Conservation practices needed to protect Illinois farmers as topsoil loss increases, experts say
Topsoil is eroding, on average, at a rate of three-quarters of an inch per year in the Midwest, a rate double what the U.S. Department of Agriculture considers sustainable, according to a 2022 study published in the journal Earth's Future. The study also concluded more than 57 billion metric tons of topsoil have eroded in the Midwest over the last 160 years.
'Not to sound alarmist, but we rely and a lot of the world relies on the Midwest producing a lot of food,' said Evan Thaler, a geological researcher who helped author the study. 'Fertilizing crops can't keep up with the amount of productivity that's lost by erosion.'
Topsoil contains living microorganisms and decaying plant roots that are important for productive crop growth. Excessive topsoil erosion can lead to a decrease in soil fertility levels and a decline in potential crop yields.
No-till and reduced tillage farming, as well as cover crops, are among the best ways to counter topsoil erosion, experts say, especially as climate change has led to increased rainfall intensity. But under the Trump administration, federal support for these practices could be dramatically reduced.
Some experts, including Andrew Margenot, an associate professor of crop sciences at the University of Illinois, have expressed skepticism about the figures in the study, particularly as they relate to erosion rates in Illinois. But Margenot called topsoil erosion a 'silent killer' whose worst effects may not become apparent for decades.
Thaler said erosion rates aren't expected to be as severe in areas with flatter landscapes like much of Illinois.
'So it's not the whole landscape that's eroding quickly,' Thaler said of the Midwest. 'It's just portions of the landscape, but those portions of the landscape are eroding quite fast.'
Regardless, experts agreed that excessive topsoil loss is an issue that poses long-term risks for the Midwest and requires assistance for farmers looking to implement conservation farming practices.
'It (erosion) is a way that we destroy really what is the best resource we have in this state,' Margenot said. 'We have a lot of wind, a lot of coal, etc., but we also have the best soils in the world.'
Tillage clears crop residue from fields after harvesting and helps prepare the soil for seeding. The USDA notes that conventional tillage practices are most intensive on the soil and can increase the likelihood of erosion and nutrient runoff into waterways. In contrast, no-till and reduced tillage farming incorporate practices such as field mulching, crop rotation, as well as less-intensive tillage equipment.
'When they talk about 'conventional agricultural practices,' tillage is our No. 1 offender,' said Emily Hansen, a commercial agricultural educator with University of Illinois Extension.
The 2018 Farm Bill — an omnibus bill that includes federal funding for conservation programs — is set to expire in September after having twice been extended by Congress.
This reauthorization deadline comes after President Donald Trump immediately took steps to suspend funding under former President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act on his first day back in office. Billions of dollars earmarked under the act for farming conservation practices were frozen.
This funding freeze came at a time when the impacts of topsoil erosion are becoming more apparent in Illinois. High winds over recently tilled farm fields likely contributed to a massive dust storm in May, the first to affect the Chicago area in 40 years. In 2023, a dust storm in central Illinois caused 84 vehicles to crash on I-55, killing eight people and injuring at least 36.
Such incidents have helped to renew debates on agriculture's role in hazardous weather events and further discussions on the importance of topsoil conservation. Others emphasize that soil conservation is important for the long-term economic outlook of the U.S.
Cash crops, hidden costs'For decades, we have rightly focused on protecting our most vulnerable soils,' said Garrett Hawkins, president of the Illinois Corn Growers Association, in a statement. 'However, IL Corn encourages decision makers to think differently, to consider how programs can better protect our most productive soils.'
The association is a farmer-led organization that represents the interests of Illinois corn farmers in Washington, D.C., and Springfield.
'Conserving our most productive acres is essential if we want to stay competitive in global markets,' Hawkins said. 'Modernizing our approach to conservation and creating programs that empower farmers to protect their most valuable soils with flexible and scalable solutions is vital. If we fail to deliver effective programs, technical assistance, and meaningful funding to our farmers, soil health and soil erosion will continue to be a challenge.'
The association developed the Precision Conservation Management program, which collects data and helps farmers adopt conservation practices.
'What they've found over the last five years of data is that the most profitable fields in Illinois are doing no tillage with soybeans and one pass or less with corn,' Hansen said.
In most cases, she said, data has shown there isn't an economic or agricultural benefit for corn farmers to do more than one tillage pass over their fields.
According to data from the University of Illinois, 46% of soybean fields in Illinois had adopted no-till during the years of 2015 to 2017 but only 13% of cornfields. Illinois is the No. 1 producer of soybeans in the U.S. and the No. 2 producer of corn.
'Corn is a lot more challenging and that's where we see people doing those multiple tillage passes,' Hansen said. 'Corn, it needs good contact with the soil, so you do have to do some amount of tillage with it. But you know more than one pass is probably overdoing it a bit.'
Among the first to get involved with PCM was Dirk Rice, a corn and soybean farmer in Champaign County. Rice said the genesis of Precision Conservation Management was the desire to help address farmers' financial concerns when adopting conservation practices.
'If you want a farmer to shift away from a practice that he knows has worked for him for 20, 30 years, there's always a concern of 'How does that affect me, financially?'' Rice said.
'And so the idea was, let's look financially at how farmers are doing this practice compared to this practice, compared to this practice,' he said. 'And I think after a decade or more of data, what we're seeing is the people that are doing less tillage are at least as profitable.'
Rice, who said all of his soybean fields are no-till and over 80% of his corn fields are no-till or strip-till (a less intensive form of tillage), noted some difficulty in dealing with potential fungi that can grow in corn residue. He also said grain quality has declined in certain situations where he's no-tilled.
Despite such challenges, Rice said soil conservation has been a tradition in his family for generations through practices like crop rotation, and it's a tradition he intends to continue.
'I'm sitting on ground my great-great-grandfather moved (to) in 1881,' Rice said. 'It's real personal to me that I leave that better than it was when I got here. And I think every generation in our family has felt the same way.'
Rice added that fertilizer is a huge expense for his farm's operation and keeping soil nutrients in place helps with these costs and reduces runoff.
'Anything I can do to keep all my nutrients in place, that's how much less I got to turn around and buy next year or somewhere down the road. So that's a real no-brainer to me,' Rice said.
Along with no-till and reduced tillage, cover crops — plants grown when the main cash crop isn't planted — can help keep topsoil 'anchored in place' and mitigate erosion and nutrient loss, Hansen said. She said cover crops such as cereal rye, which has a similar root structure to native prairie grasses, can help prevent nutrient and fertilizer runoff into streams and rivers that ultimately lead into the Gulf of Mexico.
'Cover crops have multiple benefits. They're tackling that erosion problem, they're tackling the nutrient loss,' Hansen said. 'So I like telling farmers to plant cover crops, but easier said than done.'
Margenot noted that most farmland in Illinois is rented and not directly owned by the farmers who cultivate it, which can complicate efforts to plant cover crops.
Less than a fourth of Illinois farmland is owned by the farmer who works the land, according to data from the Illinois Farm Business Farm Management, a nonprofit association that helps farmers make management decisions.
'They're not farmed by the owner, and a lot of times the landlord just wants a check,' Margenot said. 'They don't have a patience for cover crops because that digs into the net profit.'
Margenot compared cover crops to adding another ball for a juggler and said they 'complicate the operation' for farmers. While great at reducing nitrate losses from fields, Margenot said, cover crops aren't 'that common in the Midwest,' especially in Illinois, because 'they don't really make you money.'
'When it comes to the bottom line, farms are businesses. They have mortgages to pay kids to send to college. Cover crops are not a great proposition,' Margenot said. 'I think they're great ecologically and I think that they, in the long term, probably have a positive ROI (return on investment) for the farm. But in the short term there's good evidence that cover crops aren't a great financial decision for a lot of operations.'
Margenot said a comprehensive Farm Bill needs to incentivize farmers and landowners to plant cover crops given the associated costs and complications to farm operations.
Thaler, the erosion study author, agreed.
'We need to be able to feed people,' he said. 'And unfortunately, if we don't start farming in a way that conserves our topsoil (and) really take approaches to allow farmers to experiment with conservation techniques, then I think we're going to be in some serious danger.'
Among federal programs included in the Farm Bill is the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which provides technical and financial assistance for farmers implementing conservation efforts.
Jonathan Coppess, director of the Gardner Agriculture Policy Program at the University of Illinois, worked on legislation for the 2008 and 2014 Farms Bills.
'What EQIP does is the farmer goes out and takes on a practice that will reduce soil erosion, like a grass waterway for example so you get a washout spot in a field,' Coppess said. 'So the farmer will go out and get that done, and then about 75% of the expected cost of that would be reimbursed, if you will, by USDA through this EQIP program.'
'There's a lot of uncertainty around' the upcoming Farm Bill, Coppess said. 'There was a significant amount of funding provided by Congress in the Inflation Reduction Act, about $18 billion over multiple years for programs like EQIP, and the (Trump) administration froze a lot of that.'
In April, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to take immediate steps to reinstate this funding, citing a lack of authority on the part of the Departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Interior and Agriculture, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency.
Coppess described the short-term impacts of this funding freeze as 'potentially catastrophic' for farmers who spent money on conservation initiatives and who had expected reimbursement funding, especially if they had taken out a loan.
'If the administration eliminated whatever's remaining of that (Inflation Reduction Act) money, which may be as much as $12 billion, then over the long term that is a reduction in the investment in conservation,' Coppess said. 'We're investing in practices that will keep soil in the field, and get it out of the waterways, not have dust storms on the roads, those sort of things.'
Coppess said 'every dollar that goes out the door' should have the priority focus of: 'Are we helping farmers deal with risk issues in farming that matter to the food supply?'
Coppess said such an approach would require recalibrating crop insurance, repurposing subsidy funds for conservation and refocusing conservation funds on risk-based priorities; something he said wouldn't be easy and is 'a little idealistic for what we've seen in Congress recently.'
Legislators need to focus more on how to address the long-term challenges faced by farmers, he said.
'Problem is that's not the conversation we're having,' Coppess said.
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