From: jhurst@amb4.ccalmr.ogi.edu (James Hurst)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Topsoil as a commodity
Summary: Moving dirt is a well understood enterprise.
Date: 20 Nov 92 03:16:38 GMT
Article-I.D.: ogicse.46164
Organization: Sandy and Clay Clods

In article <JMC.92Nov16000246@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>Some time ago, in the newsgroup sci.environment, I suggested that
>farmers would be more motivated to take good care of their topsoil
>if it were a commodity.  Thus a farmer with deep topsoil could sell
>some to a farmer with inadequate topsoil.  

In principal, I agree John.  In practice, topsoil is a fairly low valued 
commodity.  Until the 50s, no good methods were available to estimate how
much topsoil was being lost.  At that point, USDA Ag Res. Service developed
the Universal Soil Loss Equation, a factor based empirical equation with
factors for slope length, soil erosion, climate, crop rotations, and 
conservation practices.  Used extensively by the extension service since
then, it and its children have given farmers a set of quantitative tools
to understand exactly how much soil is being lost.

IHOM, farmers nowadays are more likely to avoid soil loss to protect their
farm subsidies than to avoid soil loss.  But there are plenty of farmers 
who take soil loss very seriously and work to avoid it.

>The feasibility of this idea depends on the cost of moving topsoil.

Absolutely.  It happens I have a friend who is a principal in a firm that
sells, of all things, dirt.  We spent a long afternoon once discussing how
a company could actually make money selling something so cheap.  The upshot
is that transport costs totally dominate large orders, while packaging also
becomes important in small units.

>When I posted the idea some said it was ridiculous, 

To the contrary, it is an established part of our infrastructure.  Not 
much dirt is moved, because there is a glut of farmland, and it's cheaper
to buy the farm than to scrape it up and move it elsewhere.

>Relevant facts:

>Amount of topsoil: 1,000,000 pounds per acre - Encyclopedia Britannica
>article on soil.

>Cost of moving dirt: $1.00 to $1.50 per cubic yard - Caterpillar Performance
>Handbook.  This includes the digging, loading and unloading but refers
>to short distances.

Ahhh, Caterpillar.  The company that exists because America needs to move
dirt.

>Weight of dirt: 2500 lbs per cubic yard.

>Our million pounds is 400 cubic yards, 500 when swelling is taken into
>account.  Therefore, it costs $750 per acre to move it short distances.

[analysis deleted]

>This tells us that the limit of profitability is about 20 miles.

Interesting.  Thank you, John, for a nice analysis.

>I suppose there is a fair amount of eroded upland within 20 miles
>of river valleys with deep topsoil.

I was recently tooling around the Columbia Plateau in eastern Washington.
There were large pockets of loess soil, which is wind deposited fine
topsoil, in some areas.  In the roadcuts, you could see the loess went
down 30 feet or more.  Wherever there were loess soils, the land was in
wheat or grains.  The other major soiltype was a thin and poorly developed 
clay (?) over basalt, used only for rangeland.  After thinking about it, you 
could tell the soil type from several miles away by the human use of it.

Those loess soils could cover a LOT of that basalt, if spread out thinner.
But wheat is already a surplus crop, so there is no economic incentive to
create new grain lands.

>Still the differential in price of land
>with good and bad topsoil will have to get somewhat larger, before it
>will be profitable to dig up the Mississipi delta, which largely consists
>of topsoil washed down the river and barge it back up the river.

True.  There is actually a glut of good farmland on the world market now,
and many rural parts of the US midwest are slowly depopulating as a result.
(There are lots of other factors, cultural, energy prices, and so on of course.)
But the Ukraine and Soviet Georgia becoming available for western style
agribusiness well send shock waves through grain markets for several years. 

It seems unlikely that moving topsoil on a massive scale will be economic
in the near future, but it's done on a small scale routinely, and will 
continue.

					Cheers,

					Jim