Comment by greenie_beans
3 hours ago
glad we're working from the same figure now. 1mm per year is not insignificant, and soil is not a renewable resource... probably a fine amount of soil loss for a farmer's lifetime, but a land manager needs to think over centuries and not in profit cycles.
> and as Smil points out there are plenty of places where land being farmed industrially is gaining soil.
i would bet at least $100 this happens where they do cover crops and actually manage the soil as a resource to be preserved
Thats 1mm in the upper Midwest around the Great Lakes, wind is doubtless a factor. You can’t generalize to all industrial ag from a dozen sites in 3 geographically similar states.
wind is definitely a factor, especially after you remove all the plant life through tillage and herbicide!
Right, but tillage is not a set in stone practice. The Nebraska Corn Board is now advocating no-til corn planting[1]. Apparently it's already dominant in Western Canada and more than half of Montana cropland is managed without tilling.
Herbicide is a whole different discussion and probably too deep a rabbit hole so far down thread.
[1] https://nebraskacorn.gov/cornstalk/corn101/what-is-no-till-f...
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