Wind Erosion And Nutrient Loss: How Much Soil Is Moving And What Could That Cost Farmers?

May 13, 2022

By Mehmet Ozturk

Two ongoing studies are measuring how much soil is being blown across different fields, and how much nutrients lost with wind erosion might cost farmers.

Wind erosion

Sometimes you can see the soil leave your field, washing into the ditches with a spring rain or blowing across the roads and getting through the windows of houses. Other times it’s more subtle and slow. Most hilly fields have knobs with lighter soil due to long-term wind, water, and tillage erosion. Aside from on-farm nutrient losses, wind-eroded sediment can cause traffic accidents, increase respiratory problems, and change how water moves on the landscape. When snowpacks mix with dust, they absorb more sunlight and melt earlier.

Technically, wind erosion is defined as the transportation of soil particles from one location to another, and it easily occurs where soil is bare, loose, and dry. It is difficult to measure where soil comes from and where it’s deposited. Many different factors, such as soil moisture, organic matter, aggregate stability, topography, surface cover, and so on cause wind erosion to behave erratically from one field to the next, and even across a single field.

sand
Depending on the particle size (sand, silt, or clay), wind speed and power, transportation of the particles changes as soil rises from ground level to atmospheric levels. Small soil particles removed from the soil surface by wind can travel hundreds of miles. For instance, every year the dust removed from the Sahara Desert in north Africa travels more than 6,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean and reaches the United States. Long-distance transportation of dust is estimated using models, but ground level measurements of wind erosion are required to build and test the models.

Measurement methods

Dust samplers or traps such as Big Spring Number Eight (BSNE) and Modified Wilson and Cooke (WMAC) catch sediment blown by wind, with masts placed at different heights to get a sense of the vertical distribution of windblown sediment. Mesh mats placed on the ground estimate sediment movement by wind or water across the soil surface. Both mats and dust samplers measure movement of sediment in a given environment, but can’t confirm loss of sediment. Edge of field monitoring can capture runoff which actually leaves the farm field (although some of it could have been displaced from other locations). Sampling in ditches also provides an estimate of loss, but can’t confirm the origin of sediment.

wind erosion

Two ongoing research projects

Project One: In 2021, we began looking at spring sediment movement in Murray County in southwest Minnesota. A corn/soybean farmer received a Minnesota Department of Agriculture grant to evaluate different tillage methods for yield, economics, and erosion. We used the erosion mats to measure sediment moving along the surface of the field between corn planting and the first herbicide application. The treatments (strip-till vs field cultivation) were applied in 60-foot replicated strips, and five mats were used in each of three locations across the field. Our first year of data showed more sediment was moving in the field-cultivated strips, with significant levels of nutrients in the moving sediment.

	Strip-till	Field-cultivated
Sediment movement (lbs/acre)	449 (±328)	1074 (±1148)
Nitrate (mg/kg)*	51.59	51.59
Phosphorus (mg/kg)*	36.2	36.2
Potassium (mg/kg)*	182.4	182.4

Project Two: Over the 2020-2021 winter, wind-blown sediment was collected in small boxes (BSNE samplers) mounted at one foot above the ground. We placed two collectors in each of four 40-acre fields in Walsh County in northeast North Dakota, a conservation demonstration funded by General Mills. The fields differed in tillage treatments (tilled vs no-till) and crop rotations (following edible bean vs following wheat). In this case, tillage had no effect on the amount of sediment moving, but the previous crop had a huge effect. Edible bean leaves minimal residue on the ground, and much more sediment moved in those fields. If you extrapolate the measured sediment along a one-mile section of road, one foot off the ground, we estimate that up to 160 pounds of sediment per day per mile could move in these systems. Again, the sediment blowing is high in nutrients and organic matter. If all that nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) left the field between November and April, that sediment was worth up to $40 (December 2021 prices: $0.951/lb N, $0.918/lb P, $0.665/lb K).

table

	Edible beans	Wheat
Organic matter	5.2%	6.9%
Total nitrogen	0.23%	0.29%
Phosphorus (mg/kg)*	28.5	31.5
Potassium (mg/kg)	500	351
Nutrient value (blowing along a mile 1-ft high, Nov-Apr)	$40	$8

*Phosphorus was measured using the Bray method.

Overall, these preliminary data indicates that management makes a difference: leaving residue on a field or planting cover crops, and less aggressive tillage, can slow down soil movement, which keeps more nutrients in place for the following crop.

One thing we know from edge-of-field monitoring, by the Discovery Farms Programs in Minnesota and Wisconsin and the Root River Field to Stream Partnership in southeast Minnesota, is that erosion is flashy — a few events can have a big impact on total soil movement. So, these preliminary data shouldn’t be taken as average statewide values. We’ll continue collecting data at these sites, and add more robust wind erosion data on sugarbeet fields, which are particularly vulnerable to winter erosion due to low residue cover and intensive tillage after beet harvest. We’ll use the BSNE masts to measure sediment movement at different heights, comparing fields with a cover crop seeded after beet harvest to those with no cover crop. Cover crops have just a short time to grow after beet harvest, so we’ll see if they provide enough residue cover to slow loss of sediment and nutrients.

Source : umn.edu

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”