“With respect to public awareness…there has been a steady decline in interest in soil conservation. There is a pervasive belief amongst all of these stakeholders that…we need to move on. A sense of fatigue has set in.” Dr. David Lobb
In the 1980’s, there was a deliberate decision by conservation agencies to change the narrative from soil erosion to water quality. Working for one of these conservation agencies, I remember voicing my frustration to management. We are not even close to solving the problem of soil erosion, I argued. So why were we pivoting our focus on water quality?
A very wise conservationist, a mentor for many Iowa conservationists, reassured me. Lyle Asell always had a unique perspective and this time was no different. Programs run their life, Lyle told me very convincingly. “At some point in time it is helpful to repackage the old problem,” he continued, “and develop new policies, get new 
funding and continue to tackle the issue at hand.”
In other words, there comes a time when we should take a new approach to solving an old problem. It made sense to me. If progress on soil erosion was stuck, then maybe we needed to change the narrative. In the ’80s, we pivoted to water quality.
Now, we still have the same old problem – soil erosion. But we’ve pivoted again; this time to soil health. I get it. Farmers are weary of hearing about soil erosion. And conservation agency folks are tired of talking about it. But it is disturbing to me that soil health experts are telling only half the story. They leave out the part about how important preserving soil, or reducing soil erosion, is to soil health. It’s like they think we have solved the soil erosion problem and we are moving right on to building soil health. It can’t be done. It would be like trying to stabilize climate change without addressing carbon emissions.
No. It cannot be done, at least with the current science. We cannot leave soil erosion out of the equation of improving soil health, water quality, carbon sequestration, national and global food production, or long-term profitability.
So if you are weary of talking about soil erosion, I suggest you get over it. Bundle the problem of soil erosion into a pretty package like soil health, if you must. But don’t forget that the foundation of soil health is based on the condition that soil exists in situ (in place). And no amount of repackaging will change that.
Big challenges to cut nitrate loading
As you often do, very well said!
Thanks Rick,we simply cannot ignore soil erosion because people are tired of hearing about it.
Thank you, Neil.
Tom – I always enjoy these commentaries and this one is golden! Keep it up!
As usual, you got it correct. Well done.
Thanks Ross, good to hear from you.
Tom, I believe you tie a pretty bow on the package. We cannot have a narrow focus of achieving just one goal, they are all interconnected and need to be addressed together.
John, I do understand that it is possible to get to narrow of a focus. That could be misleading and result in a huge oversight. However if we are going to solve the water quality issue we do need to target our resources. There simply are not enough resources to take the shotgun approach of equally serving everyone. As some water quality experts refer to the shotgun approach, “random acts of conservation”. We still need to identify those farmers and those areas that are contributing a disproportionately high amount of the nutrients to our runoff. Using soil health as our focus, we may lose sight of targeting. Please let me know if you have a different opinion.
Identifying and targeting those farmers and areas sounds good to me. But how does that work with the legal emphasis on landowner privacy that is now apparently built into USDA systems?
I’m an assistant commissioner with my county SWCD.
Commissioners and assistant commissioners are not even allowed to see where conservation practices are being put in, let alone what kinds are going in and how much land is involved.
I think of that whenever I read that county SWCD commissions are supposed to provide local knowledge of local soil and water issues. If we’re supposed to have local knowledge, it would be really nice to be able to see county and/or watershed maps that show current and near-future conservation practices.
To the best of my knowledge, that is not allowed. And from what I’m hearing, the water funding bill that is most likely to be pushed through the Iowa Legislature next month may include strong limits on water testing transparency.
Cindy, I understand your concern. I don’t even know where to start with this one. Maybe someone from one of the agencies can reach out to you and give you an answer. But you are right, the science is clear, if we are going to solve the water quality issues in the U.S. we have to be able to target our technical and financial assistance.
I just heard Clay McMasters, a reporter on Iowa Public Radio, talk about the legal brick wall he hit when he tried to find out where water quality money was specifically going in Iowa. He was told that he could not find out that information because landowner/operator names and information are legally protected. Clay has been reporting on water quality for several years, and it was clear that he found that situation frustrating. He’s not alone.
Cindy, it is nearly impossible to monitor the value of conservation practices if we don’t know what practices are applied and where they are applied. It seems like more transparency is needed.
Very well said Tom. I do believe the soil health movement has the potential for better outcomes though. Promoting soil health is the same thing as talking about erosion in my mind, but puts the focus on maximizing a positive outcome (healthier soil) rather than minimizing a negative outcome (less erosion). The two go hand in hand. I can’t think of any practices that promote soil health that don’t also help reduce erosion.
Brian, I absolutely agree. There are probably no practices that improve soil health that don’t also reduce sediment runoff. However there are a lot of practices that reduce sediment runoff and don’t improve soil health; i.e. water and sediment control basins, terraces, ponds, wetlands, etc. I hope we don’t throw out those practices just for the namesake of soil health. Again, we are not targeting our technical assistance when talking about soil health. We treat everyone the same regardless of the amount of their offsite damage. With more traditional soil conservation practices we can target those areas that give us the biggest bang for our buck and focus on the disproportionately high nutrient loss areas. I agree we need all tools on the toolbox. Soil health is a very important tool.
Every time there is a paradigm shift, there also are new perspectives that make the new paradigm not quite equivalent to the old ones. I fully agree that erosion remains a major problem, and it should not leave our attention. But the new perspective brings with it attention to losses of organic carbon content, the importance mycorrhizal fungi, and other parts of “healthy soil” that simply weren’t part of past perspectives. Sure, oldtime farmers who took manure from their feedlots to the fields were supporting carbon and fungal growth without knowing it. But the intervening years have brought us “dirt,” which is not all that must be in place to have soil. Repackaging, yes. New understandings, yes. It’s both/and, not either/or.
Well said. I absolutely agree.
Good conversation,
How many farmers are conversant with their current rates of erosion on all fields and practices? Not some ancient farm plan. And, know which things they do increase or decrease it and by how much.
A minority I’d guess.
Karl Hakanson
Karl, I totally agree. Most farmers don’t know how much soil they are losing. When I ask farmer groups how much soil they lose we get answers like .5 tons/acre/year…or less. Note, the average soil loss in Iowa is estimated to be about 5 tons/acre/year. In respect for farmers, this is similar to our knowledge of energy losses from our house. Most of us, including me, has no idea. And even if I knew what energy I am losing I don’t know what changes will give me the most bang for my buck for making improvements. We should all have an energy audit, but we don’t. Likewise getting good information on soil erosion to farmers has to be Job One.
You are correct, Tom. The number one pollutant from agriculture is and always will be sediment. It carries the bulk of the phosphorus runoff and a good share of the nitrogen. We need to work on reducing sediment delivery which is the key to water quality improvement.
Frank Moore
Tom
Wow! Struck a cord with this group! Not really sure where to start. Maybe first is this group the target audience or how will the discussion make an impact? New farm bill discussion has started. What next?
I did check on Dr. David Lobb. His Canadian audience should be concern with the limited soil resources.
Lyle Asell’s perspective of repackaging is good. But I do think each resource demands additional resources as you noted in another reply and thus becomes competing. This is why many advocate trying to pinpoint problem areas that contribute the most. Possibly from the soil erosion stand point should consider the future productively that would be lost with additional soil erosion rather than what productivity has already been blown or washed away.
Cindy Hildebrand’ Assistant commissioner comments makes me feel dated. Board members had been responsible to approve new cooperators. Today there are a lot more federal funds that the sponsoring SWCD does not manage, but would be responsible for the state funds proper use of the state funds. I guess the county map with pins locating each practice would not be an allowed tool today. Does not meet the logic test however. Agree any raw data from a on farm test should not be published since its usefulness would not be useful statically on the single farm. However, is the Iowa Soil Loss Erosion Law based on the USLE still valid? Just a lot of questions raised.
Someone said something about farmers not understanding the value of manure and soil health was new. Not too sure my Depression Era Iowa and North Dakota Grandparents would agree. Too many stories and examples of how much better the soil felt, smelled and yes even tasted each year after manure and rotations of small grain, clovers, and hay land use between the row crop. Technology has enabled the use of cover crops to replicate those techniques. But, also has given an excuse to eliminate those pesky grass waterways and the dismal contour line. From the water quality stand point may have lost as much as gained.
Finally, two responses I did not see that I believe has limited the best success of our work with soil erosion, water quality and soil productivity improvement has been the metrics used to measure success and monitor participation. Many of the participants in each ‘newly packaged’ conservation approach are the same faithful conservationists. They terraced, they no-tilled and now enjoy the benefits of cover crops. Others may put a structure or two in. Often can see the deep rills washing subsoil as much as top soil into the non-contoured basin. But these are counted as treatment and duly recorded on the books. Which is demonstrates to error of only using funds expended as the metric to measure success. Conservation is hard. It takes time and resources to treat the land. One approach will not adequality solve the problem. And only cooperation will enable use to find the best approach to use each acre wisely.
There is also the ongoing issue of the validity of T. If what I’ve read about the newest research is correct, soil is formed at a rate that is less than half a ton per acre per year. Yet our “tolerable soil loss” continues to be, as far as I know, five tons per year. Seems like that would contribute to the myth that most farms aren’t losing significant amounts of soil.
I was part of a discussion about changing T to zero, a proposal that was made by at least one county SWCD. I heard from a few in the discussion that drastically lowering T would be just too discouraging to operators and landowners. That made me wonder what having an official “T” is supposed to accomplish. If “T” isn’t and perhaps cannot be based on scientific reality, how and why is it being used?
Cindy, you are absolutely correct. T is nearly a worthless concept. It is misleading and needs to be put out to pasture. As you said the leading soil scientists estimate that, at best, soil regenerates at about .25 to .5 tons/acre/year. And “T” or tolerable soil loss usually set at 5 tons/acre/year, That means that “T” allows for soil loss at 10 to 20 times regeneration. How can anyone possibly claim they are improving soil health when they lose 10 to 20 times more than they are regenerating? From a water quality standpoint we should be looking at sediment delivery and not soil erosion. Although there is a natural correlation between soil erosion and sediment delivery we can do better. We need to model sediment delivery and identify those hotspots that are causing the most sediment delivery.