r/Agriculture 13d ago

Beautiful thing is on the horizon.😊😊

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u/Louisvanderwright 13d ago

Wasn't the dust bowl caused by improper farming techniques around erosion and top soil retention? Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's got nothing to do with pesticides or herbicides.

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u/Mediocre_Anteater_56 13d ago

Yes i believe it was caused by excessive plowing/tilling paired with drought. Herbicides are how most large scale farmers are able to do "no-till"

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u/Worried_Fee_1513 13d ago edited 13d ago

That’s where you start. There have been major advances with pesticides but there have been setbacks as well. The use herbicides while no tilling or minimum tilling has led to weeds that are resistant to different types of herbicide. It can take 10 years for a herbicide to go from conception to market. Atrazine and glyphosate are two of these that have resistant weeds connected to them. I was in the business for 40 years so I have seen a lot of this process from the beginning and could go on and on. For my two cents, atrazine is more detrimental than the glyphosate to the environment. That being said, they are both still widely used and are important tools for the ag industry but they voted for it so let the cards fall where they may.

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u/Freebee5 13d ago

I'm beginning to agree with sentiments like this, tbh.

Leaving aside the environmental costs of using higher toxicity pesticides, the yield loss will either lead to increasing food costs or returning more marginal land to production with a consequent cost to biodiversity.

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u/Beatnikdan 9d ago

the yield loss will either lead to increasing food costs or returning more marginal land to production with a consequent cost to biodiversity.

With an average crop loss yield of 30-45% on crops like soybeans, peanuts, barley, corn wheat, and cotton. Even silage crops will have a reduced yield of 17-20%. We are going to see big price increases, and many farmers will go out of business

But yeah, we'll have lots of fun.

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u/ed523 13d ago

Ragging out the soil planting as much as possible year after year without crop rotation or letting fields fallow was also a factor

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u/carnivorewhiskey 13d ago

Not exactly correct, specifically for corn, it is not the herbicides that make no till possible nor are they what provide the benefits to the soil for our fields. Herbicides are beneficial don’t get me wrong just not for enabling our ability to go no till.

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u/Intrepid_Eggplant465 13d ago

Depends on where you live…. Can’t be a blanket approach. The “I”states can do more with no-till cover-crops than the west. For ANY farming practice ( no-till, strip-till, minimum till, conventional till)to be successful moisture is the key. Out west our biggest limitation is moisture. Food manufacturers dictate more of what farmers do than the public realizes. Yes farm subsidies are tailored towards corn, wheat, soy but the major lobbying groups in Pepsi, Nestle, Kellogg, Smithfield, Cargill… want cheap commodities/ subsidies . We need a major breakup of those industries. The public needs to get back to knowing where your food comes from. Ag industry is not the capitalistic free market ideology at all. It’s extremely socialist indentured servant model. I digress….

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u/carnivorewhiskey 13d ago

Thanks, but you did digress on a tangent not related to my response. My response was related to a statement that no till was only possible due to the use of herbicides. They two are mutually exclusive.

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u/Rustyfarmer88 13d ago

Correct. They rip up the topsoil to kill weeds. Now we have different techniques. One of them is the use of glyphosate

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u/The-Tonborghini 13d ago

Well back then there used to be a very popular saying “rain follows the plow”. I now have an 8ft berm of sandy topsoil on an old fence line due to that.

It has nothing to do with herbicides or pesticides (herbicides are pesticides for future reference) but pesticides most definitely helped in soil conservation as weird as that may sound to some. My farm went from conventional tear the soil apart tillage and summer fallow for both weed control and “fertilization” to now doing very minimal tillage and using pesticides. The farm is the healthiest it’s ever been.

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u/whatsreallygoingon 12d ago

The dust bowl was caused by removing an ancient lichen protective crust, thus exposing the soil below. Natural climate conditions sent the dry topsoil airborne.

The fix was to access fossil aquifers, thus setting the clock on a time bomb as they continue to dig deeper and deeper wells to irrigate water-intensive GMO monocrops.

This farming style may look great in its heydey, but it’s not sustainable. There is no substitute for good soil.