You may remember this TV announcement from the last 50 years: “It’s 11 o’clock. Do you know where your children are?”

With that in mind, do you know where your soil is?  

In asking about your soil’s history, I’m not going way back to the glaciers’ impact on the Corn Belt or the wind-deposited loess soils in the Palouse region of the Northwest. My question is about the last 100-200 years. 

Has Your Farm Lost Soil?

Before no-till and cover crops, losing 10-20 tons of soil per acre per year was not unusual. If you live where rainfall averages 30-50 inches per year, the soil probably left as muddy water. In drier regions, wind may have been the main carrier. 

In a recent research article, Matteo Cavallito estimated that prairie farmland has lost over 60 billion tons of topsoil over the past 160 years. No-tillers know how to prevent tons of erosion, and here is an example. 

Researchers at the USDA-ARS Northern Appalachian Experimental Watershed in Coshocton, Ohio, measured soil erosion in different tillage systems for 40 years on steep slopes. A severe storm hit July 5, 1969, with 5½ inches of rain in 7 hours. Almost half the rain, 2½ inches, ran off a continuous no-till corn watershed on a 21% slope. The field lost 63 pounds of sediment per acre  — yes, 63 POUNDS. In contrast, a 6.6% slope with corn in plowed ground had 4.4 inches of water runoff and lost 22 TONS of sediment per acre.