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U.S. Pays Farmers Billions to Save the Soil but It's Blowing Away

posted by martyb on Thursday June 08 2017, @09:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the The-Grapes-of-Wrath dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

In recent years, dust storms have returned, driven mainly by drought. But Shook — and others — say farmers are making the problem worse by taking land where grass used to grow and plowing it up, exposing vulnerable soil.

"The first soil storm that I saw was in 2013. That was about the height of all the grassland conversion that was happening in this area," he says.
 
This is where federal policy enters the picture. Most of that grassland was there in the first place because of a taxpayer-funded program. The U.S. Department of Agriculture rents land from farmers across the country and pays them to grow grass, trees and wildflowers in order to protect the soil and also provide habitat for wildlife.

It's called the Conservation Reserve Program, or CRP. Ten years ago, there was more land in the CRP than in the entire state of New York. In North Dakota, CRP land covered 5,000 square miles.
 
But CRP agreements only last 10 years, and when farming got more profitable about a decade ago, farmers in North Dakota pulled more than half of that land out of the CRP to grow crops like corn and soybeans. Across the country, farmers decided not to re-enroll 15.8 million acres of farmland in the CRP when those contracts expired between 2007 and 2014.

The Dust Bowl forced tens of thousands of farmers to migrate and gave us the term "Okies." Are we in for a repeat?

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  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday June 09 2017, @05:27PM (2 children)

    by butthurt (6141) on Friday June 09 2017, @05:27PM (#523162) Journal

    What t-3 wrote applies to crops are grown to feed livestock just as much as it does to crops that humans eat directly. In the United States,

    More than 90 million acres of land are planted to corn, with the majority of the crop grown in the Heartland region. Most of the crop is used as the main energy ingredient in livestock feed.

    -- https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn/background/ [usda.gov]

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  • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday June 09 2017, @05:37PM (1 child)

    by Reziac (2489) on Friday June 09 2017, @05:37PM (#523167) Homepage

    Except that for most of their lives, these livestock eat range grass (which needs it, as it evolved to be grazed); grain is used only for finishing and supplements.

    --
    And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.

    • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday June 09 2017, @06:53PM

      by butthurt (6141) on Friday June 09 2017, @06:53PM (#523210) Journal

      You appear to be suggesting that the use of crops as animal feed is incidental? Alfalfa
      (not a grain) is mainly grown for livestock:

      Alfalfa is the fourth most widely grown crop in the United States, with an estimated annual value of 11.7 billion dollars. There are 26 million acres cut for hay [...]

      -- https://www.ars.usda.gov/northeast-area/beltsville-md/beltsville-agricultural-research-center/soybean-genomics-improvement-laboratory/people/gary-bauchan/alfalfa/ [usda.gov]

      U.S. farmers could plant a record 85.5 million acres of soybeans in 2017-18 [...]

      -- https://www.agweb.com/article/is-85-million-acres-the-new-normal-for-soybeans-naa-debra-beachy/ [agweb.com]

      The livestock industry is the largest consumer of soy meal. In fact, 98 percent of U.S. soy meal goes to feed pigs, chickens and cows.

      -- http://www.wisoybean.org/news/soybean_facts.php [wisoybean.org]

      "Most of" 90 million acres, most of 26 million acres, most of 85 million acres--altogether they're not incidental in a country that has ~408 million acres under cultivation.

      Is the quote below incorrect?

      Pastured cows need to graze on lots of land for 3 to 4.5 years and they still don't produce as much meat per animal as feedlots do. In American beef production, cattle are put on pasture only as long as they need for musculoskeletal development -- for about one year. After that, they're trucked off to a CAFO (confined animal feeding operation) where they're given hormone implants that help them [grow] faster, as well as a high-energy diet of corn and soybeans until they are slaughtered at 18 to 24 months.

      -- http://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-greener-beef-will-mean-less-grass-more-feedlots/ [cbsnews.com]

      The paragraph before that one said that in the world as a whole, cattle are typically raised entirely on grass. If the bit I quoted is correct, doing that in the U.S. would mean drastically less beef would be produced there.

      I gather that, in the U.S., chickens and pigs are raised mainly indoors and that sheep, goats and horses aren't eaten very much.