fifty years

Agweek is a conservative conventionally oriented news report for conservative conventional Red River Valley farmers.  Surprising then that the program recently featured two academic soil science folks who said essentially that at current levels of waste we have about fifty years of topsoil left in that area.  One said it makes him sick to his stomach to see a treeline being bulldozed out. The situation here on the prairie is not different. 

Fifty years is within the working time frame of a twenty year old who wants to farm.  These young people should quit thinking of what their fathers and grandfathers taught them about the occupation and begin by assuming that all of it was wrong.  We all sleepwalked through the "dust storms" again this spring as usual.  It is well past time for all of us to wake up.  We are going to need that soil in order to eat when the economy spins out of control and we have neither work nor money.  Us grandfathers particularly should start to wonder if our grandchildren will someday soon be cursing us.

Jim