Evan Thaler/NPR
Farming has destroyed a lot of the rich soil of America’s Midwestern prairie. A team of scientists just came up with a staggering new estimate for just how much has disappeared…
The new study emerged from a simple observation, one that people flying over Midwestern farms can confirm for themselves. The color of bare soil varies, and that variation is related to soil quality.
The soil that’s darkest in color is widely known as topsoil. Soil scientists call this layer the “A-horizon.” It’s the “black, organic, rich soil that’s really good for growing crops,” says Evan Thaler, a Ph.D. student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
It’s full of living microorganisms and decaying plant roots, also called organic carbon. When settlers first arrived in the Midwest, it was everywhere, created from centuries of accumulated prairie grass. Plowing, though, released much of the trapped carbon, and topsoil was also lost to wind and water erosion. The soil that remains is often much lighter in color.
RTFA. The history isn’t unknown. The effects are still (sometimes) debated. It takes many tons of additives annually to keep productivity and profitability close to each other. Healthy? That’s another question.
Eideard 
“Saving Runaway Farm Lands” By Charles Fitzhugh Talman. Popular Science Monthly, November 1930. Page 59. https://books.google.com/books?id=xSgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA2&lpg=PA2&dq=Saving+runaway+farm+lands+charles+fitzhugh+talman&source=bl&ots=zaQuB4jTfW&sig=ACfU3U1yO0BiyBKvrN7xuWl1C3pdCsm7jw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj9rczAocfvAhVLWs0KHYWfAQsQ6AEwAXoECB0QAw#v=onepage&q=Saving%20runaway%20farm%20lands%20charles%20fitzhugh%20talman&f=false
Continues on page 147 https://books.google.com/books?id=xSgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA147&lpg=PA147&dq=Saving+Runaway+Farm+Lands&source=bl&ots=zaQuC3qUjS&sig=ACfU3U0rzvzsSP72YkrmxoBBFw2xtNZGWQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj-ytmui8rvAhWQZs0KHaAsCrIQ6AEwGnoECCYQAw#v=onepage&q=Saving%20Runaway%20Farm%20Lands&f=false
Advances in technology, fertilizer use and global trade have allowed food production to keep pace with a booming global population since the 1960s, albeit with gross inequities that still leave millions of people suffering from malnutrition.
But rising temperatures in this time have acted as a handbrake to farming productivity of crops and livestock, according to the new research, published in Nature Climate Change. Productivity has actually slumped by 21% since 1961, compared to if the world hadn’t been subjected to human-induced heating.
With the global population set to rise to more than 9 billion by 2050, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated that food production will have to increase by about 70%, with annual crop production increasing by almost one 1bn tonnes and meat production soaring by more than 200m tonnes a year by this point. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/01/climate-crisis-global-heating-food-farming-agriculture
“Anthropogenic climate change has slowed global agricultural productivity growth” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01000-1
Vital soil organisms being harmed by pesticides, study shows : The tiny creatures are the ‘unsung heroes’ that keep soils healthy and underpin all life on land https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/04/vital-soil-organisms-being-harmed-by-pesticides-study-shows
A UN report published in December found that the future looked “bleak” for soils without urgent action to halt degradation, given that it takes thousands of years for new soils to form. Soils are thought to contain nearly a quarter of all the planet’s biodiversity. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/04/global-soils-underpin-life-but-future-looks-bleak-warns-un-report
8AM MDT, tomorrow morning, 9th
“For years, health officials in the US noted sporadic, mysterious cases of a foreign bacterial infection, called melioidosis. The infection—which is difficult to diagnose, tricky to treat, and often deadly—was thought to only strike travelers or those who came in contact with contaminated imported goods or animals. Yet, now and then, an American would inexplicably fall ill—no recent travel, no clear links.
Now, health officials have a definitive explanation. And it confirms a dreaded, long-held suspicion: The deadly bacterium is foreign no more. Rather, it’s a permanent US resident entrenched in American soil.” https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07/a-deadly-soil-bacterium-found-in-the-tropics-is-now-entrenched-in-us-soil/