Facing Soil Crisis, US Farmers Look Beyond Corn and Soybeans (csmonitor.com) 143
Corn and soybean crops have been good to farmers in the American Midwest and Plains. But these staple crops have taken a toll on the very earth they draw nourishment from. Now, a new generation of farmers is looking underground to try to replenish their soils in a way that both restores nutrients and reduces chemical runoff into the environment. From a report: "Mainstream agriculture, they just don't get it," says North Dakota farmer Jerry Doan. "You have got to feed the biology of the soil." Some farmers are experimenting with growing cover crops on their fields. Devoting valuable land to new crops can be risky for producers, whose thin margins make them reluctant to make big changes if their yields are going to fall, even temporarily. But in some communities, such as Washington County, Iowa, farmers are taking the leap together.
Re:Republicans don't believe in biology (Score:4)
The dust bowl was less than a century ago, you'd think we'd learn.
Re:Republicans don't believe in biology (Score:4)
Whatever gave you that particular delusion? ;)
Re:Republicans don't believe in biology (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not surprised that they're this stupid.
But I am surprised that there are people in the world who are aware enough about the existence of farming to talk about it, but think that cover crops are an "experimental" idea.
Re: Republicans don't believe in biology (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Now how do you explain to a farmer with massive loans that he needs to idle his croplands for a season or two to help the soil recover?
I agree that crop rotation and fallowing is an answer to this. How do you get the farming industry to adopt the practice for their own good though?
Especially factory farms?
Re: (Score:2)
"Especially factory farms?"
Fertilizer run off inspectors and fines?
Re: (Score:2)
If you have to explain that, don't even loan that "farmer" money for planting.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure. Just give over all the farming in the country to big agri-corps.
Right?
Re: (Score:2)
So was World War 2... No, the collective has learned nothing. The same party rules today. You'd think... but what does it get you?
Re: Republicans don't believe in biology (Score:1)
Yes, we learned from the dust bowl.
We learned to have ag subsidies and loans, so farmers could afford to plant ground cover.
Now, there are no family farms, big business gets the subsidies. And price supports cause market distortion.
Not just in the US but overseas too. We put local farmers put of business (bankrupt) because of our too cheap exports.
Re: Republicans don't believe in biology (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, big farms are getting bigger, and they get subsidies. The thing is, the small farms are doomed for reasons that have nothing to do with subsidies or price supports. They lack economies of scale. Simple as that. When prices for their inputs go up, larger operations are more resilient to prolonged losses, and better positioned to capitalize on good prices. Thus the smaller guys go out of business.
It’s the same basic economics that mean most mom & pop business of any kind is more likely to fold during a recession than a national chain.
Re: Republicans don't believe in biology (Score:2)
Sounds like a (bad) public policy decision to me.
Re: Republicans don't believe in biology (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Now, there are no family farms
97% of farms in America are owned by families. 89% by area farmed.
big business gets the subsidies.
So? The purpose of the subsidies is to promote good practices not to "preserve family farms", so what difference does it make how the ownership is structured?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Do American farmers not practice Crop Rotation?
Yes. The author of TFA is an idiot. Crop rotation and cover crops are very common. So is no-till farming [wikipedia.org] that minimizes soil disturbance.
None of this is new. No-till has been practiced for decades. Crop rotation and cover crops have been done for millennia. Even the Romans understood that fields should occasionally be left fallow, and that rotating legumes with grains could increase yields.
monocropping annuals (Score:1)
"Building Soil with Animal Impact: White Oak Pastures Sustainability isn't enough; it has to be regenerative." https://www.whiteoakpastures.c... [whiteoakpastures.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Wait, what?! Growing weeds doesn't improve soil quality?? How could it be true?! lolol
Re:monocropping annuals (Score:4)
It depends on the weeds. Pretty much all of them can bind carbon from the air. Some have the ability to work with bacteria that can bind nitrogen from the air, which plants need in bound form in order to use the nitrogen - the N2 in the air is pretty much inert and unusable for higher life forms like plants.
Clover and field peas are examples of nitrogen binding plants, and so are some "weeds".
Re: (Score:2)
Clover and field peas are not weeds, though.
If when I say "weed" you think, "any plant I didn't want in my field," then you won't understand it.
Weeds are more politely called "pioneer plants." They specialize in growing in disturbed and depleted places. They're not in any place for the long haul.
Clover and field peas are almost completely the opposite of that.
Some weeds fix nitrogen but that just means they're plants, it doesn't mean that it improves the soil to have a whole field of them. Plant a field ful
Re: (Score:2)
Clover and field peas are not weeds, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If when I say "weed" you think, "any plant I didn't want in my field," then you won't understand it.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.... [oxforddictionaries.com]
Re: (Score:2)
"Weeds" is just a name that is used to describe plants for which we have no immediate use or interfere with crops. What an understanding of ecology reveals however is that weeds can be pioneering plants that appear in a given landscape when the soil is deficient or has some underlying damage. As successive generation weeds grow and die they gradually repair the soil by decomposing and providing valuable nutrients to the soil. As the soil changes the conditions become favorable to different plants, and the c
Re: (Score:3)
Every culture has collapsed ...
Animals change fuck all about the equation ... or at least intermediate animals in between the plants and humans don't. If you keep extracting nutrients faster than geological processes can replenish them and washing them out to the ocean, eventually the soil gets fucked. Or in other words, you need to shit and be buried where you eat. Intermediate animals shitting part of their nutrients out on the soil they are eating from doesn't help, if the nutrients they provide to human
Re: (Score:2)
Whale poop can be quite valuable [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Whale poop can be quite valuable [wikipedia.org].
I believe Ambergris is actually more like whale puke than whale poop.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
What perennials staples are there? Polynesian societies made heavy use of breadfruit, and in SE Asia there's sago (the palm, not the cycad), and plantains in some parts o
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
How many perennial staple crop have you eaten at all recently, let alone consumed in substantial quantity? You might be able to get some pigeon pea, but
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Allan Savory has some good talks online about the need to regenerate soil.
Re: (Score:1)
It's called sustainable farming (Score:5, Informative)
I listened to a local farmer talk about it. With industrial farming, you pump the soil full of chemicals, plant your seed, harvest, wash, rinse, repeat. He said it works, but it takes a terrible toil on the soil and surrounding environment.
He's now gone to a sustainable farming model. He said it's completely 100% against what industrial farming is all about. He doesn't till the soil, he uses lots of cover crops, doesn't harvest all of it each year, lets his cattle free-graze his fields, and he makes more money doing it. I've heard people say his beef is the best-tasting in the county. Here's a neat write-up about it [redwoodfallsgazette.com].
Another neat benefit he mentioned: He got an 8" rainfall last year, and his fields soaked it all up. All his neighbors had run-off into the river valleys, taking all the chemicals with it, but his fields are full of decomposing tillage that took it all in like a sponge.
Re: (Score:1)
Does he make more money because he can slap some organic label on it or does he actually have better yields? Or is it more a matter of saving money due toless work (no tilling) or not having to pay for chemicals?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You'd have to be some kind of super-moron to miss the intrinsic benefits of not spraying poisonous chemicals all over something you plan to eat, why clean food is inherently worth more money and is of higher quality.
Re: (Score:2)
Poisonous chemical pesticides and fertilizers are used in both organic and conventional farming systems. Any produce that reaches store shelves in western countries has to fall way below determined safety limits for human consumption.
I suspect that what you define as "clean food" and "higher quality" has no scientific anchoring.
Re: It's called sustainable farming (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Natural fertilizer tends to be more poisonous than glyphosate. The glyphosate breaks up in the natural environment, but the natural fertilizer too often remains around.
This is 100% shit. No, literally. Genuinely natural fertilizer is shit, or composted plants, or the like. It breaks down into soil. Glyphosphate only breaks down in aerobic conditions, but big ag doesn't have those. They use mechanical tilth, which creates hardpan, which traps water. That's why there's glyphosphate in our water systems. As it is actually used, it does not in fact break down.
Re: It's called sustainable farming (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
When was the last time a consumer got sick from glyphosate in their food? Because people get sick from organic fertilizer all the time. The famous example is Chipotle.
Field workers are shitting in between the rows because they don't have time to take bathroom breaks. And large-scale processing facilities cross-contaminate produce. Smaller facilities mean containment of outbreaks like these. You can't trace any of the mass illnesses from Chipotle grill to fertilizer, but you can trace them all to the overall system involved.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Good thing there's only one internet, otherwise there might possibly be two opinions which don't fundamentally agree, shattering the awesome power of the internet to cast doubt asunder. Food for thought: an internet fork might well be worse for civilization than a Bitcoin fork.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, if done wrong. But not using natural fertilizer also has consequences, and they are even worse in the long term. They include threatening the future food production capacity of the planet.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: It's called sustainable farming (Score:5, Informative)
Why just one?? Saving labor. Saving labor, saving chemical costs, saving feed for animals, and still maintaining a viable yield is the goal.
It is also a lot harder, and varies by location which is why commercial standardized farming companies don't like it.
Re: (Score:1)
You either save labor or it is a lot harder.. I don't think it can be both?
Re: (Score:2)
Sustainable farming could be applied to either organic or conventional farming system, as its aim is to uphold long-term ecological health, regardless of it's implemented. Organic farming is more about the ideological decision to use naturally occurring pesticides and fertilizers, and prohibiting synthetic ones, regardless of results.
There doesn't seem to be much data on its effectiveness though, perhaps because it's a relatively recent viewpoint and not strictly defined, though there are reports of it impr
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Many farmers practice no-till on some crops, but do till some of their fields. Often combined with crop rotation, such that the field might get ploughed at some point during the cycle, but it isn't tilled as part of the planting.
If the soil was continuously tilled for 50+ years you can't just go straight to no-till. You have to reduce it gradually and rebuild the soil.
Re: (Score:2)
The fertilizer is fine; the pesticides, less so, although if you're using pesticides you damned well better use synthetics if you care anything about the environment. The tillage damages soil structure.
I'm surrounded by coffee shops and breweries, so I've been considering collecting the spent grounds and grains, growing oyster mushrooms, enriching the spent substrate with redworms, and then selling the worm castings as top dressing for gardens and farms. It'd be a massive, massive amount of highly-enric
Isn't that just called an explosion? Or pathogen? (Score:1)
Ok, humanity *is* already the largest extinction event in Earths history, I’m being told by "the news" and their numbers.
But those growth patterns, and killing its own basis of living, looks exactly like certain stupid bacteria in a Petri dish, literal explosions, or badly unsuccessful pathogens that kill their host and themselves in the process before even getting a chance to hop to the next one. :)
Re: (Score:2)
If they do it properly then after a few cycles they can get the assets of the first thing they fucked up at a knock-down price.
Now that's sustainable!
Re:easy answer: (Score:4, Interesting)
Hemp doesn't replace either of those, as it's uses are primarily as a textile and isn't useful as food for people or animals.
Hemp seed makes excellent food. One of the few plant products with complete proteins, it also has most of the essential oils. Throw in some greens and you could live a long time on a hemp seed diet.
Hemp seed oil is also useful for other products, tons used to be used in the paint industry for example.
Then there is the blas (sp?) that is left over after extracting the fiber from the stems, can be used to make plastics and quite a few other uses.
There's a reason that hemp was made illegal, and it wasn't that it made people stoned, though that was a convenient excuse to get the busybodies on side. hemp illegalization was mostly a Hearst initiative to remove hemp as a competitor to his new pulp paper industry. DuPont and similar companies were onboard as well.
Re: (Score:3)
It's not just the hemp seed that's nutritious, practically the whole plant is near perfect food for humans. We live in an evil world people, run by those who would like to see most of us dead...
Re: (Score:3)
It's not just the hemp seed that's nutritious, practically the whole plant is near perfect food for humans.
I'd like to see you try to eat the largest portion of the hemp plant, the stalk. That could be hilarious enough to trend.
Re: (Score:2)
>Pot and Hemp are the same plant, they aren't "brothers."
Only in the same way that mustard, cabbage, and broccoli are all "the same plant". Technically they are - they aren't different species yet, but they're not "the same plant" for any human usage scenario.
Tariffs are the biggest... (Score:2)
...worries soybean and corn farmers face right now. Thousands of years have taught them how to rotate crops.
Outdated News (Score:5, Insightful)
Farming has moved so far beyond this article that I am not sure why it was even published. No-till farming has been in use heavily for over 30 years. For those that don't know what this means, farmers don't continuously plow their fields before planing and after harvest. This keeps the topsoil in-tact and far more healthy as well as promotes the worm population which is very important and a key sign of the health of the soil. These are just a few of the major items because there is not enough space to fully elaborate. In the last 10 years, the use of cover crops alone has become the normal here in MI which reduces herbicide use and promotes organic material in the soil. Bottom line: the farmers of today are far better maintainers of land than then used to be and there is no worries that the world will end or another dust bowl is in our future.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know where you live, but in the California Central Valley it looks to me like they plow every year. Dust everywhere, well plowed fields as far as the eye can see.
Re: (Score:2)
There is a big world outside CA. No offense, but your state has some of the worse farming practices known to man.
Re: (Score:1)
They have to get their pistachios [bloomberg.com] from somewhere, you know...
Re:Outdated News (Score:4, Informative)
They don't care about the soil, because they're running off an aquifer that they're depleting rapidly.
It will be the Central Desert when the stored water runs out. The land has sunk an average 28ft in the past hundred years. That's entirely from reductions in the water table. They only get 20 inches of rain per year at the north end, and 5 inches at the south end. That's not even close to enough for any of their high-value crops; and some years they don't get any rain at all!
In the midwest they're also using up their stored water. The difference is, they get enough annual rainfall that the farmers who still have soil will be able to grow other crops, even if they won't still be able to grow so much corn.
Re: (Score:2)
Too stupid to reply to most of it, but:
'Merica only does what will make it money in the next ~5 nanoseconds.
Ever heard of the US Treasury Bonds?
Did you know we even have a financial sector?
Re:Outdated News (Score:4, Informative)
Came here to say this. By 2012, U.S. farmers were using no-till on over half of all acres planted to corn, soybean, and wheat [agweb.com].
Farming has moved so far beyond this article that I am not sure why it was even published.
Consider the source: a freshly-minted staff writer [csmonitor.com] and an economics writer [csmonitor.com] for the Christian Science Monitor. If they didn't know about it before, it must be news.
Re: (Score:1)
A small point, but ~15 years ago while I was in college there was still heavy discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of no-till. My understanding at the time is GMOs major selling point was precisely that they could be used more effective in no-till situations--herbicide resistant GMOs being plantable in circumstances were you'd want to otherwise till the soil. So, yea, that's basically where the giant move towards no-till corn and soybean is from at least in those crops. I can't speak for whe
Re: (Score:3)
We use mechanical tilth and harvesting because they reduce labor, and we plant monocultures because they are compatible with mechanical harvesting. Interplanting crops in beneficial "guilds" maintains soil health and increases yields, but it is incompatible with current large-scale cultivation methods. It also reduces pest problems, especially as part of an IPM strategy. GMO is a red herring.
You didn't RTFA (Score:4, Informative)
From the article: continuous no-till and low-till farming, which decades of studies have shown improve the soil and reduce costs, is still used on only 1 in every 5 acres of US cropland, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Re: (Score:2)
Re:You didn't RTFA (Score:4)
I'm not sure I completely follow. The article's source gets its "21 percent" figure from this report [usda.gov], which if I parsed it correctly counts the practice on a per-year basis. It also defines it:
Though low-till farming isn't as clearly defined, and the article seems to incorrectly bundle them together.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I can define it, it's a bullshit term designed to mislead.
There are two kinds of farming when examined from this perspective, no/zero-till (which ironically can include tilling the soil once, to start) or with tilling. Anything else falls into the second category. The point of not tilling is that any tilling compacts the soil/ destroys soil crumb structure and leads to anaerobic conditions which are harmful in multiple ways (to say nothing of the way compacted soil retards root penetration.)
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for the source. It and the source referenced by the article seem to indicate that the article incorrectly mentioned no-till and low-till together when speaking of the no-till statistic, as no-till alone account for 21% of planted acres. No-till and low-till together account for 51% of planted acres.
The numbers aren't as clear-cut for the Midwest, but assuming corn, soybeans and wheat each represent an equal amounts of planted acres in the "Heartland" figure, I'd estimate no-till to be around 35%, and
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
You can't do no-till farming without large amounts of chemicals. Weeds and bugs will take over everything. I've mixed up many tanks of pesticide/herbicide on a no-till operation in NC. It's depressing to see what goes on in agriculture/livestock production these days in America firsthand. I recommend everyone grow your own food or keep your heads in the sand about what you're consuming from the store, you don't want to know the truth...
Re: (Score:2)
I remember working the fields as a kid in 1990s here in Finland as a decently paying summer job, and even back then, it was fairly common knowledge that farmers weren't tilling their fields yearly. Back then, I think it was once every full crop rotation between some specific crops or something similar. And that was decades ago.
Experimenting with Cover Crops? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Does it have electrolytes?
Pure propaganda (Score:3)
Literally nothing to see here. Move along.
Hemp FTW.... (Score:2)
Most people simply don't comprehend what a travesty the WW ban on cannabis has been for mankind. One of the most nutritious plants available for humans and more derivative products than most any other crop. The problem is it would liberate and empower so many "common" people that the evil elites had to prevent our access to it's benefits so they could sell us their patented products to make themselves stupid rich.
"The love of $ is the root of all evil."
Re:Hemp FTW.... (Score:4, Informative)
You can buy hemp seeds legally, a 20 lbs or 100 lbs bag if you want. There is no ban on you buying or eating hemp seeds.
pothead spotted
Re: (Score:2)
I'm really doubting the pothead has the drive, motivation and self-discipline to grow and then harvest seed from industrial hemp plant.
Especially when the industrial hemp makes pollen that will ruin his high-THC potted MJ plants.
Hey, that's a good idea. What would be hilarious is some people diffusing industrial hemp pollen into the air around the weed growers. Because they don't want to share the road or a workplace with a bunch of potheads.... lolz
Roll your own (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been growing my own produce in 5 gallon buckets in my front and back yards for 2 years running. This summer I'm finally going to do a real bed and irrigation system. Harvest doubled the second time around, after learning a few things the first year. I live deep inner-city, right smack in the middle of a valley in western WA. I Don't use ferts or chems at all, and a package of enough raddish seeds to last years is like a buck. I get that it's GMO seeds, but I'm OK with that. Carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, I'm even doing some garlic but it's got to overwinter? I wish I had some fruit trees.
I started when the family was going extreme budget on everything to solve a few problems, that's past now, but I'll be doing this every year of my life from now on.
I feel like I'm learning a very valuable skill, passing it onto my child, and I can refuse to buy into the "Organic" marketing at the grocery store. I'll make my own, thanks.
It's DAMN easy in the summers here too, even the mild summers of western WA. I just water it, and watch for bugs. Feels great carving my own pumpkins.
I've been told I'm not allowed to grow my own food in my front yard (yeah? sue me fukko) My rain buckets are "stealing" from the local farmers (wanna fight about it?) and my buckets are poisoning my food (says food grade on the can) all by the same helpless snobs I see all over town telling everybody else how to do things. Today, everybody wants to point fingers at people that are actually doing something, and tell them they are doing it wrong, but nobody wants to take a little responsibility themselves and show us what right looks like. You want to be able to tell the farmers their doing it wrong? You need to be able to feed your family without them, otherwise, your just another taker complaining that it's not good enough.
This is the age of big oil protesters in plastic Kyaks, coal powered electric cars, logging protesters passing out paper fliers by the 100s, and recycling zealots sucking down water bottled in non-reusable plastic. 9/10 times, the whole noble message is overpowered by us humans being assholes. Change starts with you, Mr. Journalist man, show us what right looks like.
The most satisfying thing of the year? Eating a salad.