Don’t know how we are going to accomplish this short of Armageddon, but all the plant material removed from the land … including the uneaten portions and, ultimately, the manure from man and beast, needs to come back and be re-incorporated into the soil. We live in a finite biosphere. This circle needs to be closed. Nothing biodegradable can be allowed to escape forever.

As noted earlier, alcohol for use as fuel needs to stop. Not moderate. Stop.

The fertility can return … if we have the will to return it.

Probably we don’t.

The bits above the band are meant to represent the native grass flora (much of it 6-8 feet tall), whilst that below is meant to show the different layers of the subsoil.

Traveling this stretch of I-80 frequently, I have occasion to stop at this rest stop from time to time, and this sculpture never fails to depress me.

If you want to know how bad erosion can get, and how a responsible society deals with it, look at Iceland. Iceland’s soil was very, very rich when the vikings first got there- it had been building up slowly since the last ice age. But the rate of loss turned out to be much greater, the the rate of increase much lower, than in Scandinavian countries. So, after just a few centuries, traditional farming methods had some very serious consequences.

The Land Institute is trying to solve this very problem by breeding perennial wheat, sorghum, and sunflower. The plants’ root systems could remain in place while their produce could be harvested seasonally – reducing erosion while still maintaining an agriculture industry.

Their website is down, but here’s a link to the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Institute

The good news is, we have the ability to slow topsoil erosion, and even reverse it. Current ag policy will never get us there, though.

deepthoughtsbyjackhandey.com

Are the crops themselves slowly leeching the elements out of the soil and converting them to biomass?

Farmers who convert to no-till agriculture reduce the rate of erosion, but no-till still can be erosive.

Allan Savory’s system of Holistic Management incorporates a multidisciplinary approach to agriculture, and BUILDS new topsoil. The “accepted wisdom” of topsoil formation is that it is formed very slowly- on the order of cm/ thousand years. Holistic Management can form soil a thousand times faster- cm/year.

Other topsoil formation concepts to look at- Keyline Plowing, Darren Doherty, permaculture.

The long term impact that both of these issues could have on global food supply is enormous, yet it gets barely a peep of mainstream attention.

Pinehead: As for the minerals, much of the biomass of a crop is carbohydrate (like cellulose), so relatively little mass/volume of the soil is removed and stored in the plant tissues.