That is an excellent but very difficult question to answer. I was taught that a well managed notill farm still had up to a ton of soil loss per acre per year. Yes, that is a heck of a lot of topsoil to go into our tributaries, 2000 lbs of the best soil we have, lost each year, even doing a good job!
With tillage, that figure goes to 10 tons or 20,000 lbs per acre per year very easily. That is not tolerable to me. It's not good for my farm, my country or my kids and their future. Soil loss is heavy again this spring with heavy rains here and worse in much of the Midwest. Are we entering the tipping point? Is some of the blame of the three year national slide in yield due to soil loss? I think the main problem is our narrowing yet contaminated gene pool in our seed which made the weather look more to blame than it was. A declining soil base to handle crop production at high levels could be third.
How bad is the soil loss in your area this year? Do you think we have lost too much topsoil? Are we doing all we can to prevent it? I have noticed the tributaries are still brown here and were muddy this last big rain we had this week as that storm rolled across the northern tier and touched our area with an inch or more in one overnight storm.
I still remember Dr. Jerry Hatfield talking about the soil loss in one inch rain over 24 hours last year in Iowa. He called it a slow soaker and yet he saw the tons of soil loss the equations and pictures predicts.
We struggle to put a value on the organic matter or how it varies place to place. Many farmers will sell off the straw that could be organic matter on their farm in the next month. Livestock men need the straw but how do we redistribute that properly with manure applications?
I guess I've raised more questions from Cody's question than I answered.
Ed Winkle
0 comments:
Post a Comment