Monocrop agriculture not sustainable

One of The Gazette's lead stories on April 21 and the April 22 editorial was about “dirt” and how much Iowa topsoil is being lost to increasingly heavy rainstorms. That's only part of the story.

Dirt is only the mineral component of soil, while soil is a “living” thing. Mineral particles blend with hummus (rotting plants), bacteria, insects, burrowing animals, natural chemicals, rainwater and air to form soil, the weathered layer of the Earth's surface (our biome). Soil requires hundreds to thousands of years to form.

Commodity agricultural practices damage soil components faster than it can reform, making soil into dirt that erodes easily. Modern agriculture uses heavy machinery that squashes air spaces from soil and creates a hardpan below the plow layer that is less penetrable for insects, roots and rainwater. Industrial agriculture pours petrochemicals, minerals, herbicides and insecticides on the land, killing soil organisms and leaving the surface bare except for crops.

Conservation practices that save a little dirt will not save us from ourselves. Modern mono-crop agriculture is unsustainable in the long run, because it destroys soil and does not create new topsoil. How much rain falls will not have any appreciable effect on the inevitable decline of our soil environment.

Dave Benn

Cedar Rapids