Some things that you read stick in your mind for a long time, like an article about how the bison were returning to the American prairie even as the people left. I don’t remember now which state it was, but I was remembering it as I have been seeing stories about the decline of soil fertility in Kansas.

It is actually a story about paradigm change – the kind that it is hard to see when we are in the middle of it. Yet it is often told as if it is a single issue story – about buffalo, about wheat, about cattle ranching, and about economic growth – as these issues are not all intertwined.