In the category of crimes against nature must be included the destruction of the Southern Plains ecosystem by boom and bust agriculture commonly known as the "Dust Bowl". US Person has often said that the profit motive is an inadequate basis on which to organize human society because it leads to such wasteful misallocations and wanton destruction of Earth's resources such as what occurred in the '20s and '30s in the south central United States. This 1936 government film, produced by the Farm Security Administration, eloquently tells the story--a "picturization"--of booming wheat prices, boosterism, bonanza farming, and inevitable bust resulting in a world-class ecological disaster:
The lessons of the Dust Bowl have not been completely assimilated by American agriculture to this day. Cash monocrops such as corn or soybean are still planted from fence line to fence line without varied crop rotation, tilling every planting season, and huge applications of expensive chemical fertilizers resulting in exhausted top soil that has lost most of its organic components and cannot hold groundwater well, contributing to erosion and greenhouse gas emissions. Some farmers like David Brandt of Carroll, Ohio are enlightened. He ought to get a medal for forty years of beneficial agricultural practices deemed odd by his conformist neighbors. (see, "Talk Dirt To Me",Mother Jones, September-October issue) Brandt uses no-till, winter cover crop farming methods that provide a weed-free bed for seeds but also distribute soil microbiota. Soils not repeatedly tilled do not release CO₂ from buried organic matter into the atmosphere but are enriched by conserved microbes and worms. Over time, a variety of cover crops allowed to decompose into the fields create a layer of carbon-rich humus that is resistant to drought and erosion, thus reducing the amount of artificial fertilizer needed to produce crops at the same yield and in some cases better yield than conventional agricultural practices. Brandt's crop yields remained steady during the 2012 drought while his neighbor's fell 50%. By the way, Brandt does not use crop insurance. The United States has not had another agricultural disaster on the scale of the Dust Bowl, but it has lost topsoil at an alarming rate. According to one university researcher 90% of US cropland is loosing topsoil faster than it can be replaced naturally; nature takes between 700 and 1500 years to create an inch of topsoil. Yes, America has been blessed with "amber waves of grain", but it will not last forever if we squander our abundance in pursuit of profit. Who says US can't talk dirt?