D6—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, May 23,1981
Don’t be too surprised if you
hear a lot about soil conservation
over the next few years. The warn
ing has been sounded and now the
struggle begins to do something
about the millions of tons of soil
that are lost each year in this coun
try.
It’s a bit frightening when you
think about the magnitude of the
loss and the thin layer of topsoil
that covers this country. Really,
only a few inches of productive
land is all we have between
abundance and starvation. And
we're losing it at an annual rate of
5.5 billion tons of soil.
Thay may not mean much, but a
Department of Agriculture expert
has figured it out as enough soil to
cover the state of lowa with a layer
an inch thick. And that’s an annual
loss. How many years can such
abuse continue?
It apparently took millions of
years without tillage to develop our
rich productive agricultural soil.
And in no more than a couple of
centuries we have seriously
threatened the very basis of
agriculture.
Maybe it will take another Dust
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Bowl to turn this country around
and head it toward the conserva
tion mindedness necessary to turn
the tide. As the stories go, back in
the thirties a combination of im
proper farming practices and dry
weather created the great dust
storm that actually darkened the
skies over the nation's capital.
Then things started to happen. It
didn’t take many days to produce a
whole raft of legislation aimed at
doing something about soil conser
vation.
And so for 30 or 40 years, there
was a great national consciousness
among farmers that soil should be
preserved.
Then came the opportunity for
agricultural exports and the plug
was pulled out and farmers started
plowing land that should never
have been tilled. Since then we’ve
bad some dry years that has left
millions of acres barren and
susceptible to wind and water ero
sion.
Conservationists point out the
stake in protecting farm topsoil
has risen sharply. With so many
more people to feed, failure to
better protect our topsoil even-
Paid
tuaily I uui i .Hwiii hunger for
millions
“Soils being taken by erosion
generally are the richest in
nutrients and organic matter and
have the most favorable conditions
for plant growth.” according to
Norman Berg, chief of USDA’s Soil
Conservation Service.
He says this constitutes a
significant dram on the productive
potential of land where our food is
produced. Berg compares soil
'losses to bags of money floating
down the nation’s rivers. Figured
at 1979 prices, he estimates the
putting all of the lost nitrogen and
phosphorus and one-fourth of the
lost potassium back into the
damaged land would add up to 18
billion dollars in just one year.
At today’s erosion rate, Berg
says food supplies will be seriously
threatened in about 100 years. In
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lowa, as one example, half of the
original topsoil of 6 to 8 inches
already has been lost from sloping,
unprotected land during the
century that state has been far
ulu ifishm.il are equally grim
for many other states.
So what can farmers do to turn
this soil conservation problem
around? They already have the
know-how and the technical
support required. It’s really just a,
matter of priorities.
Is soil conservation more im
portant than extra profits? Is it
worth giving up some' Current
income in exchange for' future
potential? Does it really matter
that some other generation may
run out ofsoil as long as this one is
well kept? »
It seems to me a heavy burden to
place on farmers to ask them to
save the nation’s soil for future,
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mankind all by themselves. If
farmers have an obligation to be
stewards of the soil, then surely the
public, through tax dollars and
governmental agencies, have an
obligation to help pay the bill. And
that has nothing to do with
government handouts or special
treatment or anything else that
smacks of favoritism.
Our land tenure system allows
farmers to own their land, but it
really makes no provision for its
continued preservation.
In the early days of this country,
fanners would till the soil until it
-was “worn out” and then just
move on. And that was what helped
settled this great country.
But then we figured out how to
save those worn-out farms and get
them back into production. Now it
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(Turn to Page 07)
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