T-storm Erosion

SUMMARY:  Although most chem fallow fields had some visible erosion, some did not, including one field that experience 2.6 inches in one burst.  All of the conventional fallowed fields showed extensive damage which included combination of sheet, rill, and gulley erosion. Erosion was inverse to the amount of residue and  how fine the field was worked.  A few fields were just gutted.

More Detail:
This spring/summer we have had a number of thunderstorms that resulted in spotty downpours which has caused significant erosion in conventionally tilled fallow, and some fields in spring crop that were prepared with tillage.  Monday evening a wide band of damage was done all along the northern boundary of Whitman County from an intense thunderstorm moving from east to west. We received word that our Thornton operation received 2.6 inches of rain and all fallow ground, whether chemical fallow or conventional tilled fallow in the area was gutted.  This morning we did a drive by to assess the damage in the area and found that all the chem fallow held up well, and our fields didn't look as if they had any water move across them.  The chem fallow fields that had poor areas from past erosion did have visible erosion.  Those areas though, mostly filtered out and stopped when it encountered areas with residue.  That's not the story with cultivated fallow fields.  All of them received heavy damage, first through sheet erosion, followed by extensive rilling, and that followed by ditching.  I'm sure that many of those fields, if not all, had been fertilized, so a lot of fertilizer went down the creek along with the soil and water.  The county road crews are going to be busy, and a lot of taxpayer money will go to clean and repair the roads associated with those fields. The cost has got to be staggering when you factor in: current fertilizer loss, lost future productivity from the soil that once resided in those fields, and the cost of clean up. One operation I observed got hammered Sat. evening with damage along a quarter mile of public road.  Although they had recently cultivated that field and there wasn't any weeds, by Monday, they felt compelled to re-cultivate, and they got nailed again Monday evening.  Some people follow bad decisions with more bad decisions, and the ground pays the price.  The irritating thing about this is that if you approach them, they will explain it away as "nothing you can do with that much water coming that fast" -- and that is just bullshit!  With modern farming techniques, all the soil, and most of the water can be held in place and not lost from the field, but it requires a willingness to change farming practices.   For twenty six years (1980-2006) these water events, either summer or winter, were extremely rare.  For the last six years, (2006-2012), these events are becoming more frequent, more intense and more wide spread.  It may not happen every year but I'm guessing that the trend will continue.  My farming career was mostly during drought conditions.  My Son may have to survive in an environment with more extremes.   I haven't taken any pics yet, and don't know if I will.  It's getting boring -- same farmers, same fields year after year.  The NRCS has 75 years of pics of eroded fields. One looks just like another.  I wonder if there is another business in the US that still exists using the same practices they started with over a hundred years ago---- besides farming????
         Tomorrow I will do a walk around.  I may update this post if I find it different than expressed here.

      ------- 7/19/12 update: this morning I did walk the fields and took a few pics.  I was happy to see that our fallow field didn't look as if it had any especially hard rain; although the neighboring fields showed quite a pounding.  We surely lost some water; however, the residue didn't show dirt deposited on it.  Even the "new" chem fallow fields in the area did well.  Some severely eroded areas where there was no residue had some spiderwebbing.  You could see the streaks of dirt where it entered areas with residue and soon stopped.  Looking at the cultivated fallow fields, many areas appeared to have lost 5-10% of their surface to a depth of 3-6".  That translates to many tons (50+) per acre.  Many years of productive life left those fields.  An example is the pic above.  Recent deep cultivation, done vertically, compounded the destruction.  This pic shows one of the flaws with this old conservation practice of divided slope farming.  The crop filtered out a lot of dirt heading for the drainage ditch; however the cultivated top was hammered.  In the 70-80's this would have been a successful practice but it isn't today.  Although it shows potential water quality improvement, the sustainability of the productive capacity of the field is diminished.  Technology and practices have improved and we don't have to settle for "some success" as demonstrated above.

Above is our operations chem fallow field near the eroded field above.  Even though we drill vertically with a hoe type opener, I didn't find signs of water or dirt movement.  This is not a good practice to rely on for the future.  We could get a bigger event that may do damage.  We are replacing our hoe opener with a single disc (minimum disturbance) type opener this fall.  That should give us a higher level of protection from these weather events.