Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations - Kootenay Local Agricultural Society

150
amount formed and that removed. After clearing, the rate of removal is
greatly increased, but the rate of formation remains the same.” 5 Already
more than three million acres of farmland had been ruined by erosion.
Another eight million acres were too degraded to farm profitably.
Reclamation of all but the most severely damaged farmland was possible,
and potentially even profitable, but it required new farming practices
and attitudes.
Many farmers when approached on the subject of erosion show interest
and agree that the loss is great. They will say, “Why, yes, some of my
fields are badly washed, but it doesn’t pay to try to do anything with
them.” They expect reclamation, if it is ever accomplished, to be undertaken
by the Government, and it is only with difficulty that they can be
induced to make an attempt at stopping the ravages of erosion. It has
been cheaper in the past to move to newer lands. 6
Soil loss occurred slowly enough that farmers saw the problem as someone
else’s concern. Besides, mechanization made it even easier to just plow
more land than to worry about soil loss. Machines were expensive and
needed to pay for themselves—dirt was cheap enough to ignore losing a
little here and there, or even everywhere.
The wide-open plains presented an ideal place for tractors. The first
locomotive-like tractors arrived around 1900. By 1917 hundreds of companies
were cranking out smaller, more practical models. Before abandoning
the market to agricultural specialists like International Harvester and John
Deere, Henry Ford invented a rear hitch that allowed tractors to pull
plows, disks, scrapers and other earth-moving equipment across farms.
Armed with these marvelous machines, a farmer could work far more land
than he had when trailing behind an ox or horse. He could also plow up
the pasture to plant more crops.
The cost of the new machines added up to more than many small farms
could afford. From 1910 to 1920 the value of farm implements on a typical
Kansas farm tripled. In the next decade costs tripled again as more farmers
bought more tractors, trucks, and combines. When prices for grain were
high, it was profitable to operate the machinery. When prices dropped, as
they did after the First World War, many farmers were saddled with
unmanageable debt. Farmers who stayed in business saw bigger machines
working more land as the way to a secure future. Just as the English land
enclosures of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had displaced poor
dust blow