Support the Timberjay by making a donation.
Someone once stated, “Life is what happens to you when you are making other plans.” Nothing could be truer for the farmers and ranchers of the southern U.S plains all through the …
This item is available in full to subscribers.
To continue reading, you will need to either log in to your subscriber account, below, or purchase a new subscription.
Please log in to continue |
Someone once stated, “Life is what happens to you when you are making other plans.” Nothing could be truer for the farmers and ranchers of the southern U.S plains all through the 1930s. The Great Dust Bowl days of those years were the result of a misunderstood ecology and misapplied agricultural practices on the Great Plains of North America.
At first, the plowbreak of plains sod resulted in bumper crops of wheat. Many feet of humus from hundreds of years of decaying grass residue provided rich soil, needing no fertilizer at first. Rains were abundant for years until suddenly they were not coming at all. The bare soil, subject to drying and the merciless prairie winds, caused dust storms to carry away topsoil.
Eventually, the rains came back to grow more wheat again, and government-sponsored soil conservation plans were adapted to great success. However, for a brief time in the 1950s, the dust storms returned. Then agriculture, spurred by new technology, took a leap and decided to tap the deep and vast Ogallala aquifer, which stretches from Nebraska to northern Texas. The “breadbasket” of America rose again. However, this aquifer used to be over one hundred feet thick (assumed to be water left from retreating glaciers), but we have used up half of it already. No one knows how many years the breadbasket has left.
For centuries, the ecology of the plains depended on a grassland (savanna) production of food for bison and other ungulates like elk, deer and antelope, along with other animal and bird life. Eventually, Native Americans, supposedly from crossing the land bridge from Asia, also obtained their food from the plants and animals of the plains. There was no “sod-busting” per se, except some tribes practiced low impact agriculture along the river bottoms by cultivating corn, beans and squash.
The book, “Braiding Sweetgrass,” explores the Native concept of accepting what the Creator gives without taking more than one needs, and also sharing abundance with others. To some, “sharing” might sound like “socialism.” but even the Amish, Hutterites and Mennonites (western agriculturalists) have practiced this.
Here in the Northland, treaties enabled the Natives to keep their fishing, hunting and gathering rights, but no mention was made of retaining their mineral and timber rights. Natives were cheated out of their land ownership, and their mineral and timber rights.
Industrial extraction methods are the dominant means of dealing with oil, timber and minerals. Timber is renewable, oil and taconite are not.
Whether it is the water in the Ogallala aquifer, taconite, oil, or any other irreplaceable resource, we need to research alternative methods and practice conservation of the resources we have.
Mark Roalson
Hoyt Lakes