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Soil Loss

The problem started when the settlers first began to settle the Midwest. Most of them came from eastern Europe where yearly plowing was standard. The first thing they did when they came to the fertile dry prairies was cut down the tall prairie grass and plow the soil exposing it to driving winds. Not only did they uncover the soil for planting the traditional corn and wheat crops but burning off the very tall prairie grasses was fairly common. The dry brittle environment did not have the regular rains they were accustomed to, the soil dried out and blew away. When the rains did come, the downpours washed still more topsoil away. Dust storms became a serious problem as the soils blew away. Unfortunately the settlers response was to keep trying the old ways of farming they were accustomed to. When fields ceased yielding a return still more prairie soil was plowed.

Most commercial farms today only raise one crop and the ground lays empty for the rest of the year making it susceptible to erosion. The world still looses 24 Billion tons of topsoil per year according to globalagriculture.org. I find that really hard to believe but that is the official number. That means about 3.4 Tons of topsoil per person per year.

When I was a boy I used to traipse all over my small farming town. There were a couple beautiful corn fields near us that lay barren all fall winter and spring. When there was snow on the ground I hated walking through that area because the snow had dirt particles all through it. It was like it had been snowing a mixture of snow and dirt. Every spring when the snow melted a small river would flow out of those fields and down through 1/4 mile of road ditch. Then it joined the crystal clear creek coming out of the woods and gurgled its way across our lower pasture. All the while churning with so much topsoil it looked like it was a chocolate milkshake. After flowing through our pasture it would drop down into a deep gully that widened into a pond. In the calmer waters of the pond some of that silt would settle to the bottom and in just a few years would fill that pond until the muck was almost even with spillway.

I’m excited about regenerative agriculture because it has the potential to create topsoil at a remarkable rate! Some farmers such as Gabe Brown has increased his topsoil from a few inches in the 90s to over 30in measured almost 25 years later!

Regenerative agriculture is all about keeping the soil covered preferably with living roots but also with a mulch of dead plants from the previous cover crop. Farming like this results in huge additions of biomass and organic matter to the soil which then is incorporated into the soil by earthworms and billions of microbes.

I remember one local farm in particular. It was a large traditional dairy farm that fed mostly corn silage. Corn silage is made by chopping the entire corn stalk instead of just removing the corn kernels. Year after year this farm raised nothing but corn that was cut for silage. It made a big impression on me because that corn was always short and yellow. It looked sick and did not yield well. They were stripping the soil of organic matter.

Although I grew up seeing these things I never considered an alternative. I still believed that excessive tillage was the answer to suppressing weeds. I heard of someone that would keep a portion of their fields empty every year and do nothing but repeatedly till the soil in attempt to lower weed pressure. The first chance I had at managing my own ground I did the same. I kept a portion of my land empty over summer and harrowed it repeatedly. To my dismay things did not go as planned. It did not help with weed suppression and the soil became so fine that when it rained, the bottom end of my gently sloping field was full of topsoil that had washed away. The most obnoxious thistles that I had been hoping to eradicate survived and field became a mess.

Regenerative Agriculture solves these problems by keeping multiple species of cover crop on the ground at all times! The roots of the plants run deep and anchor the soil. The leaves of the plants slow the raindrops as they pummel the ground and also hold the moisture giving the water time to soak into the ground.