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In recent years, there has been a growing interest in regenerative agriculture, a holistic approach to farming that seeks to restore and revitalize the land while improving crop yields and overall farm profitability. This means increased crop yields and reduced inputs like fertilizers and pesticides.
These synthetic polymer products have often been used to help boost yields up to 60 percent and make water and pesticide use more efficient. As contamination rose, crop yields fell by 15 percent. The widespread practice, which took place through the late aughts, “had a deleterious effect on soil quality,” says Richard H.
And when nitrates are present, it’s inevitable that other contaminants, such as pesticides , are also polluting the water. A 2022 Stanford University satellite study reported that although cover cropping reduces erosion and improves water quality, it also causes significant yield hits for corn and soybeans.
With fields waterlogged, many farmworkers were unable to work and pick produce, signaling that crops like strawberries might see lower yields and higher prices in the near future. But with the heavy rain came floods that damaged lives, property, and crops.
But European settlers were remarkably effective at shooting and poisoning prairie dogs and plowing up their burrows. Some relied on prairie dogs for nourishment during thin times, or used them as a ceremonial food. Today, the five prairie dog species occupy just 2% of their historic range, and some occupy even less.
Their dad and grandpa spent their lives getting rid of all the weeds and they wanted [the land] to be black and plowed because that’s the way successful farming looks and feels,” Cobb said. Landowners Cobb leased from were similarly averse to mixing things up. Some of the challenges can be impossible to plan for. Here in the U.S.,
Diesel-powered tractors replaced horse-powered plows, and synthetic nitrogen fertilizers replaced their manure. As a result of this tech boom, yields the amount of corn and soybeans produced per acre increased steadily. Its not overly reductive to say it boils down to a half century of intentional federal farm policy.
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