I looked up and saw smoke rising from a field far upstream. I stopped in wonder. It can’t be smoke, I thought, because it’s brown. Then I realized it was a giant cloud of windblown soil reaching over a hundred feet into the air. Then I saw the tractor. The farmer was planting corn in his pulverized soil, and the wind was blowing the most valuable particles on the farm into whirling brown clouds of earth. It made me sad and angry at the same time.

Pulverized soil. This field is devoid of conservation measures and is vulnerable to the forces of falling raindrops that can detach soil particles. Overland flow of water can then carry these detached soil particles into ditches and streams.

Two Days Later, the Rains Came

A most welcome rain came for us. We’ve been in a drought for three years. It was the kind of rain that made me want to sit on the porch and listen to it, to smell it and feel it on my skin. I felt relieved that our pastures and hay will grow. I imagined the trees we planted four years ago rejoicing. We received almost three inches of rain over two days. Relief for us, but devastation for the farms upstream with few conservation measures to absorb the impact of raindrops and manage the impending overland flow of water.

Whiskey Creek runs through our farm, and after this rain, the creek was bank full. I have seen it this full before but not as brown as chocolate milk. It’s brown because it’s loaded with soil from the unprotected fields upstream. The most productive soil particles on those farms are on their way to the Shenandoah River and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay. That makes me even sadder and angrier. The farm where I saw the dust cloud upstream is devoid of any measures to conserve its most precious resource—soil. How can that be in this day and age?

Whiskey Creek bank full of sediment laden water. The suspended soil particles came from the unprotected farming fields upstream.

The Founding Fathers Espouse Conservation

America’s journey in soil conservation began with two of our Founding Fathers: Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, both espousing the virtues of two of the simplest soil conservation measures—contour farming and reduced tillage.

In a letter to his fellow Virginia politician and planter William A. Burwell in 1810, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We have had the most devastating rain which has ever fallen within my knowledge. Three inches of water fell in the space of about an hour. Every hollow of every hill presented a torrent which swept everything before it. I have never seen the fields so much injured. Mr. Randolph’s farm is the only one which has not suffered; his horizontal furrows arrested the water at every step till it was absorbed…. Everybody in this neighborhood is adopting his method of ploughing, except tenants who have no interest in the preservation of the soil.”

In 1818, Madison gave a speech to his fellow farmers in the Agricultural Society of Albemarle. “The evil of pressing too hard on the land, has also been much increased by the bad mode of ploughing it,” he observed.

The Soil Erosion Service Is Created

But what really awakened America’s spirit to improve the land and the soil that feeds us was the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. It was our country’s first major ecological collapse. Farmers plowed up the Great Plains, and after years of drought and windstorms, millions of tons of topsoil had blown away.

Hugh Hammond Bennett is the “father of soil conservation” in the United States and was the first chief of the Soil Conservation Service that was created in 1935. Photo circa 1940, photographer unknown, source: USDA public domain

In response to the devastation of the Dust Bowl, Congress and President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Soil Erosion Service in 1933 to help farmers learn about and install measures to prevent wind and water erosion of soil. The federal agency was renamed the Soil Conservation Service in 1935 and then the Natural Resources Conservation Service in 1994. I was hired by the SCS as a soil conservationist in 1980 and retired from the NRCS as a district conservationist in 2011.

Farmer stands in a dust storm in New Mexico, Spring, 1935. Photo credit Dorothea Lange, Shutterstock

National Security Requires Food Security

My job, along with all the other federal workers in this agency was to prevent soil and other pollutants from entering streams and to build soil health. The United States can feed itself because it has the farmland to do so. Taking care of soil on that farmland safeguards food security for our country. Food security is an anchor for national security. So imagine my disappointment when I see crop fields pulverized by tillage and laid bare to the forces of wind and rain.

These forces can detach soil particles and move them elsewhere such as into ditches and streams, where they suffocate the aquatic ecosystem and increase the cost of providing drinking water for public use. Equally devastating is the loss of that precious soil to the field from which it came—the most productive layer of soil for the farmer.

Reducing Soil Erosion Is the Easy Part

Soil conservation measures are very simple. Reducing tillage, planting on the contour, and using cover crops and plant residues all reduce the risk of wind and water erosion by up to 95 percent. Measures such as crop rotation, contour strips, and buffer strips are used in combination with the others so that farmers build soil instead of losing it to the elements.

NRCS Technicians design and lay out contour farming practices like these to reduce soil erosion and to improve soil health. Photo credit Shutterstock

Stopping erosion is the first step in building soil health. It’s the easy part; the practice I think all farmers should be implementing after almost a hundred years of federal resources expended on it.

Farmers Can Manage for Carbon

The second step is to use the residues from crops that have sequestered carbon from the atmosphere and put them into the soil. This is called carbon farming or climate-smart farming. Farmers do this, for example, by leaving the stalks of crops such as corn and wheat on the fields or by applying manures and compost to the land.

The more carbon there is in soil, the healthier the soil is because it has more microbial activity and nutrients and can hold more moisture. There are four core principles for building soil health: keep soil covered, minimize soil disturbance, maximize living roots, and energize with diversity. Carbon farming builds healthier and more productive soils while helping reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; a win-win for us all.

To learn more about measures to reduce erosion and to build healthier soils join the Virginia Soil Health Coalition or contact your local soil and water conservation district or the local USDA Service Center.

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