Evan Thaler News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

The Midwestern United States has lost 57.6 billion tons of topsoil due to farming practices over the past 160 years, and the rate of erosion, even following the U.S. Department of Agriculture's guidelines, is still 25 times higher than the rate at which topsoil forms. Yet, we need not despair: researchers recently reported that no-till farming, which is currently practiced on 40 percent of cropland acres in the Midwest, can extend our current level of soil fertility for the next several centuries. This has implications for everything from food security to climate-change mitigation.

The Midwestern United States has lost 57.6 billion tons of topsoil due to farming practices over the past 160 years, and the rate of erosion, even following the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s guidelines, is still 25 times higher than the rate at which topsoil forms. Yet, we need not despair: researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently reported in the journal Earth’s Future that no-till farming, which is currently practiced on 40 percent of cropland acres in the Midwest, can extend our current level of soil fertility for the next several centuries. This has implicati...

New research from UMass Amherst shows that the rapid and unsustainable rate of topsoil erosion can be drastically reduced with no-till agricultural methods already in practice.

A combination of climate change and unsustainable agricultural practices could lead to Dust Bowl–like conditions

Farmers who want to sell carbon need to conserve their topsoil first. Losses from erosion are stunning.