How is the soil health in a typical industrial corn field?

Hi, I'm reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. I read his book, In Defense of Food, and really liked it. Very well researched, and well written too. I'm having a much harder time with The Omnivore's Dilemma (he rants about corn for 120 pages so far), but I'll keep going. He does seem to have many good points, and has done a tremendous amount of research.

One of his points is that we seem to be monocropping corn year after year, using fossil fuels to produce synthetic fertility, instead of the older crop rotation of soya bean/corn. I'm not from the corn belt, so I have no idea. How healthy is the soil in a typical corn field?

I'm more "red neck" than "Green Peacer", and I think there are good reasons to use some Ag Chem, and modern equipment. But I do like reading things about sustainable agriculture. And I am a believer in having as light a footprint on the Earth as I can. I'd like to leave my land in better condition than I found it. I think we all would.

I wonder how we're going to feed all these people?
I wonder how we're going to heat our houses if not with fossil fuels (wood/coal/oil/gas)?
I wonder how we're going to cope with migration from hot/dry places to more moderate climates?
I wonder what the benefits to climate change are? There must be some benefits...
I wonder if we can live smaller lives (less of everything)?

There are some pretty dire outlooks from some pretty well-educated folks out there. They're not all quacks... (there are quacks on both sides, I try to ignore those).

Hmm, maybe I should read different books.

Sorry for the long post. How is the soil in a big corn field? I'd really like to know. I have a degree in Agricultural Soil Chemistry.

Thanks,

Troy

I never knew there was such thing as a industrial
corn field ? Kind of like farm raised chickens Is there
chickens that are raised somewhere in an
apartment in San Francisco ?

Well I have had the soil tested for over 40 years on much of the ground we farm. The organic matter is higher than when we started testing. The PH is running in the 6.5-7 range. The utilization of nitrogen is under a unit per bushel of corn. When we started it was common for it to be over 1-1 1/2 units per bushel of corn. In 1978 the average yield on the farms was 130 BPA, using a rolling ten year average. Now it is at 235. This is largely due to the improved hybrids but the soil is also in better condition.

What many just do not seem to understand is how much fodder these modern high yielding hybrids produce. We have rising organic mater levels with heavy tillage to incorporate it into the soil structure.

It is popular for people to bash modern farming practices. There has not been hungry people in the US due to a crop failure in its entire history. So it is easy to throw rocks when you have a full belly.

Your comment on how do we heat our homes with out fossil fuel, and then you list wood, gas , oil
and coal. Wood is a renewable resource. Trees can be planted and harvested like any other crop.
One solution to home heating is Geothermal energy . Ground source heating systems are
becoming more popular, but more expensive initially. Authors of books generally have a message
that they want to convey, and controversy sells more books.

While monoculture corn may be popular in
some areas, I do not see it here in ND and
N MN. Most of the farmers seem to have a
decent rotation going on.

JD
On another note I heard on radio where Iowa is losing farm land at an alarming rate due to roads and subdivisions.

Thanks for feeding the world on fewer acres.

What's going to happen when there are more people to feed and less ground?

A lot of those books are 40 years behind.

They need to have a problem, or no one would buy them.

?Sustainable? is the new buzz word. It doesn?t mean much as it is a grey word, how does it apply?

Even little farmers like me are using high tech to soil sample 2.5 or 5 acre grids of the fields and applying fertilizer (manure when we can get it, commercial to balance
out what the next crop needs exactly) and so many other new/old ideas to raise the best crop with the least inputs.

Fertilizer is placed in bands often now, close to when and where the plant needs it. Too expensive to apply more than needed, we apply less and less fertilizer
(commercial and manure) per bu than ever.

Cover crops are a very hot topic and being used on more and more acres. Some cover crops hold soil in place, some scavage and store nutrients over winter, and a
few add N to the soil. And on and on.

Don?t want to overwhelm you, but there is nothing I do now like I did 20 years ago, and every 5 years I make enough changes it?s hard to remember them all.

Those books you are reading are many years out of date. They need to have a problem or they wouldn?t sell. In general, they use 49 year old info to show the ?problem?
and then don?t show you a viable, realistic solution for today?s world.

Modern farming has already done much more than books like that show in the past decades.

?Soil health? is actually a very common buzz word at common Ag and farm meetings the past 5 years. It is what we farmers want. We are way ahead of your author.

Paul

That?s a big topic all by itself......

A lot of the record high corn yield growers grow corn on corn. The old corn plants take 2 years to break down; but they are very good at building soil and returning nutrients back to the ground over time.

Soybean stubble has a small amount of stored nitrogen, but the stubble tends to decay fast and return far less meaningful nutrients to the soil over the long term.

Crop rotation isn?t as simple as it would appear.

Corn on corn can actually build soil organic matter over time.

50-50 rotation kinda keeps things even. The advantage can be less dis age or insects; but that isn?t always true.

Growing beans on beans often robs soil of organic matter and soil health. Tho in some soils and climates it works well too.

It?s a huge topic no one can explain the details and how they apply in a forum message, but at least, we farmers want to survive and thrive and have a better year next year - we are applying these ideas to our farms to improve the farms.

We are not stupid hicks and we are not looking for ways to wreck our most valuable asset, the land, as some of these type of books try to imply.

Efficiency and sustainability - that is what any successful farmer is trying for. We are not 40 years behind the times as these book types imply.

Paul

He's an English professor with no ag background and has probably never set foot on a farm. I'd give him about as much credibility if he wrote a "how to" book about flying to the moon.

What's going to happen when there are more people to feed and less ground?

Click to expand...

Here's a stock tip for ya' George -- remember this name:
Solyent Green. :shock: *lol*

They never tell you about all the ground not producing food and taxpayers are paying for it

Guys like the author have always wanted to dictate to others but then lacked the ambition to go the next step. Today, there are a number of would be petty dictators that would regulate US agriculture into oblivion. Scary times ahead.

I have read both of the books you
mentioned, and I believe Michael Pollan is
very well informed about Agriculture.

As a farmer/cattleman, I certainly can
identify things in his books to take issue
with, but I think he has some valid
concerns. I agree corn on corn practices
can improve soil health, but the lack of
rotation can also promote weed resistance.

As far as soil health, a lot of that
depends on who is managing things. Small
farms can be better or worse than large
farms at maintaining fertility and soil
organisms or reducing erosion or
compaction. Just as Pollan covered the
industrial organic farms and showed their
faults (it's worth reading about), he
gives us a fair assessment of where we
could improve in modern ag production.

My take away from both of these books was
this: We are very blessed to have access
to cheap and plentiful food. Some
producers misrepresent being sustainable
for their own gain, but many in Ag are
trying to be efficient and responsible
stewards. We have to either use resources
(fuel, fertilizer, chemicals), or be less
productive (which has an environmental
impact over more acres to get the same
result as being more input-intensive).

Pollan challenges you to think, and not
everyone is comfortable with that. But I
enjoyed his perspective, and it helped me
realize that those of us in Ag have to do
a little damage so that we can all eat.

Lon

It's just like any other cause,make a conclusion,then cherry pick data to back it up.

I had the same response when I read the title. I don't want to pick on anybody too much,but why would somebody with a degree in soil science be asking a bunch of farmers who are out to destroy the planet to make a buck,about this?

I don’t see corn on corn here. The fields I pass daily, the go from corn, to beans to wheat. I may not have the order right, but they do rotate. I suspect mostly for disease and pest concerns. One place near here grows a fair amount of wheat, and bales the straw. I guess they make money doing it, they have done it for a lot of years.

Don't have answers to your questions but the US has something like 20 million cropland acres in conservation reserve program (planted to grasses) not being cropped at present time. Sort of an insurance policy. We have about 900 million bushel soybeans in carry out (storage & surplus) that is double our normal carry out bushels. No where to market them. Some good discussion points in your post. We do a corn beans wheat rotation no continuous corn.

The issue many people seem to fail to recognize is the fact that farmers have a vested interest in maintaining the land. Its a valuable asset that needs a certain degree of care and management like any other asset. No one gets ahead by destroying the productivity of land by farming with short term planning because the return isn't enough to justify the loss. No land is productive enough to pay itself off in 5 or 8 years - especially when it runs $5000 to $10000 an acre. Because of its value and the slow return on investment farmers have to be good stewards of the land or they won't be farmers for long.


You get people that think because an operation is "Only in it for the bucks" automatically means they are poor stewards of the earth resources - actually it means the opposite. Its like anything else in farming - going cheap on feed doesn't make you money - it means skinny cows, fewer calves and less earnings.

Industrial cornfield??

I too wondered why wood was considered a fossil fuel? I heat primarily with wood, mostly dead trees and blowdown trees. Many of my neighbors think I am pretty old fashioned because of my wood heat and still doing some farming, maybe I am the fossil(or dinosaur) So that makes wood a fossil's fuel?

rrlund , I don?t know I?m sick of worrying about it they can eat what we grow, grow their own or go hungry .

my girl friend's dad 87 years young was a life long farmer then an o-r-t.
he told me at Christmas he couldn't farm today as farming is much different now.
then he was talking about no till his grandfather taught how to plow nothing showing on top of ground.

I try to farm with 2000s ideas and 1980-90s equipment in the 2010s.

Cant afford the new stuff on a small farm, but can?t afford not to be modern in your thinking.

Paul

My take on hybrids (GMO...oh my gosh..... what is this world coming to.........) is that we have a different breed of corn down here from what I see you guys and gals growing up there. Here the stalks are less than 6' tassled out, 2 ears to the stalk....each one in exactly the same positon....looks like soldiers in a parade as you scan the field, making for very little residue...really just the right amount. There is some sileage produced but I've only seen a couple of farms doing it and had I known what they were doing, I would have paid more attention to the size of the crop before harvesting. My guess is that they used a similar crop lineage to what your folks use up there.

If the tree huggers only knew how much, and for how long, seed producers have been working on improving the quality of products so that the world can eat.......they'd shut their whining mouths and go back to doing something useful.....in their "urban" jungles.

(quoted from post at 07:41:43 01/28/19) I have read both of the books you
mentioned, and I believe Michael Pollan is
very well informed about Agriculture.

As a farmer/cattleman, I certainly can
identify things in his books to take issue
with, but I think he has some valid
concerns. I agree corn on corn practices
can improve soil health, but the lack of
rotation can also promote weed resistance.

As far as soil health, a lot of that
depends on who is managing things. Small
farms can be better or worse than large
farms at maintaining fertility and soil
organisms or reducing erosion or
compaction. Just as Pollan covered the
industrial organic farms and showed their
faults (it's worth reading about), he
gives us a fair assessment of where we
could improve in modern ag production.

My take away from both of these books was
this: We are very blessed to have access
to cheap and plentiful food. Some
producers misrepresent being sustainable
for their own gain, but many in Ag are
trying to be efficient and responsible
stewards. We have to either use resources
(fuel, fertilizer, chemicals), or be less
productive (which has an environmental
impact over more acres to get the same
result as being more input-intensive).

Pollan challenges you to think, and not
everyone is comfortable with that. But I
enjoyed his perspective, and it helped me
realize that those of us in Ag have to do
a little damage so that we can all eat.

Lon

Click to expand...

I have also read the books and agree with LonM. Too many guys are more than willing to write-off a guy because he makes a fellow think about how "things are done". Over the course of the book, he buys a calf and sells it to a CAFO, visits an Iowa commodity farmer, spends several weeks working on Joel Salatin's farm (Joel should have paid him royalties because that book really rocketed him to a high status almost overnight. He worked hard for years to get what he has, but that book really helped him out), he went scavaging for his food for the fourth part. This book wasn't written in an office in New York. The guys did his field work.

It's just too easy to listen to the opinion-makers you like and ignore any other.