Just a few months ago, Chicago issued its first-ever dust storm warning after thunderstorms swept up loose soil from farm country and hurled it into the atmosphere. Dust storms typically don’t get tons of national media coverage, but a new dataset shows there were 232 deaths from windblown dust events from 2007-2017.

The number jumps up to 240 if you include the deadly I-55 pileup in Illinois a couple years ago. So, how do we put an end to these dust storms? No-Till Innovator Randall Reeder has the answer.  

“Illinois had three straight springs with dust storms, some more tragic than others. I think I can guarantee you, if all the land, and I'm not picking only Illinois, if all the farmland was no-till with cover crops, there would be zero dust storms because that soil was always going to have a cover on it, and we would not have any dust storm. We'd have minimal erosion from rain. It would take a big rainstorm to cause any erosion.”  

“We've got research in Ohio, 40 years on a steep slope and corn and they were measuring the sediment in pounds per acre, not tons, a few pounds, and it just shows the value and how we can just flat out eliminate erosion with no-till and cover crops.”

Watch the full version of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.