Once again this year, a drive up through the southeastern part of the state showed the sickening effects of too much rain on too much bare soil. Some of the academic types who were so quick to collude with industry in the destruction of the small dairy farms that kept at least some perennial crops on the land are having second thoughts, I hope. Not so much hope for the Washington types who seem willing to push more corn no matter what.
Here in western Minnesota, our soil is different; more clay, less silt loam, less slope, less erodible. But we are not immune. Farmers know what the soil surrounding those tile intakes show after a heavy rain and erosion is sometimes obvious from the road here too. Everywhere the need is for more diversity. A greater variety of plants on the land feeding a more diverse group of animals and humans. More people doing different things to create a local economy. More real wealth for the support of the rural community without increases in commodity production and the resulting hard use of the land.
You all help with that when you buy local. Thank you!
Jim
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Hi, Jim,
ReplyDeleteYou and your readers may be interested in this story we at Dakotafire put together about the effect of rainfall on soil in different management systems. I don't think many people have realized that there is a direct connection between taking land out of grass and an increase in flooding, which spreads the problem of not keeping rainfall on the land to neighbors and nearby communities, as well as the problems for agriculture when rain doesn't stay where it lands.
http://dakotafire.net/newspapers/the-closer-land-is-to-a-grassland-system-the-happier-producers-are-to-see-rain/4660/