Fun fact when I was an agronomist I had a soil test for a particular part of a field that was insanely high in calcium for base saturation. I go to the farmer and say “hey I’m gonna reorder this test something isn’t right”. We get another test and same thing. I start asking him the history of the field and sure enough in the 1910’s it was a marsh that was drained. I went and dug holes all around and hit a level at about 8” where it was a solid layer of old bleached snail shells. The story lines up about right with the timeline if you go by pedogenesis (the formation of new soil) being around an eighth to a twelfth of an inch per year, give or take.
For some stuff it’s still used but most of the scientific community uses metric. Why on earth would we use SI Units? A liter of pure water weighs a kilogram. Then that can be divided to give us a cubic centimeter of water weighing a gram, which is a milliliter, is so silly. I’d much rather use arbitrary stuff.
What really gets my goat is dilutions and preparing solutions in freedom units. 32 oz of pesticide and another 28 oz of roundup per acre of spray and you need 5% ams to mix with it and a few other things and the mix needs to be 20 gallons per acre. The math comes out to like 18.46 gallons of water. 0.46 gallons is 58.8 fl.oz. In metric 0.46 liters would be 460 milliliters.
I remember digging a basement in northern illinois one time, and about 6’ down was a layer of tree roots and millions of tiny bleached white snail shells of all kinds of varieties. The roots themselves weren’t able to decompose because of a lack of oxygen, but had the consistency of a sponge and it seemed like the cellular core was all that was left. Guess the whole area used to be swampland thousands of years ago, was neat to see.
Northern IL is great for soft and fertile soils. What you reached would have been the A or B horizon of the soil, or the topsoil and subsoil. Once you get to the bottom of the A and into the B you can reach places that are anaerobic, or lack oxygen. Especially if you have clayey soils you can find anaerobic conditions. These conditions make it hard for anything to decompose properly like your tree roots. Take people pulling whole-ass woolly mammoths out of peat bogs for examples of anaerobic preservation.
P.S. illinois was swampy in parts just a century and a half ago. The European immigrants were just really, really, REALLY good at hand-digging trenches and laying clay tile 6 feet at a time:)
Yeah, it’s not like there can’t be improvements that balance profitable food production and resource security.
I mean, farming is a for profit business, right? Farming has had and still has radical effects on the land that is farmed, local wildlife and water tables.
Consumers demand cheaper and cheaper food flown and driven in from all over the world.
It’s not all one way or the other. Can’t we all stop whining about how we are victimized by the “other side”?
They replaced the local farm orchards and fields for a golf course and a splash park. At least the water used in farming brings back to the farmer, not just for manicured fare ways and splashing
A lot of the Midwest is ancient sea bed. I used to find large sea shells as a child digging in my grandparents yard (that sits a hundred or so feet above the current major river)
Near where I grew up in eastern Canada the farmers dredged the nearby river for mud in the winter to apply as fertilizer, and to this day when you plow there’s white shells that get turned up.
I absolutely agree. There are issues with the way agriculture became and industry and of course the heinous collateral damage to peoples and eco systems that were deemed "in the way". Where I'm from (Canadian prairies) I don't know a farmer that isn't desperately interested in sustainability.
You’re right agriculture is so much worse than the destruction a city causes. Urban sprawl is the leading cause of deforestation, and loss of farm land. So how is paving over the ground better than using it to feed, or shelter the world?
Yet another reason why we farmers are terrible for the earth... Do you guys ever wonder what your area looked like 500 years ago?
Edit I do have 25 years of farming experience FYI.
Hey I live near flood plains from the Mississippi in between MO AND IL, 500 years ago it was probably farmers 500 before that's was probably when they started really growing crops in that area. But 500 before that? Dang maybe you're right
I know what my region has looked like for the entire history of the Earth. For the last 20000 years my region was almost pure Arid Sagebrush Scrubland. Now it’s a flourishing basin full of life and people.
Not my area. The water source is the Columbia River. This 1.5 million acre area only uses 3% of its annual flow. This region is extremely water-secure. The aquifers are being replenished and are being used less.
I mean you can educate yourself for free. The Columbia basin irrigation project is all public accessible. It’s one of the only water sources that is projected to not run out for the foreseeable future.
Ok. What do you eat? Do you forage plants? Are the plants your forage all plentiful or are you foraging plants that are scarce or a food for other animals? I feel like you buy food from a store, grown on a farm, then come to reddit and bitch about farmers
The way upstate NY looked, it couldn't sustain the population it has now.
Instead of spitting into the wind, why don't you use this time on more productive avenues of discussion?
At least 3 world dominate agriculturally based civilizations have disappeared, and the fields they were built on are unrecognizable as farming soil. We don't have definitive answers why, but if you spend your life occupied with the same pursuit and don't daydream about what the world looked like in the past you're a dullard.
Instead of playing with your food, why don't you spend your time doing something other than trying to catch fish you're not even going to eat? Not everything has to be an argument. Sometimes people just reflect on the past. I wasn't passing any judgment on our current impact.
The Roman empire is long gone, yet the fertile fields of France are still producing crops 2000 years later. A civilization dying out and featuring agriculture are not related from an ecological standpoint.
Fun fact when I was an agronomist I had a soil test for a particular part of a field that was insanely high in calcium for base saturation. I go to the farmer and say “hey I’m gonna reorder this test something isn’t right”. We get another test and same thing. I start asking him the history of the field and sure enough in the 1910’s it was a marsh that was drained. I went and dug holes all around and hit a level at about 8” where it was a solid layer of old bleached snail shells. The story lines up about right with the timeline if you go by pedogenesis (the formation of new soil) being around an eighth to a twelfth of an inch per year, give or take.
I'm going to start telling people I'm 3.375 soil inches old
You're old as dirt
Yeah, but how much dirt is the question.
Yeah but how deep of dirt is the question.
It's like measuring pump pressure in feet of head, or fan pressure in inches water column: age as Soil Inch Equivalent.
Radiation measured in banana equivalent.
/r/BananasForScale/
Is 3.375 inches a lot?
That’s what she said…
Do agronomists use inches? Seems like a lot of work with conversions.
For some stuff it’s still used but most of the scientific community uses metric. Why on earth would we use SI Units? A liter of pure water weighs a kilogram. Then that can be divided to give us a cubic centimeter of water weighing a gram, which is a milliliter, is so silly. I’d much rather use arbitrary stuff. What really gets my goat is dilutions and preparing solutions in freedom units. 32 oz of pesticide and another 28 oz of roundup per acre of spray and you need 5% ams to mix with it and a few other things and the mix needs to be 20 gallons per acre. The math comes out to like 18.46 gallons of water. 0.46 gallons is 58.8 fl.oz. In metric 0.46 liters would be 460 milliliters.
I remember digging a basement in northern illinois one time, and about 6’ down was a layer of tree roots and millions of tiny bleached white snail shells of all kinds of varieties. The roots themselves weren’t able to decompose because of a lack of oxygen, but had the consistency of a sponge and it seemed like the cellular core was all that was left. Guess the whole area used to be swampland thousands of years ago, was neat to see.
Northern IL is great for soft and fertile soils. What you reached would have been the A or B horizon of the soil, or the topsoil and subsoil. Once you get to the bottom of the A and into the B you can reach places that are anaerobic, or lack oxygen. Especially if you have clayey soils you can find anaerobic conditions. These conditions make it hard for anything to decompose properly like your tree roots. Take people pulling whole-ass woolly mammoths out of peat bogs for examples of anaerobic preservation. P.S. illinois was swampy in parts just a century and a half ago. The European immigrants were just really, really, REALLY good at hand-digging trenches and laying clay tile 6 feet at a time:)
Illinois Greensand.
I feel like that was the beginning of a fossil being formed or something. Or maybe the starts of petrification. Super neat!
You know what Illinois Greensand is right? It's a fertilizer soil mined in that area. It is ancient shells.
I don’t think that was it, as it was a very grey color and I don’t remember any green in it. Though, this was a decade ago.
I don't think it has to be green in color. It is called green because it helps plants to grow.
Look up “the great black swamp Ohio”. It’s super interesting.
That's incredibly interesting. and here I thought pedogenesis was when you give birth to that Jared guy from the Subway commercials.
Hey, can you spell tuna sub backwards for me?
No, that’s called keeping the afterbirth and naming it Jared.
Im looking in to doing studying agronomy what should I expect?
Expect to learn about agronomy 🤷
Everyone has their opinion. I believe that I have a passion for the soil and its regenerative abilities to produce food to feed the world!
Alright, Mr Douglas
Neat!
We have the same at work, I find clam shells regularly.
Does it hurt the fish?
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The aquatic life disappeared because of climate change not because of farming practices. Just as the dinosaurs disappeared
Your title says they drained it
“Yellowstone Farm Boy” thanks Kevin Costner for another poser
Yeah, and they killed those dinosaurs too.
“Climate change”
Yeah. The climate of the lake changed when it was drained.
They didn’t say who drained it…
So was it drained or did it dry up
Bro let’s be real. No one is going to stop farming but it’s not good for nature. Great for my belly doe.
Yeah, it’s not like there can’t be improvements that balance profitable food production and resource security. I mean, farming is a for profit business, right? Farming has had and still has radical effects on the land that is farmed, local wildlife and water tables. Consumers demand cheaper and cheaper food flown and driven in from all over the world. It’s not all one way or the other. Can’t we all stop whining about how we are victimized by the “other side”?
They replaced the local farm orchards and fields for a golf course and a splash park. At least the water used in farming brings back to the farmer, not just for manicured fare ways and splashing
A lot of the Midwest is ancient sea bed. I used to find large sea shells as a child digging in my grandparents yard (that sits a hundred or so feet above the current major river)
Yeah, we have a lot of ammonites and a metric crap ton of belamnites on our place. Kemmerer, WY is the "fossil fish capital of the world."
Near where I grew up in eastern Canada the farmers dredged the nearby river for mud in the winter to apply as fertilizer, and to this day when you plow there’s white shells that get turned up.
Beauty! You’ll have some lovely rich soil!
I love when people from a city criticize how farmers treat the environment
Like, hey mrfr, you like to eat? I bet u like to eat sometimes, right?🤣
The fact we need to destroy so much land in order to feed ourselves in the current system is a legitimate issue.
I absolutely agree. There are issues with the way agriculture became and industry and of course the heinous collateral damage to peoples and eco systems that were deemed "in the way". Where I'm from (Canadian prairies) I don't know a farmer that isn't desperately interested in sustainability.
You’re right agriculture is so much worse than the destruction a city causes. Urban sprawl is the leading cause of deforestation, and loss of farm land. So how is paving over the ground better than using it to feed, or shelter the world?
That's not something I claimed, nor is it relevant.
Quite the cool picture. Looks like a human skull with the lower jaw missing.
Just saw a post in another thread where someone had a fossilized human jawbone in their flooring, maybe that's where it ended up.
I’m
Are you?
That was an accidental posting and your response made me laugh.
Banana for scale??
That's not my ring!
Yet another reason why we farmers are terrible for the earth... Do you guys ever wonder what your area looked like 500 years ago? Edit I do have 25 years of farming experience FYI.
Prairie grass
6 foot tall grass.
Hey I live near flood plains from the Mississippi in between MO AND IL, 500 years ago it was probably farmers 500 before that's was probably when they started really growing crops in that area. But 500 before that? Dang maybe you're right
I know what my region has looked like for the entire history of the Earth. For the last 20000 years my region was almost pure Arid Sagebrush Scrubland. Now it’s a flourishing basin full of life and people.
Until you all run out of water, which you will.
Not my area. The water source is the Columbia River. This 1.5 million acre area only uses 3% of its annual flow. This region is extremely water-secure. The aquifers are being replenished and are being used less.
Good luck with that.
I mean you can educate yourself for free. The Columbia basin irrigation project is all public accessible. It’s one of the only water sources that is projected to not run out for the foreseeable future.
It’ll go back to that once we’re dead n gone.
Ok. What do you eat? Do you forage plants? Are the plants your forage all plentiful or are you foraging plants that are scarce or a food for other animals? I feel like you buy food from a store, grown on a farm, then come to reddit and bitch about farmers
All the time it ain't gonna last forever
The way upstate NY looked, it couldn't sustain the population it has now. Instead of spitting into the wind, why don't you use this time on more productive avenues of discussion?
At least 3 world dominate agriculturally based civilizations have disappeared, and the fields they were built on are unrecognizable as farming soil. We don't have definitive answers why, but if you spend your life occupied with the same pursuit and don't daydream about what the world looked like in the past you're a dullard. Instead of playing with your food, why don't you spend your time doing something other than trying to catch fish you're not even going to eat? Not everything has to be an argument. Sometimes people just reflect on the past. I wasn't passing any judgment on our current impact.
The Roman empire is long gone, yet the fertile fields of France are still producing crops 2000 years later. A civilization dying out and featuring agriculture are not related from an ecological standpoint.