The Ragtag Daily Prompt this morning is GOODBYE/HELLO
And Sammi has published another Weekend Writing Prompt
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Carnivores, goodbye!
No more inefficient beef.
Hello, veggies and grain to feed the world!
So they ploughed the pastures,
even the marginal lands.
And the winds came…
and the land blew…
My response springs from a discussion I had with Mr Bump earlier in the week about using land for grain and vegetable production rather than pasture. This 31-word tale describes what happened here on the prairies when the settlers came. The “Dirty Thirties” taught us that some land just can’t be cultivated.
Christine's Collection 
A great little piece there Christine. I live in the country in the UK. I watch the farmers rotate their fields between different crops and fallow years for grazing a like. Its all down to ground quality as to what can be grown or grazed interesting really.
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Yes, ground quality and rainfall. We may have the quality, but this would be a desert for lack of rain if farmers hadn’t wised up about how to work the land — and how not to. Thanks for your comment. 🙂
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No kidding. This is the issue in places like the Amazon. They dont know how to work the land so they just keep annihilating the forest to find fertile soil.
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While I agree with you, we can’t really point fingers at them for doing what we have already done — and it made us rich. They want to become as prosperous as what we’ve become by turning our forests and native grassland into farmland.
I don’t know just what the solution is — and I hate to see the rain forest destroyed — but if we say, “You should be willing to stay poor to preserve the environment,” they may say, “Stop your endless urban sprawl and replant your own forests.”
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Indeed, every county is doing its bit to turn Earth into a Mars like planet. We’re all doomed and theres nothing we can do about it sadly.
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I think there’s something we can do, each and together, but we need to maintain a charitable approach so as not to antagonize those we must work with. And the Earth has proven itself amazing at regeneration. A look at London England will tell us how much can be accomplished.
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Agreed, Everybody must come together or it’ll never work.
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31 amazing words. I live on the plains as well, and I still amaze at the dust that flies everywhere, even in a more suburban environment like Bismarck — it was never like this in Detroit. But as much as I love meat, if all the cattle disappeared overnight it really wouldn’t break my heart; I’d rather leave the Earth knowing it’s sustainable.
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Thanks for your comment. I would feel the same; I enjoy red meat but could easily live without it. However, if all the cattle disappeared the pasture land would just grow long grass. It wouldn’t be good for cultivation. Whether that would make the earth more sustainable I don’t know. Maybe someone will invent a way to make pasture grass taste like sausage. 😉
There’s always irrigation, but in Kansas farmers are drawing water out of deep underground reservoirs to irrigate their dry lands — and some environmental folks are complaining about the danger of depletion. There’s so much we don’t understand about all the interconnection nature’s got going. History shows us that when man sets out to fix things, he often makes another mess because someone failed to factor in the xxx.
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Here in the south of England land rotation is the norm, but we don’t get extremes in weather conditions as some places on the planet do … yet.
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Farmers do rotate crops here, and they used to do land rotation here in the sense of leaving some land in summer-fallow every year — mainly to control weeds. But nowadays there’s no plowing, no land left open to the winds. To conserve soil moisture, farmers seed directly into last year’s stubble.
Needless to say, this takes weed chemicals. A lot of Round-up-ready Canola is grown here on the prairies. — except I’ve heard Round up is kaput now. Agricultural chemical use is a whole ‘nother subject. 😉
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You said a lot in a few words! Depleting ground water is a cause of worry in a lot of places.
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Thank you. It sure is right here. This is dry land and the soil is classed on SK soil maps as “dune sand.” It really blew in the Thirties — now a lot is back to pasture again.
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Well done, Christine.
I just couldn’t get mine to work.
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Thanks for reading and for your comment. The word MARGINAL can go different ways, but only when I thought of land did something surface. And then to squeeze. 😉
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It can. And probably why I’m so stuck. I hate doing the obvious though, whilst taking my shower, an idea did come to me so I just may play after all!
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