13.1: Two Paths, One Sustainable Road

In this book we have tried to inform you about the science of soil, what it is made of, and how it works. We have covered how to test soil for nutrients, how those nutrients behave in the soil, how they cycle, and how they are taken up and used by the plant. We have explored extensively how nutrients and carbon flow around the world based on our current farming system and its need for mineral fertilizers. We saw how nitrogen and phosphorus enter the biological realm and how they leak out as pollutants. We also added information that many other soils books do not include like a strong emphasis on organic matter and soil biology. We explored composting as well as green manures, cover crops, and low-impact tillage methods. In other words, we have let you know how different farming methods impact soil health. That is the bottom line of this book. Modern agriculture has profound impacts on soil. And change is needed from our current trajectory or our soils and fertilizers will be gone in a few hundred years at most.

Our current farming system as practiced in the U.S. by most conventional farmers has been a system that evolved. We went from planting sticks and broadcasting seeds to plowing and making seedbeds for row crops. We replaced the horse and single bottom plow with 400 horsepower tractors that can pull a 24-bottom plow and seed 48 rows at a time. We reduced the number of people working in agriculture and increased machine power. Now, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, less than 2% of the population is on a farm and each farmer feeds about 170 people. Farming just wandered to the place it is now without a clear understanding that there are ways to still feed people without compromising the soil and the environment.

Farm Bureau's facts continue to sound the well-worn alarm that "the global population is expected to increase by 1.8 billion by 2050, which means the world’s farmers will have to increase total annual grain production by almost 1 billion tons and total meat production by more than 200 million tons." We are already living in a world with 8 billion people. We currently DO have enough food to feed everyone especially since "Americans throw away about 25% of the food they purchase for at-home consumption" and "A whopping 40% of all food grown and produced in the U.S. is never eaten." The tragedy in this is we lose soil while throwing away the food it grows. We fail to recycle the precious phosphorus we import to grow the crops which we then end up discarding in landfills. We don't return our own human selves, or our bodily 'wastes' back into the nutrient agriculture stream. We export about 20% of the crops we do grow and when we do that we unintentionally disrupt the ability of local farmers to profitably feed their own people. And people living in poverty still can't access food even if it is in a market right across the street whether that is in Columbus, Ohio or in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Even Iowa, one of the states with the deepest, richest soil anywhere, is a net importer of food because it exports the wealth of its soil as commodity corn and soy. Iowa farmers grow ingredients, not food. Economics, energy, and food policy are all part of a food system that previously has not valued soil health and that will need to change.

In the breadbasket in the U.S. Midwest, there is a responsibility to feed the hungry and we must be smarter about how we do that. We must be smarter so that we preserve the soil for future generations and can continue to feed people well into the future. Future farmers will need to repair the damage we are currently doing as we flex our mechanical and technological muscles at the expense of soil biology, structure, and health. There is hope, we do know what to do to save our soil. We still have time.

Contrasts

In this section, we see the contrast between conventional, modern U.S. agriculture and the sustainable approaches that will have to be taken as we shift directions to conserve soil.

Conventional approaches

Conventional farming from the 1970s until the early 2000s treated soil like dirt, as just a place to stick a seed and nothing more. The tractor and plow ignored the structure (grapes) of the soil. As we have seen, plowing ruins pore spaces, burns up organic matter, and reduces water-holding capacity. Conventional agriculture adds chemical nutrients as salt-based fertilizer rather than relying on the natural capacity of healthy soil biology to provide nutrients. The crop plants became 'lazy' because they do not have to reach out, in collaboration with their natural, beneficial fungal partner, to obtain their own nutrients. Conventional plants are totally dependent on the farmer’s spoon-fed nutrients as well as herbicides which burn down weeds and much of the soil microbiology as well.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Conventional farming may kill the soil. It feeds the plant “junk food”.

The dominant cultural view in agriculture is that soil is just a media that holds plants in place and synthetic nutrients must be applied or synthetic helpers like herbicides and pesticides must be administered to plants that have been genetically modified (GM) to withstand them. This, however, is not sustainable, especially since Corporations own GM seeds and the farmer must continuously buy seed rather than save and re-use their own seed. As this book explained, synthetic nitrogen leaches or volatilizes and leaves the system; that is unavoidable as farms try to maximize nitrogen fertilizers for the highest yield. Remember, it is estimated that less than 50% of applied nitrogen is actually taken up by the plant. Conversely, sac-body bacteria & gummy-worm nitrogen does not leach. It is slow release; available just when the plant needs it. Salty, synthetic fertilizers make a hostile habitat for soil livestock. If we could see sick soil life, like we can see a sick person, we would be aghast at the devastation we have caused in the soil.

In modern agriculture, soil is viewed as a disposal area on which to spread liquid manure. Both manure and soil are problems that farmers try to keep on fields and out of water. Soil is viewed as continually and unavoidably being degraded. Soil itself is a commodity that modern agriculture will eventually, regrettably, use up. Annual tillage oxidizes soil carbon and good spongy organic matter. Agriculture undoubtedly contributes to climate change, flash flooding, and water pollution. Heavy equipment crushes the fragile, wonderful, “grapes” of soil aggregates and degrades soil. Continuous corn and soybeans, and continuous plowing, year after year, with soil grapes all gone, lead to cement feet result.

Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\): Manure tankers ready to spread, crush the soil structure.

“Pardon me oh thou bleeding piece of earth that I am meek and gentle with these thy butchers”

- Shakespeare

Sustainable/Organic - A New Path

Sustainable/organic farmers understand that soil is alive--a biological system. They purposefully foster the soil livestock; that complex web of soil life that we have only just begun to explore. These farmers foster soil that is fecund with microbes. Organic farmers bank wealth in the soil for their children’s children. They respect all life, even a bacterium. They cheer on soil life and its magic of resurrection.

Figure \(\PageIndex{7}\): Organic farmers feed the soil; let the soil feed the plant. Photo credit: C.J. Jansen, Northeast Wisconsin Technical College.

Organic farmers are sustainable farmers. Both 'strains' of farmers use science and biological principles to return organic matter to the soil, recycle nutrients, and add biological nitrogen. These farmers do not use herbicides pesticides or synthetic fertilizers. And because they don't, the soil is healthier. It is a myth that yields from sustainable/organic (S/O) farms are always lower than conventional farms. On the contrary, during seasons of high rainfall or drought, the organic matter in these soils acts like a sponge either soaking up excess water during a flood or holding more moisture in the soil during a drought. Resiliency is the hallmark of S/O farms. Self-reliance is another. On Full Circle Organic Farm, for example, when fertilizer or fuel prices skyrocket the farm does not need to increase prices for its 100% grass-fed beef because the grass continues to grow, the sun still shines, and the rain still falls regardless of those external costs for inputs the farm does not use.

The good news is that conventional farmers now see what S/O farmers saw a while ago--that soil health is important and needs to be protected. Tillage and cultivation are used by many sustainable and organic farmers, but they along with conventional farmers, are trying out new methods of planting and weeding that are less disruptive to soil. We are finding many more tools in the toolbox that we didn't know we needed and had not looked for previously, because the land was very forgiving. But with our ever-larger machinery and ever-increasing farm size and concentration of livestock, we do need new solutions to problems. Sustainable and organic farmers tend to look for biological solutions while conventional farmers tend to look for technological fixes. Ideally, the S/O farms will lend age-old solutions to the toolbox, a re-discovery of things that work to preserve soil health. Conventional farming lends its brightness and ingenuity to creating tools that work for all farmers, not just the very largest operations. An example of new tools is an effort by the Greenfire conservation group to pay farmers for measuring and keeping phosphorus on their land. It is all hands on deck as we attempt to move all of modern agriculture from an 'endless buffalo' mindset to the realization that not only do we have to conserve our soil, but we may also have to start regenerating it.

This then is the new undiscovered country, how to farm and feed the world without destroying it.