The Midwest has lost 57 billion metric tons of topsoil over the last 160 years, new study finds

Farmers till their land to prepare soil for planting, but a new study published in the journal “Earth’s Future” found topsoil in the Midwest is eroding on average nearly 2 millimeters per year.
A few years ago, Isaac Larsen attended a wedding at a pioneer church in Minnesota. After the ceremony, he wandered around a cemetery by the church.

He noticed the cemetery, which had never been tilled, was at least a foot higher than a corn field just on the other side of a fence.

“That was one of those ‘lightbulb’ moments that told me that a lot of soil had been eroded from that field since the founding of the church,” Larsen said.