How to Prevent Soil Erosion

Posted by clay on February 15th, 2020

According to the Agriculture Department, we tend to export three loads of surface soil per acre per annum in America alone. The epicentre of harm is that the western belt, wherever we tend to grow principally GMO corn and soy on many acres of monocultured industrial farms.

CROP ROTATION is the best process to prevent soil erosion in farming.

Apparently we tend to learned nothing from the Nineteen Thirties geographical area concerning a way to take care of our soils!

Our surface soil currently blows away within the hot, dry summer, and washes away within the spring rain, travels down the river into the Gulf of Mexico, wherever it smothers aquatic life at AN ugly rate. Fertility lost forever. See this 2-minute instructional video by PBS.

Experts estimate that with current farming practices, we tend to solely have sixty years of surface soil left.


Topsoil is important for growing crops. It’s wherever the soil life is. surface soil is wherever soil microbes eat and poop and feed the plant roots. It’s wherever bacterium and fungi facilitate to carry the soil along. It’s wherever the essential nutrients area unit that feed the plants.

Let’s see however our actions will facilitate stop eating away each at the macro and small levels.

#1: avoid the corn and soy-based way

I know the human diet isn’t the primary place you’d expect to begin with fixing eating away, however the reality is that even the bulk folks UN agency grow our own food still need to purchase a number of what we tend to eat.

The standard yank diet is serious on grain-fed, factory-farm-raised meat, whereas feeder diets conjointly focus heavily on corn and soy. Monoculture farming of grains strips the surface soil whether or not the grains area unit fed to humans or animals. The unhappy truth: corn and soy—as primary dietary staples—are tributary to geological process, in step with academician Anton Imeson, University of Dutch capital, in his book geological process, Land Degradation and property.

I’m a mortal of Mark Shepard’s Restoration Agriculture resolution as a result of he proposes perennial, regenerative alternatives to annual staple crops. The Savory Institute is doing a little glorious analysis into this issue, as well. Watch Alan Savory’s intriguing Teddy boy speak. Wes Jackson’s analysis into perennial grains at The Land Institute is equally promising.

Ridding your diet of corn and soy will facilitate kick GMOs from your diet.

True to my word, I’ve well my autoimmune disorder by following a grain-free diet.

#2: Grow your own manufacture

Growing our own manufacture will truly create a distinction in land management policy. The a lot of economical we tend to become at utilizing our tiny areas, the less we want mammoth, clear-cut areas for industrial farm production.
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Returning depleted farmland back to grassland, forest, and sustainably-managed perennial systems suggests that saving what’s left of the surface soil whereas at an equivalent time make a lot of. a lot of surface soil suggests that a lot of carbon sequestration (which is helpful in spite of your opinion on climate change).

Another advantage of a lot of individuals growing their own food is AN engaged group that's willing to require responsibility for its own existence instead of outsourcing responsibility.

#3: Avoid cultivation in tiny areas

Industrial farming needs cultivation, that loosens the soil, permitting it to blow away within the wind and wash away within the rain. typical tillage destroys and interrupts the soil life that might have helped to feed the plant roots and hold along loose soil.

There area unit lots of variations on no-till farming, like the tactic utilized by Masanobu city within the One-Straw Revolution.

In tiny gardens, large-scale farming strategies like cultivation aren’t necessary. learn the way to transition your garden to a no-till garden. attempt loosening garden soil every spring before planting with a excavation fork.

Would you wish to find out a lot of concerning up the diverseness of your garden, reducing maintenance, and increasing yield?

You’ll realize many data similar to this in my book, The community Micro-Far
In bare, loose soil, gullies can kind throughout serious rains and wash away the topoil. In our curtilage gardens we will minimize water erosion by coming up with our gardens properly. we will build garden beds on elevation contours, that catch the water and unfold it across the landscape instead of causing it away. this enables the water to slowly sink in over time, irrigating the gardens for America.

We can conjointly use swales, that area unit ditches on contour. I’ve written already concerning a way to build swales.

Capturing fresh water in rain gardens may facilitate to slow runoff, minimize erosion, and supply another tool for free of charge irrigation.

Did you recognize daffodils will facilitate scale back runoff and capture nutrients? browse a lot of in my post will your garden would like daffodils?.
Mulch with Plants

Plants area unit galore in most backyards and gardens. Here area unit some easy ways in which to require advantage of them.

Mulch with Weeds

Mulching with weeds could be a easy, basic task we will waste our own curtilage gardens to guard the soil.

bucket o’ weeds

When I withdraw to weed, I take a bucket with ME. once I’ve got a full bucket, I realize places in my garden wherever there's vacant soil, and that i lay the force weeds double as thick as i believe i want to. typically I’ll use my pruners to cut it into smaller items.

broccoli mulched with force weeds

The plant matter can degrade thus quick that in an exceedingly} week i'll have to be compelled to jazz again! At the very least, if you think that it's weird, it won’t keep that approach for long.
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The plant matter keeps the soil in situ and keeps it wet. exploitation weeds as mulch conjointly helps to form a lot of nutrient-rich surface soil, thus we’re not solely preventing erosion, we’re make lost surface soil.

Also, a lot of mulch of any kind suggests that a lot of environs for useful insects.

Check out my post concerning differing kinds of mulches for alternative ideas on a way to use organic material that you’ve most likely already got on the market to you.

Mulch with Comfrey

Comfrey is what’s known as a dynamic accumulator. Comfrey roots will reach at heart and mine the dirt for on the market nutrients. The plant then accumulates those nutrients in its leaves. once the comfrey leaves decompose, either by being cut or by dying back over winter, they fertilize the surface soil with these nutrients.

Dynamic accumulators like comfrey permit America to catch nutrients and pull them up to be used. however tremendous to stop erosion and fertilize each season with comfrey plants that I already own!

I cut the comfrey down as several as five times per summer. it's invasive and bounces back on every occasion. this is often known as chop-and-drop. Chop comfrey into tiny items and lay as mulch.

See my post concerning comfrey for extra details.

comfrey stalks cut from below the cherry trees

Below you'll be able to see the comfrey mulch that I ordered around some new Thymus serpyllum plants.

fresh comfrey chop-and-drop mulch

It might look funny to get inexperienced trouble maker plants as mulch. within the image below you'll be able to see what it's like simply 2 days later: “Normal”-looking, brown mulch!

Comfrey mulch many days later

There area unit still little patches of soil showing through the brown mulch, thus many days later I mulched this space once more. I don’t wish any surface soil showing vacant.

Mulch with trefoil and Flowers

Mulching with flowers could be a good way to multi-task within the garden. stop erosion by covering the soil with living plants whose roots hold the soil in situ. Attract pollinators and useful insects to the garden, too!

My high three flowers to sprinkle round the garden are: flower, Golden State poppies, and Lobularia maritima. Here’s however i take advantage of Lobularia maritima as a living mulch. See my article half dozen Flowers to Grow within the vegetable patch.

Clover provides element plant food whereas holding soil in situ, and its flowers area unit the foremost beloved by honeybees! Annual trefoil makes a decent crop in vegetable gardens over the winter, and perennial trefoil will well below fruit trees and berry bushes.
Broccoli within the edible landscaping mulched with Golden State poppies. you'll be able to see the flower sprouts springing up during this bed.

sweet alyssum living mulch

There area unit several things we will do as shoppers and gardeners to actively participate in preventing eating away and make new surface soil by having healthy horticulture practices.