How Agroforestry Could Help Revitalize America’s Corn Belt
How Agroforestry Could Help Revitalize America’s Corn Belt
By practicing agroforestry — growing trees alongside crops and livestock, for example — farmers can improve soils, produce nutrient-rich foods, and build resilience to climate change. Now, a movement is emerging to bring this approach to the depleted lands of the Corn Belt.
A few points I would like to make:
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Soil degradation of corn:soy systems is largely due to tillage. No till is better, but perhaps not as good as agroforestry
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Proponents of agroforestry often gloss over the changes required to actually practice it. Where a farmer can use large combines to harvest corn and soy relatively easily, he now has trees interrupting harvest, or its harder to harvest the diverse cropping systems (e.g., food bearing trees). While the benefits of argo forestry are real, so are the challenges.
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Soil C sequestration from these systems is most likely temporary, and net neutral, but will reduce input costs
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We need to switch away from beef - eat more chikn
Even better, don't eat chicken either. Chicken still takes up more land simply by requiring land to grow feed. Anything plant-based will be a better solution.
I don't know why you were downvoted; you are right. Plant based is the way to go, and I say this as your typical omnivorous white dude. Until we get more buy in from people (changing diets) and from corporations, it's unlikely to change, though.
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@ODGreen I work with some folks looking at sycamore on degraded lands. They say it works pretty well. But mostly if you're intending to burn it for electrical generation.
Large parts of the corn palt are prarie and should be grass as far as eye can see. Corn is a grass.
Corn has very shallow roots and aggressively pulls nitrogen out of the soil. Prairie plants are much more diverse than just grasses and many have very deep root networks extending down 6+ ft. Corn fields are nothing like a prairie habitat.
The area this article is talking about was oak savannah:
Within these oak savannas, which were interlaced with prairies, tree crowns covered between 10 percent and 30 percent of the ground. They were essentially a transition between the tight deciduous forests of the East and the fully open grasslands further west.