky piss about doing anything other than extracting as much value off their land as quickly as possible. This was typically done with high degrees of tillage, large quantities of fertilizer, and significant doses of herbicide. If there SOC levels dropped below 5%, they would just buy in lime and lime the shit out of the fields. Rinse, wash hands, repeat. Its purely anecdotal, but the *vast* majority of farmers I had the opportunity were not good farmers and not interested in any kind of longer term relationship with their soils. Most seems like they were trying to extract maybe 5-15 more years of growth out of their soils before they were completely depleted of SOC and basically not usable as farm-able land. We're talking about a region that prior to cultivation had SOC levels in the 30-40s; most of the soils there now are down at below 10%, many as low as 5%, which is borderline being able to grow anything at all.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Recently read the book "Running Out" about aquifers in western Kansas. Takeaway was that the overwhelming majority of farmers were explicitly targeting emptying the aquifer within their lifetimes. Unclear what they expect to happen next.
  - omegaworks 5y ago
    Bailouts. Every American farmer relies on the generous crop insurance policies maintained by our government.
- titzer 5y ago
  This is an unfortunate consequence of a long chain of economic transformation. My family was all farmers, a nearly unbroken chain reaching back at least 300 years into western Germany. My father went into the business world, but hated it and tried to return to farming in the mid 1980s, at which point economies of scale had already transformed the market so that the 200 acres of corn and soybeans the family had raised for generations no longer could support his full income. He borrowed money, bought another farm, couldn't even afford the equipment to harvest my grandparents' farm, had to contract out to the burgeoning Wagners who were farming thousands of acres. In the end, he had to give up the idea of farming and became basically a day trader by the mid 1990s. He was nostalgic about the old farm and it was tragic that his entire world was upended by enormous macroeconomic forces that pushed him into dry tech-driven commodity futures trading, about the exact opposite of what was bred into his genes. I can see why farmers are extracting every bit of profit from the soil that they absolutely can. The machine demands it of them. Farms are huge operations nowadays, and from what I can tell, small family-owned and run corn and beans farms are half a century in the past at this point. The soil is just one more casualty of growthism.
- imtringued 5y ago
  That's what we get from the "grow as fast as possible today" mentality. People aren't thinking about how to maximize economic output. That is probably the biggest failing of capitalism. People think maximum growth is the same thing as maximum output.
- 5y ago
beauzero 5y ago
Also why daikon radishes are used as a "cover crop" that and for nematode reduction.
mauzy 5y ago
While the statement implying that modern farmers are good Shepard's of soil quality is... debatable at best and I'd argue mostly false it is certainly true that, as a rule, deeper / larger root structures benefit soil rather than diminishing. Especially within the same family of crops deeper roots will always result in a healthier soil than shallow.
- foxyv 5y ago
  I don't remember saying they are good shepherds. Just keenly aware. The usual solution is to dump many tons of petrochemical based fertilizers and amendments into their soil which washes off into local waterways.

by foxyv 5y ago

yosito 5y ago

Presumably if you have more productive crops, the ratio of petrochemicals to food output improves.

dwiel 5y ago
Why assume that more output doesn't come with more input? It doesn't seem presumable to me one way or the other.
- bluGill 5y ago
  > Why assume that more output doesn't come with more input? It doesn't seem presumable to me one way or the other. It isn't. There is such a thing as too much. Inputs that wash off in the rain is wasted money. Inputs beyond what the plant needs are best sit around (or wash off - see above), but sometimes will make the plant grow taller instead of grow more food - or worse will kill the plant from too much. There is a lot of room though. Today we can target small areas of land with different amounts of each input. 100 years ago you tried to give each field the same amount of every input since you didn't know what it really needed, and didn't have the ability to do anything about it even if you did.

RosanaAnaDana 5y ago

>Modern farmers are keenly aware of soil quality and spend a lot of time and money to keep their farms running at top efficiency. You sure about that? When I was ARS, sure there were 3-4 farmers I met who took SOC and and soil health seriously; individuals who wanted to think about their soil as an ecosystem and grow their soils as they did their crops. Then there were the other 96-97 farmers you would meet who could give two wiffs of stinky piss about doing anything other than extracting as much value off their land as quickly as possible. This was typically done with high degrees of tillage, large quantities of fertilizer, and significant doses of herbicide. If there SOC levels dropped below 5%, they would just buy in lime and lime the shit out of the fields. Rinse, wash hands, repeat. Its purely anecdotal, but the *vast* majority of farmers I had the opportunity were not good farmers and not interested in any kind of longer term relationship with their soils. Most seems like they were trying to extract maybe 5-15 more years of growth out of their soils before they were completely depleted of SOC and basically not usable as farm-able land. We're talking about a region that prior to cultivation had SOC levels in the 30-40s; most of the soils there now are down at below 10%, many as low as 5%, which is borderline being able to grow anything at all.

jeffbee 5y ago
Recently read the book "Running Out" about aquifers in western Kansas. Takeaway was that the overwhelming majority of farmers were explicitly targeting emptying the aquifer within their lifetimes. Unclear what they expect to happen next.
- omegaworks 5y ago
  Bailouts. Every American farmer relies on the generous crop insurance policies maintained by our government.
titzer 5y ago
This is an unfortunate consequence of a long chain of economic transformation. My family was all farmers, a nearly unbroken chain reaching back at least 300 years into western Germany. My father went into the business world, but hated it and tried to return to farming in the mid 1980s, at which point economies of scale had already transformed the market so that the 200 acres of corn and soybeans the family had raised for generations no longer could support his full income. He borrowed money, bought another farm, couldn't even afford the equipment to harvest my grandparents' farm, had to contract out to the burgeoning Wagners who were farming thousands of acres. In the end, he had to give up the idea of farming and became basically a day trader by the mid 1990s. He was nostalgic about the old farm and it was tragic that his entire world was upended by enormous macroeconomic forces that pushed him into dry tech-driven commodity futures trading, about the exact opposite of what was bred into his genes. I can see why farmers are extracting every bit of profit from the soil that they absolutely can. The machine demands it of them. Farms are huge operations nowadays, and from what I can tell, small family-owned and run corn and beans farms are half a century in the past at this point. The soil is just one more casualty of growthism.
imtringued 5y ago
That's what we get from the "grow as fast as possible today" mentality. People aren't thinking about how to maximize economic output. That is probably the biggest failing of capitalism. People think maximum growth is the same thing as maximum output.
5y ago

beauzero 5y ago

Also why daikon radishes are used as a "cover crop" that and for nematode reduction.

mauzy 5y ago

While the statement implying that modern farmers are good Shepard's of soil quality is... debatable at best and I'd argue mostly false it is certainly true that, as a rule, deeper / larger root structures benefit soil rather than diminishing. Especially within the same family of crops deeper roots will always result in a healthier soil than shallow.

foxyv 5y ago
I don't remember saying they are good shepherds. Just keenly aware. The usual solution is to dump many tons of petrochemical based fertilizers and amendments into their soil which washes off into local waterways.