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The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

#71

Post by fiftyfifty »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #22

I have done a little quick and dirty looking around, trying to get an idea of how much damage was done in the Dust Bowl and what the long term consequence were (as a point of comparison/trying to find a thing that might help mentally model where this is going). Here are a couple of links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl#Long-term_economic_i... https://www.softschools.com/facts/us_history/dust_bowl_facts... I…

It would probably be worth contacting someone at the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which is part of the USDA. It was literally created as a response to the soil lost during the dustbowl and was originally called the "Soil Conservation Service". They may already have studies that cover exactly what you are asking about:

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/national/abou...

Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

#72

Post by hinkley »

okareaman wrote: post #8

I guess we'll have to replace it "Artificial soil: quick and dirty" https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19526161-700-artifici...

Requires a subscription.

'Replace it' is a little imprecise here, allowing for substitutes. I'm sure some people are trying to make substitutes but we know a lot more about how soil becomes these days and we're able, to an extent, to create it by introducing food to the right food chains.

Unfortunately for perennial crops, you have to build that food chain up orders of magnitude more than you do just for annual plants. At the same time the carbon content and resiliency are much much better.

Elaine Ingham is worth some time in a search engine.

Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

#73

Post by aaron695 »

Luck the environmental lobbyist have got the suckers into only caring about CO2 levels, and not harming the planet.

That said, if this reduces productivity that would mean more forests to cut down but I'd need to see a more full report on what is happening.

Loss in land value and productivity should also be happening to back this up. The entire region will not suddenly become useless at once.

And if there's anyone left who cares about the environment not CO2, helping quantify this at land sale level would help push some market forces.

Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

#74

Post by tastyfreeze »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #10

These topsoil crisis stories have been running since the 1930s, and are still nonsense. Modern farming doesn't depend on soil nutrients. The soil is tested, then minerals and petrochemical fertilizers are added. The soil is basically a growing medium.

> The soil is basically a growing medium.

This is absolutely false and is the idea that got us to where we are today with heavy tillage, fertilizer application and biocide application. Those practices are demonstrably destroying our environment and are wholly unnecessary.

Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

#75

Post by CuriouslyC »

corty wrote: post #12
gumby wrote: post #2

Modern farming is not the bucolic system drawn on the food packages in the supermarket. It's an extractive industry little different from mining or oil drilling. In fact industrial food is largely eating oil, both in energy intensity itself and the use of oil as feedstock for fertilizers and food additives.

Most important is nitrogen-based fertilizer, that can easily be produced from any kind of electricity. Most of the other stuff are minerals that are cheaply mined anywhere and won't run out for the next few thousand years. The most important oil consumption is for driving farm implements, but that can easily be changed to rapeseed oil in the short term and other green energy in the long term. So no cause for panic.

If you don't have topsoil you don't have water retention and you don't have organisms and structure that avoids the need to till for aeration and mineral movement. That means the garbage soil we're left with must be watered from aquifers when it's not constantly raining, and we must till the soil then work in fertilizers, which wastes gas and time.

The path you say has "no cause for panic" is a path to cyclical famine in 50-100 years.

Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

#76

Post by CuriouslyC »

markdown wrote: post #53
makerofspoons wrote: post #3

We're ~60 years from running out of topsoil globally if we continue degrading it at the current rate: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-...

Where does the topsoil go? Doesn't it, by definition, just become topsoil somewhere else?

It gets eroded by wind and water, with the end result being at the bottom of oceans and lakes.

Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

#77

Post by drawkbox »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #22

I have done a little quick and dirty looking around, trying to get an idea of how much damage was done in the Dust Bowl and what the long term consequence were (as a point of comparison/trying to find a thing that might help mentally model where this is going). Here are a couple of links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl#Long-term_economic_i... https://www.softschools.com/facts/us_history/dust_bowl_facts... I…

Agriculture also reduces the root depth as crops are harvested fast and regular iterations. This was a large cause of the Dust Bowl issue. There was a great post on this on reddit that has photo for reference. [1][2][3]

Cover crops help this now to prevent Dust Bowl like conditions and bad soil where possible [4].

Side note: Most carbon capture also happens in the root of wild grasses and plants. It isn't just agriculture but all our landscaping types that prevent root depth. We need more trees, and more wild growing but we cull it all back for the Stepford style perfect landscaping. HOAs in Arizona for instance hate wild grass and wild flowers, but they capture more carbon and can look amazing. Planting trees and plants that are more natural with deeper roots can help climate change and help the Gray-Green divide that highlights inequality on the amount of green in urban areas [5].

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/mdocyn/c...

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/microgrowery/comments/mdyb3h/compar...

[3] https://preview.redd.it/sp1n9tf6hdp61.jpg?width=509&auto=web...

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/business/cover-crops-a-fa...

[5] https://www.geographyrealm.com/gray-green-urban-divide-wealt...

Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

#78

Post by CuriouslyC »

99_00 wrote: post #55

Right now there is no financial incentive to preserve topsoil. In the future there will be. So why artificially create incentive to pay the higher cost now when we can punt to the future where technology will be so much better and the cost will probably be lower?

Topsoil takes a long time to build up. If you wait until it's an emergency to start trying to change farming practices, it'll take 10 years for farming practices to change, then another 10 years to build topsoil, and a lot of people will starve.

Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

#79

Post by meowkit »

99_00 wrote: post #55

Right now there is no financial incentive to preserve topsoil. In the future there will be. So why artificially create incentive to pay the higher cost now when we can punt to the future where technology will be so much better and the cost will probably be lower?

Same problem with climate change.

1) You assume technology will be better. There is no guarantee that this will be true.

2) Externalities like mass migration or civil unrest that could occur from food shortages would mean we don’t have a chance in the future to tackle the problem effectively.

Re: The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil

#80

Post by [deleted] »

titzer wrote: post #48
gumby wrote: post #2

Modern farming is not the bucolic system drawn on the food packages in the supermarket. It's an extractive industry little different from mining or oil drilling. In fact industrial food is largely eating oil, both in energy intensity itself and the use of oil as feedstock for fertilizers and food additives.

I come from a long line of farmers. My father was the last of our family to try to hold onto the farming tradition. He grew up on a farm, along with all my aunts and uncles. His generation was the first go to college. He chose business. He made a ton of money, and hated it. After leaving the business world in the mid 1980s to return to farming, it was not the same, and he soon returned to what was effectively day tra…

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