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Originally Posted by jimjamuser
I wouldn't call it deforestation, per se. More like wall-to-wall or field-to-field crops. And even crops right up to the highway. I was in Nebraska in the 1960s and there was a Federal program called Soil Bank which was designed to prevent the topsoil from blowing away as it did around 1929 partly causing the Great Depression. The Soil Bank idea was for the farmer to basically leave the harder-to-till parts of their land untouched like in gullies and near the roads. This allowed these parts of the farmer's land to remain in trees and heavy brush and thus hold the topsoil - it made for great areas for wildlife. The farmers got PAID to NOT plant these rough areas under the Soil Bank plan.
Nebraska in the 60s had large numbers of both whitetail and mule deer populations. it was not unusual to see as many as 20 or 30 pheasants crossing a highway back then. Today that has all changed. At some point, the Soil Bank was eliminated because people began to care less about the environment as factory farming took over and profits were the driving factor. The pheasant population dropped due to less bush cover and possibly the over-fertilization was bad for their eggs.
Incidentally, Nebraska has plenty of trees. It and Kansas are not all grasslands.
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You might want take google earth trip across Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and many more. Only the area they can’t bulldozer has forest. I grew up in NW Missouri. There little timber left except along Missouri River loom hills where they haven’t figure out financially how to flatten plant row crops yet. wait couple more generations and even they will be gone.
The only areas along rivers are Boggs or swap where they can’t drain. IMO any tributary that flows water should of had 50 yard path on each bank to prevent erosion and habit for wild life. The program that allows land to go unplowed part of farm subsidies programs. Under farm subsidies they can also get paid planting or not. Some Hugh farms can draw close to million dollars in just subsidies. Couple farms out in western Kansas made news over years for amount of money they got from farm subsidies. But, with any federal government programs there waste and fraud.
As kid use to here pheasant and quail all time, now there about as rare as dodo bird IMO in area I grew up in
