Several strategies can slow erosion and get our food and farm systems back on a sustainable track.

Plant cover crops. By keeping roots in the ground year-round, cover crops help keep soil in place and maximize water-holding ability, making it more resistant to floods and droughts.

Diversify crop rotations to help build soil fertility and disrupt pest cycles. Plant perennials, such as prairie grasses or trees, in or near crop fields to maintain deep living roots year-round – stabilizing soil, drawing carbon deeper underground and capturing excess fertilizer before it can become a pollutant.

Plow less (or not at all) with low- or no-till farming systems that minimize disturbance and keep moisture in the soil.

While many farmers across the country are already doing some or all of these things, for others, adopting such practices will be a major change in their operations – and change is not easy. It’s in everybody’s interest to support U.S. farmers in rebuilding soil health and preventing erosion through policies, such as the Agriculture Resilience Act, proposed legislation to help U.S. agriculture achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, improve soil health, and provide farmers with tools to adapt to climate change impacts like extreme weather events and trade wars, that can ensure transition that benefits all. (Union of Concerned Scientists, Dec. 17, 2025)

When fields are left bare after harvest, soil can easily blow away in the wind or wash away in storms, depositing fertilizers and chemicals into waterways. Cover crops, which include winter wheat, crimson clover, cereal rye, oats or radish, are planted after harvest and before winter. Those crops can reduce soil erosion, break up compacted soil, provide habitat for beneficial insects and wildlife, and prevent latent fertilizer from leaching into rivers and streams.

Less than 6% of Illinois farmland uses cover crops. Six years ago, Illinois became the second state in the nation to offer subsidies to farmers for planting cover crops in the fall, an effort to reverse its status as one of the worst states for agricultural runoff.

The Demand for Fall Cover for Spring Savings program has outpaced state funding every year since. However, despite the program’s popularity and calls from environmentalists and farmers for its funding to increase, the 2026 budget reduces funding by 31%.

“I have made difficult decisions – including to programs I have championed, which is hard for me,” Gov. Pritzker said during his State of the State and budget address in February. (Capitol News Illinois, June 25, 2025). However, farmers do not need state funding to use cover crops. Although multiple factors weigh on farmers concerning cover crops, the main reason they do not use them seems to be that doing so costs money, while leaving soil to erode costs nothing in the short term, although long-term results in decreased soil productivity.

As a result of the dust catastrophe of the 1930s, in 1937, President Roosevelt wrote governors of all states recommending legislation that would allow local landowners to form soil conservation districts, following a model Soil and Conservation Districts Law. States did pass such laws; these districts now number over 3,000 in the U.S. and its territories. Illinois has 97.

Ogle County Soil and Water Conservation District works cooperatively with other conservation organizations for the conservation of farm and other land and water. It has no single source of funds. Some was from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but that stopped recently. Illinois’ fiscal year 2026 budget allots $7.5 million to state SWCDs – that’s $1 million overall cut from the previous year. Funding had already been cut by $4 million total in fiscal year 2025. (Capitol News Illinois, June 25, 2025).

Desire by responsible politicians in the Illinois state government to decrease expenditures is easy to understand, as Illinois fiscally is squeezed between a large need to fund pensions, large debt, decreased federal income, and politicians like Andrew Chesney waving the flag to voters of tax reduction.

If you think cover crops and SWCDs are good expenses for the state of Illinois, contact state Rep. Tony McCombie and Chesney, or other legislators in your district.

• Henry Tideman is a resident of Oregon.