drifts

 Again yesterday we were faced with the bad effects of tillage here on the prairie.  The winds blew strongly out of the southeast and then southwest as they have nearly every day for the last month.  The air was gloomy and gritty with blowing dirt.  Few fields have enough growing plants to stop this-only hay fields and pastures.  Driving home in the evening from the CRP acreage I am developing as pasture I could see soil blowing off the fields belonging to the same farmer who provided the soil drifts along our fence and far into our hay field in February.  Check the post from Feb 26.

Andy told me that he had waded through soil as deep as his bootlaces there.  So have I.  And it is not just one of us farmers.  It is all of us.  With our hay fields and pastures we have about half our acres protected from this, but the half we put to annual crops is exposed.  We in agriculture have not devised a solution to this tillage problem other than a massive annual chemical dump to facilitate no-till(and all too often, tillage farming as well).  This is a dire situation ranking right up there with growing inequality.  Blowing soil is climate deterioration made real.  It is not just about polar bears.

The Universities have been little help here.  And the Silicon Valley hotshots think the solution to everything is to create fake meat from-you guessed it-these same annual crops.

We pray for rain to save the production year.  Then, of course, the wind erosion will pause for a bit and water erosion can take center stage.  We need real change!