New Evidence Shows Fertile Soil Gone From Midwestern Farms

Guno צְבִי

We fight, We win, Am Yisrael Chai
Dust bowl coming to parts of the mid west



Farming has destroyed a lot of the rich soil of America's Midwestern prairie. A team of scientists just came up with a staggering new estimate for just how much has disappeared.

The new study emerged from a simple observation, one that people flying over Midwestern farms can confirm for themselves. The color of bare soil varies, and that variation is related to soil quality.

The soil that's darkest in color is widely known as topsoil. Soil scientists call this layer the "A-horizon." It's the "black, organic, rich soil that's really good for growing crops," says Evan Thaler, a Ph.D. student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

It's full of living microorganisms and decaying plant roots, also called organic carbon. When settlers first arrived in the Midwest, it was everywhere, created from centuries of accumulated prairie grass. Plowing, though, released much of the trapped carbon, and topsoil was also lost to wind and water erosion. The soil that remains is often much lighter in color.

Thaler and his colleagues compared that color, as seen from satellites, with direct measurements of soil quality that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has carried out, and found that light brown soil contained so little organic carbon, it really wasn't A-horizon soil at all. The topsoil layer was gone. What's more, Thaler found that this was consistently the case on particular parts of the landscape. "The A-horizon was almost always gone on hilltops," he says.

Even the study's critics, though, agree that topsoil is endangered. "To me, it's not important whether it's exactly a third," says Anna Cates, Minnesota's state soil health specialist. "Maybe it's twenty percent, maybe it's forty percent. There's a lot of topsoil gone from the hills."
https://www.npr.org/2021/02/24/9673...deMi7ut6llQRrshg1xV5YeNxF1TwnPchL5Mdqo0798kFA
 
Without chemical fertilizers, seven billion people would probably starve to death in about 24 months.

While general relativity and quantuum mechanics hog all the praise, honestly the invention of chemical fertilizers might have been the greatest scientific discovery of the 20th century.
 
Without chemical fertilizers, seven billion people would probably starve to death in about 24 months.

While general relativity and quantuum mechanics hog all the praise, honestly the invention of chemical fertilizers might have been the greatest scientific discovery of the 20th century.

Thaler believes that a century of plowing is to blame. The soil gradually fell down hillsides, a little bit each year, as farmers tilled the soil.

The same thing contributed to the dust bowl in the 1930's
 
Heavy machinery is the cause of much wind erosion. It compacts the soil , inhibiting the ingress of water , and the winds blow the dried-out topsoil away.
 
The same thing contributed to the dust bowl in the 1930's

I believe the major problem with loss of top soil is erosion and poor land management, not fertilizer application.

There are other problems with fertilizer application, but erosion is not one of them. Just my two cents.
 
CULTIVATING THE SOIL: WHY IT’S IMPORTANT AND HOW IT DIFFERS FROM TILLING

Nature takes a toll on the soil as the elements actively dry it into a crust. Cultivating breaks up the crusty soil surface allowing for a much easier penetration of air, nutrients and water deep into the soil where plant roots can gain access to them.

https://mantis.com/cultivating-the-...ling is actually a form,the soil is very poor.

Tilling helps to break up compacted or clay soil and add oxygen and organic matter to soil. ... By exposing a greater surface area to air and sunlight, tilling reduces soil's moisture-retaining ability and causes a hard crust to form on the soil surface.
 
I believe the major problem with loss of top soil is erosion and poor land management, not fertilizer application.

There are other problems with fertilizer application, but erosion is not one of them. Just my two cents.

Fertilizer is , generally, applied by heavy machinery- which compacts the soil causing wind erosion. It isn't unusual to have highway visibility greatly reduced by dust clouds.
 
Fertilizer is , generally, applied by heavy machinery- which compacts the soil causing wind erosion. It isn't unusual to have highway visibility greatly reduced by dust clouds.

Right, like I said fertilizers are not a cause of erosion (directly), but land management practices are.

I am not familiar with fertilizer application practices in the Midwest, but there are multiple fertilizer application techniques which do not require massive impacts to soils by heavy equipment
 
Right, like I said fertilizers are not a cause of erosion (directly), but land management practices are.

I am not familiar with fertilizer application practices in the Midwest, but there are multiple fertilizer application techniques which do not require massive impacts to soils by heavy equipment

What would they be ? Aerial spraying isn't exactly popular with local populations- and it's banned in many localities.
 
What would they be ? Aerial spraying isn't exactly popular with local populations- and it's banned in many localities.

Most farmers around here use low impact fertigation or broadcasting. I do not know about the practices in the Midwest.

I read somewhere that most of the grain grown in the Midwest is for livestock consumption, not human consumption. If we all just became vegetarians, we probably would not need this industrial-scale massive grain cultivation.
 
Without chemical fertilizers, seven billion people would probably starve to death in about 24 months.

While general relativity and quantuum mechanics hog all the praise, honestly the invention of chemical fertilizers might have been the greatest scientific discovery of the 20th century.

MISINFORMATION! REPUBLITARD!
 
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