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NW IL | Next to one of our dairy pasture fence lines there is a 5-6ft drop to the neighbors field. Definitely not "original" compared with the general slope of the land.
In the midwest we are going on 175-200 years of continuously tilled ground. Say you only loose an 1/8 of an inch of soil a year. In 200 years that's 25 inches. I'd wager that in a dry year with a little wind some people lose an 1/8th each tillage pass. Many parts of the country don't have 4 feet of top soil to start with either.
Didn't they say you could loose a covered wagon in the tall grasses of Oklahoma when it was settled only 150 years ago? Think it's got that much fertility left now?
We are incredibly blessed with our deep soils and plentiful rainfall in the heart of the country. Many other parts have much more brittle ground that can disappear in just a few generations.
Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations by David Montgomery is a good audio book for spring work. Amazing to see how agriculture affected (and continues to affect) so much of global history. (His other books are good too.) | |
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USDA going to get caught again
