Erosion also occurs after spring plowing and planting. It takes weeks for seeds to germinate into seedlings and for seedlings to grow into strong plants with significant root systems. Rain or drying winds can easily lift the precious topsoil away from around and even under these plants. Water can even uproot crops and carry them downstream.

Over the past century America has learned the hard truth of soil erosion. After the Dust Bowl, the American government encouraged farmers to adopt soil conservation techniques, which they’ve done very effectively. However, recent studies have shown that economic pressures may convince farmers to put fragile lands back into crop production. For example, although Dakota farmers had chosen to put some fields out of production and revert them back into grassland in order to conserve soil, the high sale price of corn in the late 2000s and early 2010s (yes, this is when the government strongly supported the expansion of corn-based ethanol for fuel![1]), enticed them to plow up fragile lands and plant nutrient- and water-hungry corn.[2] This has led to serious increases in soil erosion throughout the Dakotas since that time.[3]

Now, let me be clear—the farmers who choose to put more land into crop production are not greedy; most American farmers find it challenging to pay their bills, let alone send their kids to college, with their farming income alone. They aren’t intending to damage the earth, and most farmers aren’t getting rich from their farming labors. When demand and prices are high for a particular crop, they meet the demand. But studies demonstrate that we need new and better policies that take ecosystem and soil health into consideration. We also need better economic incentives that will enable farmers to make a good income and care for their soils on which we, and future generations, depend.[4]

One of the chief reasons we all need to be concerned with conserving our soils is because they’re disappearing and being degraded. In the US since the 1950s, “about one-third of American cropped land has had to be abandoned because of erosion problems.”[5] And when we look at the global problem of erosion, we find that human activity—especially agriculture—over the past 150 years has caused nearly half of earth’s topsoil to be swept away.[6]

This is really bad news. First and foremost, it’s bad news because erosion removes nutrient-rich topsoil. But it also reduces the soil’s ability to absorb water later. Erosion, then, leaves soil more vulnerable to further erosion and decreases the soil’s capacity to support plant life. Erosion is a triple whammy since topsoil takes decades, if not centuries, to develop. On its own, an ecosystem can create one inch of soil in about 300 to 1000 years. This process can be shortened to 30 years if people add organic matter, fungi, and nutrients to thin soils to promote topsoil development.[7] In other words, we can’t just snap our fingers (or spray on some chemicals) and make fertile soil out of thin air. And without good topsoils, we can’t feed ourselves sufficiently. Sure, we can grow a few types of crops by soilless means (such as by hydroponics), but our primary staples—grains, such as rice, wheat, and corn and legumes, such as soy—need soil to grow.[8]

Farmers know the importance of soil health and wring their hands over the loss of this, their most valuable resource. Some farmers even consider themselves to be growing soil more than anything else! They, along with agronomists, have been tackling the problems of plowing—both of erosion and greenhouse gas emissions—in a variety of ways. In future posts, I’ll discuss two types of solutions: one involves adopting low-till and no-till methods and the other involves growing a different type of plant altogether.

Much more could be said about how plowing increases soil erosion and how erosion is deleterious to our food system. If you’re interested in knowing more about the preciousness and vulnerability of soil, I’d recommend two engaging and accessible books by geologist, David Montgomery:

• Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations
• Growing a Revolution: Bringing our Soil Back to Life.

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[1] See, for example, https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/energy/biofuels/energy-briefs/history-of-ethanol-production-and-policy, which explains that “The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 signed by President Bush requires renewable fuel usage to increase to 36 billion gallons annually by 2022” and that up to 15 billion gallons of that total can be from corn.

[2] Tom Wang et al., “Soil Conservation Practice Adoption in the Northern Great Plains: Economic Versus Stewardship Motivations,” Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 44, no. 2 (2019).

[3] Benjamin L. Turner et al., “Scientific Case Studies in Land-Use Driven Soil Erosion in the Central United States: Why Soil Potential and Risk Concepts Should Be Included in the Principles of Soil Health,” International Soil and Water Conservation Research 6 (2018).

[4] Turner et al explain, “few economic or policy mechanisms exist to balance contemporary land use trends [such as the increase in transitioning grassland into cropland] with conservation areas or give producers incentives to adopt soil and water conservation practices at the farm level, despite the documented soil health benefits” [ibid., 74.].

[5] Peter Warshall, “Tilth and Technology: The Industrial Redesign of Our Nation’s Soils,” in The Fatal Harvest Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture, ed. Andrew Kimbrell (Washington: Island Press, 2002), 173.

[6] World Wildlife Foundation, “Soil Erosion and Degradation,” accessed 25 September 2019. https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/soil-erosion-and-degradation.

[7] Wes Jackson, New Roots for Agriculture, New ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 17.

[8] Warshall,  in The Fatal Harvest Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture, 170.