# 60 years?



## rjmoses (Apr 4, 2010)

Chicken Little runs amok nowadays.

http://news.yahoo.com/only-60-years-farming-left-soil-degradation-continues-165713221.html

But, then again....too many people?

Ralph


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

rjmoses said:


> Chicken Little runs amok nowadays.
> 
> http://news.yahoo.com/only-60-years-farming-left-soil-degradation-continues-165713221.html
> 
> ...


Ok quick. Everyone stop farming!! That will solve that problem.


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## 8350HiTech (Jul 26, 2013)

People in the US may find this concept silly, but this article isn't crazy. Look at some pictures from around the globe of washed-out "farmland" that people are "creating" from rainforest. The math is simple. You can only create soil at a certain speed, which is slow, super slow. It can vary by soil substrate, but either way it's freaking slow. You can lose a hell of a lot faster than you can make it.


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## hog987 (Apr 5, 2011)

Teslan said:


> Ok quick. Everyone stop farming!! That will solve that problem.


You may have a point there. Stop farming. Starve the masses. Anyone left alive in the next few years will only need a small part of land.


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## hog987 (Apr 5, 2011)

8350HiTech said:


> People in the US may find this concept silly, but this article isn't crazy. Look at some pictures from around the globe of washed-out "farmland" that people are "creating" from rainforest. The math is simple. You can only create soil at a certain speed, which is slow, super slow. It can vary by soil substrate, but either way it's freaking slow. You can lose a hell of a lot faster than you can make it.


I was looking at some research the other day that said an inch of top soil could be produced in as little as 5 years. But you need earth worms. For the earth worms to survive you need plenty of bacteria and plants with massive root systems. Also top soil production is not linear. The more you have the faster you make it. But if your starting with poor subsoil its going to take a long time.

Now on dad's land 25 years ago he was lucky to have 2 inches of top soil. Now he has about 4 inches. Its sandy land so the top soil is still not the best but sure better than what it was before. How was it done. Perennial pasture and lots of manure.


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## rjmoses (Apr 4, 2010)

hog987 said:


> You may have a point there. Stop farming. Starve the masses. Anyone left alive in the next few years will only need a small part of land.


You know, as gruesome as this sounds, there might be more truth in it than we like.

Take it to an extreme: Most of our national/international problems are caused by fighting over resources. Yet the world population continues to grow. Feeding more people and better medical treatment only accelerates the problem.

Our problem in this country is that our administration binds us to some-times well-intended rules and regulations (Tier 4 as an example), yet the rest of the world pretty much does what the f*** it wants.

Ralph

It's not nice to fool Mother Nature!


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## Bgriffin856 (Nov 13, 2013)

Teslan said:


> Ok quick. Everyone stop farming!! That will solve that problem.


No everyone start farming organically. See how long that lasts


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## Bgriffin856 (Nov 13, 2013)

Thats funny as you drive around here you see hundreds of acres grown up into weeds brush and trees. Sad because that land will never be farmed again just not economically possible


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## endrow (Dec 15, 2011)

hog987 said:


> I was looking at some research the other day that said an inch of top soil could be produced in as little as 5 years. But you need earth worms. For the earth worms to survive you need plenty of bacteria and plants with massive root systems. Also top soil production is not linear. The more you have the faster you make it. But if your starting with poor subsoil its going to take a long time.
> 
> Now on dad's land 25 years ago he was lucky to have 2 inches of top soil. Now he has about 4 inches. Its sandy land so the top soil is still not the best but sure better than what it was before. How was it done. Perennial pasture and lots of manure.


You can also do that with no till farming and cover crops.


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## RockmartGA (Jun 29, 2011)

""We are losing 30 soccer fields of soil every minute, mostly due to intensive farming," Volkert Engelsman, an activist with the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements told the forum at the FAO's headquarters in Rome."

Key words there, "Activist" and "Organic Agriculture Movement"


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

RockmartGA said:


> ""We are losing 30 soccer fields of soil every minute, mostly due to intensive farming," Volkert Engelsman, an activist with the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements told the forum at the FAO's headquarters in Rome."
> 
> Key words there, "Activist" and "Organic Agriculture Movement"


 How does one become an activist? Seems like an easy job. Just be critical of everything and ask people to donate money to you so you can continue to be critical.


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## 8350HiTech (Jul 26, 2013)

hog987 said:


> I was looking at some research the other day that said an inch of top soil could be produced in as little as 5 years. But you need earth worms. For the earth worms to survive you need plenty of bacteria and plants with massive root systems. Also top soil production is not linear. The more you have the faster you make it. But if your starting with poor subsoil its going to take a long time.
> 
> Now on dad's land 25 years ago he was lucky to have 2 inches of top soil. Now he has about 4 inches. Its sandy land so the top soil is still not the best but sure better than what it was before. How was it done. Perennial pasture and lots of manure.


Any chance you could add a link to this research, hog?


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## endrow (Dec 15, 2011)

Field next to some land I farm. Mine is the green one


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## deadmoose (Oct 30, 2011)

endrow said:


> Field next to some land I farm. Mine is the green one


Is rha t recent? When does winter come there?


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## hog987 (Apr 5, 2011)

[quote name="8350HiTech" post="153641" timestamp="1417885622"]

Any chance you could add a link to this research, hog?[/quot

I will try but cant remember the guys name at the moment. If it pops into my head I will add somethinh.


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## endrow (Dec 15, 2011)

deadmoose said:


> Is rha t recent? When does winter come there?


took the picture today


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## hog987 (Apr 5, 2011)

endrow said:


> You can also do that with no till farming and cover crops.


Cover crops are not common around here. Partly cause of the mind set of guys and partly because of the short growing season. you took a pic of a green field today and if I took one of my fields it would be white. Iam going to try playing with the idea of double cropping winter and summer greenfeed.


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## endrow (Dec 15, 2011)

hog987 said:


> Cover crops are not common around here. Partly cause of the mind set of guys and partly because of the short growing season. you took a pic of a green field today and if I took one of my fields it would be white. Iam going to try playing with the idea of double cropping winter and summer greenfeed.


I can understand thatyou have sow ll it into the standing corn with an airplane.Probably midsummer


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## hog987 (Apr 5, 2011)

endrow said:


> I can understand thatyou have sow ll it into the standing corn with an airplane.Probably midsummer


You got to understand that corn is not a common crop here. Too cold. It is becoming more common for silage and silage only. Too short of season to get grain. Even the silage is all done after a killing frost. Also have to go a long ways till there are any planes to do ag work. At the very least over 100 miles.

Generally what we grow for summer crops is what you would grow for winter crops.


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## Grateful11 (Apr 5, 2009)

If they want to worry about something they should drive through a city like Charlotte, NC. We drove through there this morning, had to pick up something in SC, and my word everywhere you look on the northern end is nothing urban sprawl and huge warehouses and slaying all the trees down. The area is expanding faster now than ever I think. There's one area that a month or so ago was a nice stand of trees and some pasture, must have been close 150 acres just in one spot, it's going to be some sorta food warehouse like Sysco just another name. Then there's Amazon, they're building a huge warehouse where there used to be trees.

Looks to me like there's a lot soil getting covered with asphalt and concrete.


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## hog987 (Apr 5, 2011)

Grateful11 said:


> If they want to worry about something they should drive through a city like Charlotte, NC. We drove through there this morning, had to pick up something in SC, and my word everywhere you look on the northern end is nothing urban sprawl and huge warehouses and slaying all the trees down. The area is expanding faster now than ever I think. There's one area that a month or so ago was a nice stand of trees and some pasture, must have been close 150 acres just in one spot, it's going to be some sorta food warehouse like Sysco just another name. Then there's Amazon, they're building a huge warehouse where there used to be trees.
> 
> Looks to me like there's a lot soil getting covered with asphalt and concrete.


Some of the best soil in Alberta is right where the city of Red Deer is. So what do they do when they expand the city. They burry that nice rich top soil. Not all of it but a good chunk.


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## carcajou (Jan 28, 2011)

hog987 said:


> Cover crops are not common around here. Partly cause of the mind set of guys and partly because of the short growing season. you took a pic of a green field today and if I took one of my fields it would be white. Iam going to try playing with the idea of double cropping winter and summer greenfeed.


Interesting. What crops are you thinking?


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## hog987 (Apr 5, 2011)

carcajou said:


> Interesting. What crops are you thinking?


peas/oats in the summer. Than either rye or triticale planted after the oats are cut and baled. I don't know if this will give me another cut of greenfeed the next year or not. If anything it will give me early grazing for the cattle. With the early frost this year I didn't get and rye planted.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Cover crops help a lot more than you might think, flying them on is pretty common here. With the cost of having them flown on we've thought about buying a entry level high boy. mounting a Gandy airseeder with a fertilizer boom and doing it ourselves, should be about the same cost as five years worth of paying for an air tractor to do it.


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## deadmoose (Oct 30, 2011)

How much does the airplane seeding cost?


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## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

Ok Fellas, we have a new "cover crop" sub-section in the "Soil and Amendment" forum.

Regards, Mike


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

deadmoose said:


> How much does the airplane seeding cost?


Between $12 and $14/acre depending on the price of av fuel, thats just the plane, we usually supply our own seed. We use bin run rye then shop around for crimson clover and groundhog radish.


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## endrow (Dec 15, 2011)

when is the best time of the year to Ariel seed. what is the heights of the corn


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## endrow (Dec 15, 2011)

Mlappin not sure if you get snow cover all winter . Could you send pictures of these cover crops . as they appear right now


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Picture of that bald eagle I took had rye, crimson clover and groundhog radish in it.

Kind of disappointed this year, it took very well, but with the below average temps and ground freezing solid a month early not a lot to show.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

endrow said:


> when is the best time of the year to Ariel seed. what is the heights of the corn


Usually in September is when they start.

The local cover guru is pushing planting your cover crop in corn before it canopy's shut. He also has recommendations on what to use that will just go quasi dormant and wait till the corn starts to dry down then it will take off again with more exposure to the sun. Of course this guy also recommends planting a third of your acres to wheat every year then planting his "special" fifteen way mix. I imagine as well he doesn't farm a lot of acres, in our case the thought of dealing with 400-500 acres of wheat in a year like this gives me nightmares.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Local dirt moving guy took a lot of railroad rock the last few months of our right of way, in return he's digging all the stumps out and leveling things off. Our plan is to spread it heavy with manure then plant annual rye grass a few years. Might mix in some radish as well.


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## Hugh (Sep 23, 2013)

I grew-up in Florida. Much of the central part of the state is "sugar sand." This stuff is fine sand with a tiny bit of organic matter mixed in. To improve it, you have to get the PH up with lime and add clay to hold moisture. The funny part is that there is so little organic matter. Florida is one of the most stable land masses on Earth, and it is little changed in the last 400 million years. The native vegetation (where I grew-up near Orlando) is scrub oak, palmetto and pine.

If we assume that this vegetation has, on average, a life span of 100 years before new plants replace the old, we could safely assume 6 inches of fallen trees, dead palmettos, etc that would decompose every 100 years. This is 5 feet per thousand years, 5000 ft per million years (one mile) and 400 miles in the last 400 million years. One would think, (especially if one listens to the organic people) that stacking land 400 miles deep with organic matter would make a really great soil once all of this decomposes. However, these soils have little organic matter and poor water holding attributes.

The same could be said about soils in many different places. I have seen sodic soils in the West that are nearly un-tillable, have no organic matter, so hard that one could hardly make a dent with a hammer, but when wet, stick to everything and then dry like concrete. However, these soils have native plants that hack-out their existence. No doubt, even these soils have had hundreds of feet of decomposed plant material over the eons.

The press is loaded with writers who went to college and made a Left turn and went into journalism, history, sociology, etc. The rest of us spent all of our time learning how to rebuild engines, run a business, work in a factory, weld or just bust our asses in the real world of fact=fact.

I believe we can safely assume that 90% of everything in the press is disinformation. The roots of the environmentalist movement are Fascist. Now, many of you will think I'm a kook. I suggest you look into it. Hitler was a big time ecologist, vegetarian, animal lover, etc.

Here is a quote: "The National Socialist "religion of nature," as one historian has described it, was a volatile admixture of primeval teutonic nature mysticism, pseudo-scientific ecology, irrationalist anti-humanism, and a mythology of racial salvation through a return to the land."

Here is a link to an article, and notice the article is highly referenced: http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/germany/sp001630/peter.html


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## carcajou (Jan 28, 2011)

Hugh I think you made a hard left turn in your last post. What the heck do the last three paragraphs have to do with this topic?


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## Hugh (Sep 23, 2013)

carcajou said:


> Hugh I think you made a hard left turn in your last post. What the heck do the last three paragraphs have to do with this topic?


Everything, since the original post that created this thread was about the press. Read the first post.

The opening and starting post to this thread:

*"Chicken Little runs amok nowadays. *

http://news.yahoo.co...-165713221.html

*But, then again....too many people?"*

Ralph then gives us a link to an article in the press that states: "Generating three centimeters of top soil takes 1,000 years, and if current rates of degradation continue all of the world's top soil could be gone within 60 years, a senior UN official said on Friday."

The theme of Ralph's post was the press run amuck in a Chicken Little fashion. The theme of the article he linked to was about organic farming to avert soil loss. Organic farming is largely concerned with "returning organic matter to the soil." There are other issues, such a "monoculture" soil compaction, pesticides, etc. The article states it takes a 1000 years to built 30cm of soil (1.2 inches)

This is why the first part of my post talked about soil building, where 400 million years has produced little organic matter in some parts of Florida. The second part of my post addressed the press.

In fact, I would say my post is one of the few that actually addressed the issues raised by Ralph. Thanks for the input, and have a great day!


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## stack em up (Mar 7, 2013)

Every grid sample we have had done the last 10 years has showed a decrease in our OM. Best way to build OM is roots. Roots make up +-75% of OM, the rest is everything else.

Started with cover crops after silage this year. Winter triticale for forage next spring, but it will also hopefully help with the wind erosion.

Had some tillage radish flown on this fall, but the catch was poor.


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