I suppose erosion can be a beautiful thing.

Both the Grand Canyon and the Arches National Park, for instances, were created by millions of years of water and wind eroding away soil and rock in a desert.

Closer to home, or right here at home to be exact, our tree-covered loess bluff hills are the result of erosion. The river washed soil downstream and spread it out from Vicksburg to Monroe. Then silt particles went airborne in winds from the west and landed between the Welcome Center at the bridge and somewhere the other side of Bolton. The third round of erosion was rainwater headed for the Gulf of Mexico forming gullies and creeks.

The sequence was water erosion, wind erosion, water erosion.

On the other hand, erosion is often quite ugly. With the unintentional and unwitting help of mankind, erosion gave us Americans the Dust Bowl, washed away crop fields, and messed up backyards in the past 100-plus years. The same sort of things had happened long before in other parts of the world. We’re still kind of new at causing and preventing erosion.

As students quite a while back, we studied erosion prevention methods like terracing, contour farming, growing winter cover crops and planting windbreaks in the dry, windy parts of the country.

It was about 20 years ago that interest boomed in reduced-tillage and no-till crop farming. Farmers readily embraced these techniques; not only did they help prevent soil erosion but anything that kept the tractor parked saved on expenses during a long period of low crop prices.

The government has long been involved in erosion prevention and restoration of eroded land. Both the flood of 1927 and the Dust Bowl a few years later spurred Congress to create new agencies and programs within the U.S. Department of Agriculture to assist and to regulate.

In the 1980s, programs like Conservation Reserve and Wetlands Reserve were initiated and they still exist. Terms like Sodbuster and Swampbuster became negative labels because landowners or farmers deemed guilty of either were denied participation in any federal programs that involved payments such as cost-share or commodity subsidies.

And the environmental protection movement of the latter part of the 20th century continues within the realm of agriculture. A collective spirit of cooperation brings attention to and adherence to erosion prevention methods. Many businesses involved in timber production and harvest have voluntarily signed on to Mississippi Best Management Practices to prevent or minimize erosion during and after logging operations.

My favorite true tale of farming techniques on steep, erodible land came from a dean of agriculture who was somewhat of an international farm expert. He told of watching farmers in a part of Asia on land so steep each one walked around the slope with a long stick in one hand and a mouthful of seed. The farmers would poke holes in the ground with the stick as they walked and then spit a seed into each downhill hole. He said they were fairly precise spitters.

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Terry Rector writes for the Warren County Soil and Water Conservation District, 601-636-7679 ext. 3.