Special WSJ report on agriculture, with interesting article on "fertile land is under strain."
Ag takes up about 1/5th of energy consumption in the US, so higher oil encourages, over the long run, abandoning certain energy-intensive practices, such as tilling:
The most popular fuel-reduction strategy involves a radically new way of planting seeds. Instead of breaking up the ground with a plow to plant seeds, no-till farming leaves the remains of last year's crop on the surface. Drills punch through this mat of vegetation and insert seeds into the ground. Ditching the plow can cut fuel consumption by as much as half . . . It also reduces the need for expensive fertilizer.
A major enviro drawback, according to an accompanying article? No-till requires more herbicides.
Another reason why farmers like to plow: you can dry out a wet spring field and thus plant earlier. You see that hear in Indiana with its super-wet springs. But with climate change making for more droughts, ag experts expect more and more farmers to adopt the no-till method (or one of its many variants) over time, thus reducing the ag sector's energy draw. Fields that aren't plowed typically hold up much better in July and August when rain gets much more rare. Indiana has suffered super-dry summers, with this year's summer reducing the crop haul by a large amount, as just my eyeballs can attest.
Interesting pair of articles.
The map and chart below came with the first cited piece. Note all the stable soil in the "New North."
;)
Click the smaller image for a more readable version.