Engineer-Poet,

Your looking at 'it' thru the eyes of an engineer, I must assume.
The author as a soil biologist.

Me as a farmer. From early childhood when I was raised on farms, to farms I have held even though working in the IT industry, to now where I brought my present one in 1985 and farmed it and it was under intensive modern ag row cropping for much of my ownership in the 80s. Upon which time in the early 90s I stopped row cropping and resorted to grasslands and grassland management for the haying crops(made more money then).

Ok. It IMO takes a farmer who is close to the soil to see what has happened and I must agree with the author as to what I see.Though most farmers might see this they refuse to give it credence,IMO again.

My area has very good soils. It also contains much bottom land which requires no fertlizer inputs for the most part.

What I see and judge , viewing the past against the present is the vast amount of devastation. How the modern practices destroy the land.

A personal example then:

I noticed that the operators who put in my row crops had little real regard for the soil and land. They were destroying my farm as a result and they were the biggest in the county and the richest.

Yet when I dug 5 ft hole for the erection of a pole barn I was building I noticed that there was not a single earthworm to be found as I augered these holes. Right in the middle of a corn field. Looking over my farm which was BTW being No-Tilled..I discovered that I could find zero evidence of earthworms. Except in the nearby woodlands.

I also noticed plenty of gullies starting to form. I tried disking them and overseeding them with Ky 31 Fescue..did not good for they promptly sprayed weed burndown over them and planted right over them.

They had destroyed two of the ponds on the place by breaking the damns. Ponds that drained a lot of watershed. They pushed the fences into the ponds. Took me a great deal of work to resurrect the ponds after I discontinued the row cropping.

There is far more but the good fertile soil that was classified as Collins Silt Loam was being turned sterile over time.

I sowed it all down and it began to come back.

This has happened all over my county and other counties. The farmer thinks nothing of altering the land via dozers and trackhoes, which most now own. They destroy the topsoil and figure that as long as they can spread fertilizer on it then it doesn't matter at all.

Most farmers are IMO lousy stewards of the land!!!

I know a lot. They want the money,period. They will use what ever methods to ensure they have a cash flow in the positive.

Note that I have experience in more than one state as far as owning small and large farms. The lands of central Ky are entirely different and what works for one doesn't work for all.

So my view is that , yes we are fast destroying our precious soil and nature in the process.

One has to simply drive by a large paper/pulp mill or chip mill or charcoal making site to realize the enormity of what is transpiring , all in the name of a suburban family being able to cook meat outdoors. Or having cheap food, even though that food be fairly tasteless and void of much nutrition.

I think ag is our last frontier to destroy.
The oil is going.
Financials are in dire straits.
Ag is next to meltdown and believe me,it is ripe.

They, the farmers, have mostly forgotten how it used to be. How precious the land was when you sat on very good land and most of the us does not have good water, good growing seasons and good soil..all combined as we do in many areas nearby.

Illinois in the flat lands has been turned into a massive field of industrial ag. Thats about all it is. Mining of coal may come back but intensive ag is about it.
Iowa,Indiana,upper Missouri and so on.

We are killing it and at a rather rapid pace.
Good thing that ethanol is now just a dream.

Bad that we grow grains that are used to foist junk food on the masses and enable them to continue the dreams of endless dreams of paradise on earth thru gorging themselves and endless driving.

Airdale