• randon31415@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Are you sure you aren’t thinking of crop rotation? Have 4 fields, have one fallow every 4 years to recharge the soil. Keep farming without doing so causes the topsoil to blow and that caused the great dustbowl which preceded the great depression.

      • MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net
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        3 months ago

        It boggles my mind how little people are aware of this kind of practice. The Who even wrote a “joke” song about it in the 70s:

        https://youtu.be/_VkVn0A7E6o

        Well, I farmed for a year and grew a crop of corn 
        That stretched as far as the eye can see 
        That’s a whole lot of cornflakes 
        Near enough to feed New York till 1973

        Cultivation is my station and the nation 
        Buys my corn from me immediately 
        And holding sixty thousand bucks, I watch as dumper trucks 
        Tip New York’s corn flakes in the sea

        ~~

        Well, my pick and spade are rusty
        Because I’m paid on trust 
        To leave my square of cornfield bare

      • randon31415@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Probably to keep from ripping up the top soil during the harvest. Kind of counterintuitive to use less farmland and to produce less when the price is high, but same thing works with oil fields - you get more the slower you pump.

          • randon31415@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Oh, I thought you were talking about not harvesting the corn once it was ready.

            federal government literally paid farmers to not harvest crops

            If it was already harvested and then left to rot, that was market manipulation of some sort. Maybe Grangers and breaking the rail monopolies? Though I think they did the whole “left harvested food to rot” bit in the late 1800s, not early 1900s