daylilydreams said:I can tell no farmers are here, it is a struggle to survive with farming as your income. While we do not farm we have family members that do, while also holding down other jobs in order make ends meet. The hours are long and the work hard plus you at the mercy of mother nature as to if you end up with decent crops. The costs of farming are huge, land, equipment, fuel costs, taxes, fertilizers, fixing equipment that breaks and much more. You can't blame a farmer for using as much of his land as possible it is certainly not based on greed.
By the early nineties, some farms here the black top soil was gone to the point the yellow clay underneath was exposed.
St. Cloud had rapid expansion back then, in former prime farming area, and some regional farmers were paying to have the top soil removed for construction hauled out to put on the hill tops that were laid bare..
Some were smart or rich enough they also removed the clay top down several feet , spreading that over a broad area and then had the hill replaced at in a lower form with the top soil from the construction area.
Sharon and I hauled several yards to our garden in our trailer, shoveled by hand.
That cost money but then the gov. alcohol subsidy hit at that time so with the huge increase in the price for corn, for a decade they had a sudden cash flow.
Next time there will be no gov. windfall to help them out and the soil will still be gone.
Addendum:
The soil loss was so bad, back then, that what few snow banks we had from the rare snow storm, were black from the dirt blown off of the fields.
The road visibility was so bad some days, you had to turn your headlights on in that area, and even then you could not see an approaching car fifty yards away in broad daylight.
Those years were dry enough that hundreds, probably thousands of acres had corn the blue-grey color of death by July.
Only good thing was the dead corn, stopped the soil from blowing in the summer.
Rivers, in Minn. were low enough the State Gov. banned irrigation from lakes and streams, and some had their wells go dry.
If those days return, and I would not bet against it, those fools who removed the hedge rows earned their misery.
Many have done it because with the huge machinery they have nowadays maneuvering around the hedge-rows was too annoying.
At the same time though, some were removed for future housing areas and these are not small houses.
It is not a Christian attitude but it would not bother me one bit if when the dry weather hits they have to shovel dirt off of their drive ways and side walks.
These are they type of housing areas where all trees are removed , those trees make it so much harder to build the plywood - OSB clap trap things they build nowadays and there is nothing to stop the soil blowing off of the field from burying their yards,
(Except in wintertime!) 
In the past when my brother called to tell me someone had passed, I said "WHAT is wrong with you people, dieing in winter!?!!" He laughed and said "odds are, the next one won't be here" Thanks alot! 
but in MN, the summers are equally hot and humid. They just don't last as long and not everything there is air conditioned as it is in the south.
