GrainsWest Fall 2018

Fall 2018 grainswest.com 27 ploughed up to 30 centimetres deep to improve water absorption, break up roots and recycle nutrients. Summer fallowing was also practiced to replenish moisture and nutrients. Winds, rain and drought did a number on the broken- up topsoil. In places, up to 13 centimetres of it blew away and crippled productivity. Contemporary studies show that up to 80 per cent of the organic matter in some chernozems disappeared in the first few decades of cultivation. “Tillage erosion” was also noted when soil was washed from hills and ridges into basins and wetlands. By 1926, 10,000 farms in Alberta were abandoned due to crop failure. Most of these occurred on solonetzic soils that responded poorly to drought. Allan Rowe is an historic places research officer for Alberta’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism and an historian of Alberta’s early immigration. Rowe noted that ethnic groups of immigrants settled in different patches of Alberta, which shaped the soil and farming practices. Americans were the most common immigrants in southern Alberta and they brought their dryland techniques with them. Central and northern Alberta were settled by a mix of Europeans and farmers fromOntario. Both groups sought a balance between subsistence farming and other tasks including the cutting of wood for sale as fuel and building material. For this reason, groups of immigrants were attracted to trees on the parkland, despite those fields being less fertile than the open prairie. Rowe explained that experienced farmers brought soil practices with them while new farmers relied more heavily on their kin, agricultural societies, newspapers and mobile government education programs to learn what worked and what didn’t. Alberta’s modern soils still preserve the legacy of early farming brought from Ukraine, Britain, Scotland, Scandinavia, Eastern Canada and the United States and we are still shaping our soils. Soil conservation in the 1980s led to the adoption of zero tillage and other practices that maintain fertility and maximize yield and these practices will be visible in our soils 100 years from now. Below the furrows of each field is a layered library of landscape change. Anderson said reading these soils reveals an elegant history. Sentiment aside, there is practical value in appreciating soil science and the history of soil formation. The footprints of early farming and modern land use will be dealt with for generations. “Every time we touch a landscape, we disturb it or take it apart,” said Leskiw. “We need to know how to put it back.” Graphic:ToddKristensen