Re:The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
by bluGill on Thursday April 15, 2021 @10:12PM
(#26828601)
The practices of 150 years ago destroyed the soil. Farmers had to stop those in the 1930s. Since then plows have gone out of style and reduced soil loss greatly. Farmers who get 4x the yields are actually building soil, they have to because the soil they were left with by the 1980s wouldn't support those yields without doing things to build up the soil. It is years to build up though, if you can add 1mm of soil in a decade that is good. However you can also make what is left better without adding more.
Re:The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil
by datavirtue on Thursday April 15, 2021 @08:02PM
(#26827688)
We are not past sustainability.
The practices of 100 or 200 years ago were much more sustainable than what we have now. They had no pesticides or fertilizers, and they couldn't till the soil so thoroughly. Farms were smaller and the increased biodiversity of "pests" was actually better for the soils, if not for yields.
What has really tipped the balance is the "amazing" 4x crop yield increase over the last century. It came at the expense of literally every other living thing associated with the land: pests, grasses, trees, animals, birds, you name it. And it required juicing everything up on steroids, genetically modifying and breeding different crop varieties, and carpet-bombing an entire phylum of life with chemical warfare.