Generations of future crop productivity blowing in the wind

By Angie Peltier and Liz Stahl, crops educators, Jodi DeJong-Hughes, water quality educator and Gary Wyatt, natural resources educator, UMN Extension 

 

Throughout much of western Minnesota on May 12, 14 and 15, 2026, dry soils recently disturbed by spring tillage and other field operations combined with sustained 25 to 35 mph winds -gusting as high as 55 mph- led to a staggering loss of topsoil. 

 

One video taken by SWCD staff in western Polk County, MN, illustrates that topsoil loss from Red River Valley fields significantly reduced visibility (Video 1). Shocking soil losses were observed in parts of southern MN as well, with visibility being reduced to almost zero on Highway 15 on the Brown County/Watonwan County line, in a video recorded by the Brown County Sheriff’s Office on May 12.   

Video 1. This video, taken in Polk County, MN shows poor visibility due to wind-eroded soil. Photo credit: Morgan Torkelson, West-Polk, Minnesota Soil & Water Conservation District. 

However, it doesn’t take winds gusting to 48 mph as they did in Crookston on both May 12 and 14 for soil erosion to occur. Soil erosion can occur when wind speeds are as low as 13 mph! 

In addition to the clay, silt, and sand particles that became airborne, organic matter, nutrients, and many crop protection products applied either to the soil or seed (such as seed treatment insecticides and fungicides, and soil-applied herbicides) were carried by the wind. Pathogen propagules such as cysts of the soybean cyst nematode (SCN) can also travel on the wind. 

Besides causing hazardous driving conditions, this erosion led to poor regional air quality, as illustrated by the US-EPA air quality map from May 14 (Figure 1, US-EPA).

Figure 1. Map of U.S. air quality on May 14, 2026, showing areas of western Minnesota and bordering states that experienced air quality outside of the “good” range due to airborne soil particles. Map credit: US-EPA, AirNow.

These region-wide wind erosion events were most severe in fields that had been aggressively tilled or land rolled and in fields with drowned-out areas or dry soil. Also at risk were fields where the 2025 harvest resulted in substantial soil disturbance, such as sugarbeets and potatoes, or left little residue, such as soybeans and dry beans, especially where windbreaks were lacking. 

For those crop seedlings that had already emerged, sandblasting injury was prevalent (Figure 2). Sand-blasted sugarbeet seedlings resulted in a need for many of the region’s sugarbeet acres to be reseeded, a considerable expense for the farmer.

 

Figure 2. Symptoms of sand blasting caused by wind erosion on corn seedlings. Photo credit: Dorian Gatchell, MN Ag Services. 

Why Did This Happen?

Last week’s shocking soil erosion events were the result of many factors coming together to create a “perfect soil storm”. 

While soil erosion is influenced by factors like high soil calcium carbonate levels, flat topography, and sustained wind speeds, the most critical factor within a producer’s control is keeping the soil covered. Maintaining crop residue, living roots, and active plant growth helps armor the soil surface, slowing wind speeds at ground level and preserving future crop productivity by reducing the potential for severe soil and nutrient loss.

Tillage and Residue Cover

Tillage is often used to create a favorable seedbed and warm the soil in the spring. However, the number of tillage passes, timing, depth, and intensity of tillage all influence how much residue remains on the soil surface and how much protection the soil has from erosion. 

Tillage also breaks apart soil aggregates, making soil more vulnerable to wind loss. Soil aggregates are small clumps of sand, silt, clay, and organic materials held together by sticky compounds produced by plant roots and soil microbes. Aggregated soil particles are larger and heavier than individual particles, making them more resistant to being moved by wind. These aggregates also play many important roles in supporting crop growth, including improving soil structure, water infiltration, nutrient cycling, and root development.

While it is unrealistic to expect all acres to transition to no-till production, there is considerable opportunity to reduce tillage frequency, depth, and intensity. To reduce production costs and preserve future crop productivity, consider reading about ways to successfully reduce tillage intensity.

Flat Topography

When Glacial Lake Agassiz receded after the last Ice Age, it left behind the remarkably flat landscape of the Red River Valley.

Very flat topography over long distances allows wind to gain speed across the landscape. As a result, western Minnesota and eastern North Dakota are particularly vulnerable to wind erosion. Southwestern and south-central Minnesota face similar challenges due to their relatively flat terrain from a receding glacier over 10,000 years ago.

Land Rolling

Land or rock rolling is commonly used to improve harvest efficiency and create a smoother field surface. The primary purpose of rolling is to push rocks below the height at which a combine reel is typically set during soybean harvest, allowing growers to capture the lowest pods on the plant. However, rolling can crush soil aggregates, breaking them apart into smaller individual sand, silt, and clay particles. The smoother soil surface allows wind to move more freely and pick up more speed across fields, increasing the potential for soil erosion. When heavy rains occur after rolling and before crop emergence, these loose particles can settle and form a surface crust. Soil crusting can delay seedling emergence, reduce stand uniformity, and increase the risk of replanting (Figure 3). 

While rolling is often viewed as a relatively inexpensive field operation, with costs of roughly $10 per acre for labor, fuel, and machinery ownership and operation, most seasons include weather risks that can increase the true cost of the practice. In fields without significant rocks or intact corn root balls, UMN Extension research has shown that rolling does not increase soybean yields, making it an unnecessary expense in many situations. 

 

Figure 3. Crusted soil caused by heavy rain on poorly aggregated soil negatively impacts the emergence of corn seedlings. One corn seedling was unable to break through the crusted soil and will be developmentally behind neighboring plants. Photo credit: Angie Peltier, UMN Extension.

High Soil Calcium Carbonate Content

Many soils in western Minnesota are naturally calcareous, meaning they contain high levels of calcium carbonate. Calcium carbonate causes soil particles to remain separated from one another, slowing aggregate formation and increasing susceptibility to wind erosion.

Shelterbelt and Windbreak Loss

Shelterbelts were widely planted following the Dust Bowl of the 1930s to reduce wind speeds and protect soil. Research has shown that a 30-foot-tall windbreak can protect soil and preserve crop yield potential for distances ranging from 90 to 300 feet downwind. However, aging trees, emerald ash borer, disease, herbicide injury, and removal for operational convenience have resulted in the loss of many shelterbelts, and most have not been replaced. 

Why Does it Matter?

Topsoil Is a Non-Renewable Resource

The fertile topsoil found throughout western Minnesota developed over thousands of years under native tallgrass prairie vegetation. Replacing lost topsoil is not realistic on a human timescale. It takes approximately 400 to 1,000 years to form a single inch of topsoil.

The organic matter and fine clay particles most susceptible to wind erosion are also among the most valuable components of the soil. These materials improve water-holding capacity, supply nutrients, and support biological activity. When nutrients and organic matter are lost through erosion, producers often must replace them through additional fertilizer applications at significant cost.

How much fertility is lost with wind erosion?

To better quantify how much soil was being blown into neighboring ditches, soil samples were collected from six agricultural ditches across west central Minnesota. Results showed a wide range of accumulation, from 3,300 pounds of soil per acre of ditch to as much as 64,000 pounds, with an average of approximately 18,000 pounds per acre. This is equivalent to roughly 10–15 pickup loads of soil!

The average nutrient content of the deposited soil was 55 pounds of total nitrogen (TN), 13 pounds of total phosphorus (TP), and nearly 37 pounds of total potassium (TK) per acre of ditch. These values do not account for the lighter clay particles that were transported beyond the sampled ditches, which are often significantly more nutrient-rich, potentially at least ten times more fertile than the material that settles locally.

Tillage Is a Significant Production Expense

In addition to increasing erosion risk, tillage is an expensive field operation. Using University of Illinois Extension estimates, the cost of a single chisel plow pass increased from approximately $19.50 per acre in 2025 to $21.25 per acre in 2026. Every tillage pass comes with a cost. During difficult economic years, when commodity prices are low and input costs are high, the money spent on unnecessary tillage can be the difference between profit and loss. Reducing tillage intensity and the number of passes across a field can lower production costs while simultaneously reducing erosion risk.

Soil Out of Place Is Dirt

Soil blown from a field does not simply disappear. Clay particles can be carried 1,000s of miles away, leaving our rich Minnesota fields with less organic matter, nutrients, and water-holding capacity. Heavier particles like sand and silt bounce across a field, accumulating in ditches, roadsides, and neighboring properties. Cleanup costs can be substantial, and county governments are passing them on to the landlords (Figure 4). Dirt-filled ditches lose storage capacity, reducing their effectiveness for drainage and snow storage while and increasing the risk of flooding.

 

Wind-blown soil also creates public safety hazards when visibility is reduced and air quality deteriorates.

 

Figure 4. Cleaning wind-eroded topsoil out of ditches results in considerable expenses related to equipment rental or depreciation, labor and fuel. Photo credit: Dorian Gatchell, MN Ag Services.

Practices to Reduce Wind Erosion Potential

Although little can be done during the remainder of the 2026 growing season to recover soil already lost, several management practices can reduce future erosion risk. Producers cannot control when rain falls or how hard the wind blows, but they can make management decisions that help soil withstand these challenges. Keeping soil covered and reducing soil disturbance are key steps toward improving soil resilience.

Long-term solutions include:

Reestablishing Shelterbelts and Windbreaks

Properly placed windbreaks can significantly reduce wind speed at the field level. For more information on windbreak design, species selection, planting assistance, and cost-share opportunities, contact your local Soil and Water Conservation District or USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service office. These agencies can also help incorporate additional landowner goals into the design, such as enhancing pollinator habitat or supporting wildlife. 

The National Agroforestry Center also has a webpage devoted to windbreaks. 

Increasing Use of Perennial and Cover Crops

Some regions of Minnesota experience winter for nearly half the year or longer. During this extended period, fields planted only to annual crops lack living roots to stabilize the soil, leaving it vulnerable to wind erosion for a significant portion of the year. When winters have little snow cover, with low temperatures and low relative humidity, exposed soils can become freeze-dried, breaking larger, heavier clods into smaller clods that are more susceptible to wind erosion.

In these conditions, soil protection with plant residue and roots is critical. Cover crops and perennial forage crops provide roots that stabilize soil, above ground biomass that slows wind speeds at the soil surface, and improved soil aggregation that increases resistance to erosion. The contrast between fields with and without cover crops during the May 12 wind event clearly demonstrated the value of keeping soil covered whenever possible. A video from May 12 near Crookston illustrates this difference clearly, showing wind-blown soil erosion in the background where no cover crop was present, and little to no erosion in the foreground where winter rye had been established.

 

Video 2. In the foreground is soil protected from wind-erosion by crop residue and a cover crop, whereas the soil in the background that is not protected in this way is being eroded away in the wind. Video credit: Morgan Torkelson, West-Polk, Minnesota Soil & Water Conservation District.  

Establishing a winter cash crop, such as winter field pea, camelina, rye, or wheat, or a perennial crop such as alfalfa or a grass forage system, keeps soil covered and reduces the risk of wind erosion. Like corn or soybean, these winter annuals and perennial crops are harvested at least once to produce grain or forage.

A cover crop, in contrast, is not grown for harvest but is planted to provide ecosystem services during periods when no cash crop is growing. For example, winter cereal rye can be seeded after harvesting small grains at a rate of 20 to 60 pounds per acre (depending on goals and conditions). Once established, it provides multiple benefits, including stabilizing soil with fibrous roots, feeding soil microbes through root exudates, and capturing residual soil nitrate that might otherwise be lost to leaching.

The Midwest Cover Crops Council offers a Minnesota-specific cover crop seed selector tool that helps match species to goals such as scavenging leftover nutrients after harvest, establishing within a desired planting window, or winter survival characteristics.

Reducing Tillage Intensity

Practices such as no-till, strip till, and ridge till can reduce soil disturbance, improve and preserve aggregation, lower fuel and labor costs, and help rebuild soil organic matter over time. These systems contrast sharply with intensive tillage practices that disturb soil more frequently and at greater depth.

Following the breakup of the native tallgrass prairie by the moldboard plow, soil organic matter levels declined substantially, often by 30 to 50% or more in many prairie-derived soils. Much has been learned over the years about the negative impacts of aggressive tillage on soil health and erosion potential. However, there remains a strong cultural image of a “good” field as one with black soil and a green crop, even though production systems using no-tillage, strip tillage, or ridge tillage can be just as profitable, and in some cases more so, when long-term soil productivity is considered.

Reducing tillage intensity provides multiple benefits to a cropping system, including: (1) reducing soil erosion while lowering equipment-related costs such as fuel, time, and labor; (2) preserving and improving soil structure (aggregation), which enhances water infiltration and resistance to wind erosion; and (3) when combined with cover crops, supporting the gradual rebuilding of soil organic matter, nutrient availability, and topsoil function over time.

For producers who have long relied on more intensive tillage systems, transitioning to reduced tillage can feel unfamiliar. University of Minnesota Extension provides resources to support this transition, including guidance on reducing tillage intensity, as well as information on associated adjustments in nutrient management, weed control, and overall system planning.

Looking Ahead

The soil storms of May 2026 serve as a reminder that topsoil is one of agriculture's most valuable resources. The combination of dry conditions, exposed soil, flat landscapes, and high winds created conditions reminiscent of historic dust storms.

As producers evaluate this spring's events, opportunities exist to strengthen and protect the soil through reduced tillage, cover crops, perennial vegetation, and renewed investment in windbreaks. These practices can help ensure that future wind events result in fewer soil losses and greater long-term productivity.

Upcoming University of Minnesota Extension Soil Health Events

• June 25, Lamberton, MN, Cover Crop Field Day
• September 9, Strip Tillage Expo
• January 27-28, 2027, St. Cloud, MN, Soil Management Summit