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Facing Soil Crisis, US Farmers Look Beyond Corn and Soybeans (csmonitor.com)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 and an economics writer for the Christian Science Monitor. If they didn't know about it before, it must be news.
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.
"No-till farming has been in use heavily for over 30 years."
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).
I don't respond to AC's.
Itâ(TM)s not experimental. Itâ(TM)s common practice on many farms, and has been for a while. The fact that they refer to cover crops as experimental proves the authors have no fucking clue what they are talking about, or what modern farming actually looks like. Just an ignorant twit spreading FUD.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Not sure where you are getting your information, but the vast majority of farms are still family owned.
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.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
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