Chapter 2: Soil Conservation

When it comes to agriculture, soil is an important factor to what you can and can’t grow in certain areas. Along with this, taking proper care of soil is also important. “Soil erosion and sediment fluxes analysis: a watershed study of the Ni Reservoir, Spotsylvania County, VA, USA” examines the effects of soil erosion and how it can impact agricultural land. From these we learn that soil erosion accounts for a loss of 0.82 Mg of soil per year with the bank in this certain study losing between 4.7-11.3 cm of soil per year. (Pope & Odhiambo 1719). Not only is soil eroding at a fast rate, it is also being polluted.

With the increase in factories and production, there is also an increase in factory waste and chemical waste. With this comes the dumping of these waste products. ExxonMobil has admitting to processing and dumping 365,000 barrels of crude oil every single day (Lerner 52). This then seeps into the soil and the chemicals in turn get into the crops that are growing in the ground. Along with dumping, the burning of hazardous materials such as chemicals and explosives seeps into the ground, mutating crops (Lerner 52). The crops in these areas then become unsafe for production and consumption, which results in loss of crops and revenue.

A way to combat these issues is to implement soil conservation land tracts. These require farms to comply with the conservations policies set in place. In Kentucky, there are about 1,200 individual checks on land to see if the farms were complying with government policies (Haire 15). This is a simple solution to a big problem. Another solution is to change the crops themselves to become more tolerant to the changing soil environment. An example of this is the salt tolerant tomato. Over irrigation can cause the land to become salty over the years, resulting in crops to no longer tolerant the growing conditions (Ferber). Genetic engineering has allowed for researchers to produce a tomato that can now grow in these soils. With further research and cross breeding, more crops can be engineered to become more tolerant to these new salt contents.