erosion and maize

" 'we will solve the problems through technology.' this is just another form of religion. we may get some technological substitutions for the fossil carbons, such as wind turbines, solar collectors, and so on. but i'd like somebody to help me come up with a technological substitute for soil and water...cereals, oilseeds, and pulses (legumes' edible seeds) make up about 68 percent of the calories and about the same acreage. upland rice is increasingly grown on steep hills in china and indonesia, where erosion is a big problem. but even on flat land, agriculture can cause erosion, which happens after heavy rains in places like iowa and kansas...the primary killers of soil on the continent are our top annual crops: wheat, corn, and soybeans...annual systems leak, they are poor micromanagers of nutrients and water."

from "Tackling the Oldest Environmental Problem: Agriculture and Its Impact on Soil" by wes jackson.

i found a local cornfield i could hike out into and take some photos ( and i was as careful as i am in my own gardens not to harm any plants...no transgenetic corn was bent, broken, smashed, or uprooted...walked between plants, not over them...this corn is a couple of feet tall...about five or six inches taller than the maize i have planted...but i used organic seed that's not round-up ready or liberty-link )this particular field is planted in thirty inch rows and you can see the amount of exposed soil between the rows...farmer brown is going to douse this field a few times in pesticides and herbicides that are genetically linked to the corn to keep it exactly that exposed...eliminating any sort of vegetable competition that might serve to better hold the soil together with its roots...aerial photographs of farm field during the growing season may present an illusion of fields brimming with green but it is illusory...the ground underneath the plants' crowns is as bare as could be...i have posted photos of flat field water erosion already this year...and of water standing in the fields as well...this particular field was bordered on the side i entered by a strip of about eight feet of grass and weeds but the other side is bordered by the river and the field slopes down to it...i didn't have time to hike down along the river looking or signs of erosion this morning ( a field trip later on...perhaps after the next monsoon rain...if the season's climate continues in the pattern it has developed this will happen eventually )...but i am willing to wager i will find some if i look...and the river is where the runoff of fertilizer and pesticides and herbicides is going to wind up...i wonder how much of that will find its way into the groundwater and into the municipal wells here in town...i will need to find an accessible soybean fields soon to compare row widths and open ground ( no-one grows wheat around here, beyond winter wheat as a ground cover and nitrogen reservoir)more on that and any signs of erosion i run across in my rural jaunts later...i almost forgot that the last photo is of some zea diploperennis just because i am still utterly geeked that it has grown so well in a climate so far removed form its ancestral home...a convincing argument in support of the relative ease and rapidity of the widespread diffusion of maize into north america ( cultural diffusion or demic diffusion? someone have the answer?)

if you look up to the top of the from about the 25 inch mark on the tape you'll just see the support roots growing out of the stalk on a corn plant...you'll see more of that when my corn is bigger