Though well-intentioned, government efforts to solve the problem of dysfunctional soil have not resulted in major gains; the answer is farmer-led education
Since its inception, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), formerly the Soil Erosion Service and Soil Conservation Service (SCS), has pursued a goal of protecting soil and water resources from degradation. However, as a former career employee of NRCS, I often questioned this goal.
Over the years, NRCS has been fairly effective in its efforts to reduce soil erosion. But therein lies the predicament: I felt that the agency having a focus on controlling erosion left the question unanswered of why soil continued to erode. I believed that soil leaving the field was never the problem — it was a symptom of the fact that we really didn’t understand why it was happening. I received a great deal of training about how to calculate how much erosion would occur in a given scenario, but that did not answer the question of why.
But as I began to understand how the soil functioned as a biological system, it became apparent to me that soil was leaving the field because those soils had been degraded to the point where they could no longer function to protect themselves from erosion.
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