We have generational farmers taught you kill every tree they can in order to grow one extra bean plant. I've heard many many times if it's stealing water from crops or in the way or potentially scratch equipment it's gotta go. There's zero chance of #1 or #2 happening.
Quail habitat improvement program
- Thread starter Ohiosam
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Another thing that I'm sure is a contributing factor that is not fixable. The efficency of modern harvesting equipment. Waste gran losses are below 2%, often less than 1% on newer equipment. Old equipment was much higher than that and as a result fields had waste grain that would help sustain animals over the winter. Now those fields are picked clean. Thanks to modern pesticides andsubsoil injection of nitrate fertilizers an earth worm can't even live in that dirt. When is the last time you saw ants in crop field.
It's interesting to talk to farmers about all these issues or at least the issues that they pretend to care about especially top soil. how much top soil there was 60 years ago until now and what it's going to look like in sixty more years.
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Tell them I know where it's all at. Same place their nitrate fertilizers end up. Tell them to quit being cheap, plant a cover crop and the loss of both would be drastically reduced.
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Bullshit!
About 1990 I wanted to build an irrigation pond in my woods. A couple of the soil scientists from the soil and water conservation office came out to watch my contractor dig some test holes with a backhoe.
When he dug I noticed how that the topsoil soil was only about an inch or 2 thick and mentioned it to the S&WC guys. They told me that was normal for woods soils that had never been tilled. I asked “You mean the 10-12 inches of top soil I have came from my family plowing for 150 years?” They said yes.
About 1/2 Ohio crops are no-till and almost all the rest are minimum tilled. The vast majority of Ohio crop acres are being farmed in a way that minimizes erosion.
I'll bring this back up with my friend this coming week. Generational farmer family now farms around 5k acres. May have be more of a quote current soil fertility vs available top soil from 60 years ago.
Drive around NW and NC Ohio right now. The amount of soil that’s being swept away by the snow and the wind is sickening. It’s piling up in road ditches and drainage ways, just waiting for a thaw so it can be swept down into the watershed. There’s basically zero cover crops around here, and there’s still an alarming amount of fall tillage taking place. All I have is anecdotal evidence in my own little bubble of the state… but no-till, minimum-till, call the so-called majority practice whatever you want, it’s still not doing enough to offset the removal of fencerows and buffer strips around here. I don’t think anyone is picking on you specifically, Sam, so don’t take it personally. It just is what it is. With commodity prices where they are and input costs where they are, you certainly can’t fault producers for trying to increase their yields as much as possible. But that still doesn’t make it right or good. These watersheds are an absolute mess and it seems no one wants to admit or take responsibility for being a source of the problem.