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US Pays Farmers Billions To Save The Soil. But It's Blowing Away (npr.org)
An anonymous reader shares an NPR report: Soil has been blowing away from the Great Plains ever since farmers first plowed up the prairie. It reached crisis levels during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, when windblown soil turned day into night. In recent years, dust storms have returned, driven mainly by drought. But Shook -- and others -- say farmers are making the problem worse by taking land where grass used to grow and plowing it up, exposing vulnerable soil. This is where federal policy enters the picture. Most of that grassland was there in the first place because of a taxpayer-funded program. The U.S. Department of Agriculture rents land from farmers across the country and pays them to grow grass, trees and wildflowers in order to protect the soil and also provide habitat for wildlife. It's called the Conservation Reserve Program, or CRP. Ten years ago, there was more land in the CRP than in the entire state of New York. In North Dakota, CRP land covered 5,000 square miles. But CRP agreements only last 10 years, and when farming got more profitable about a decade ago, farmers in North Dakota pulled more than half of that land out of the CRP to grow crops like corn and soybeans. Across the country, farmers decided not to re-enroll 15.8 million acres of farmland in the CRP when those contracts expired between 2007 and 2014.
Farming got more profitable when the government fully embraced ethanol. Farmers plowed under land to grow more corn to supply the government-funded ethanol plants that needed to go into gasoline by government mandate. Now the government is blaming farmers for farming and wanting to change the rules.
If you want the farmers to save their soil, you've got to let them go bankrupt.
Tense is everything, and tense is something the title and summary screws up royally.
Title says ...
however the summary says the US stopped paying the farmers that money, because the farmers ceased to renew the enrolments...
The title makes it sound like the farmers are taking the money and eschewing their responsibilities and allowing the soil to blow away - they aren't, those responsibilities expired when the money stopped flowing.
Tilth is farmers' fault. There are zero-tilth agricultural methods. Clearing is suppliers' fault. They effectively force farmers to clear woods around their property that would slow winds because it also harbors animals that might shit on the lettuce, or what have you. Instead of doing due diligence and actually inspecting produce, they just want to be able to handle it like it's made of plastic.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Stop subsidizing corn for corn syrup and ethanol. Make antibiotic use in grain lots illegal. Re-introduce large herds of ruminants to the areas that are no longer profitable to grow grains on. You know, like the Bison and others that actually created the great plains.
That's probably for the best. Odds are that anyone growing weed couldn't plow a straight row anyway.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
- US Dept. of Agriculture
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I don't know what happens to its price, but I know that then we can certainly make American high again.
#MAHA
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There is another factor not covered. At least in Minnesota there used a be a property tax exemption for land that was under CRP. You would pay a significantly reduced property tax vs farmable land. They removed this exemption about 10 years ago now, and since that as CRP expires farmers would rather farm it, then pay the taxes as if they were farming it -- but without the associated yearly income.
You don't have to use herbicides/pesticides for no-till farming. You can use cover crops, solarization, mulch, there are also organic no-till farms proliferating like um weeds.
Besides, tilling is so awful for the environment and human health using roundup is probably the greener approach.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Last year I visited a research farm near UC Davis. The fields were no-till, and rather than spraying the entire field with glyphosate, the used a targeted applicator and an optical sensor to recognize the weeds and put the herbicide directly onto the leaves. No glyphosate was wasted by spraying it onto the soil or the crop. This cut the need for herbicide by 95%, reducing the cost and the environmental impact. They hope to make the applicator so accurate that it can even be used with crops that have no glyphosate tolerance, since none of it will touch them.
In a few years, this technology will be common, and plowshares will be melted down to make, well, maybe swords or something.