World’s Longest-Running Experiement Buried in Michigan

One of the most important advancements in human evolution has been agriculture.  We no longer had a need to be nomadic and move seasonally to forage for food.  We realized that seeds + earth + water and sun will yield a crop.  Where you have sustainable crops, you have a city.  Where you have a city, you have commerce.  Where there is commerce, there is wealth, trade, and prosperity.

One of the trickiest bits of farming has always been weeds.  Weeds steal water, sunlight, and nutrients from the soil surrounding a crop.  They are a pest.  A menace. Sure, now we have herbicides that specifically target weeds, leaving the crop we want alone, but what did we do before?  How many times did we have to weed an acre before we could declare it weed free?

That's just what Dr. William James Beal set out to discover 137 years ago.  You read that correctly.  His experiment is still ongoing to this day, being carried out by the teams of people that have come and go since.  It's all happening right here in Michigan.  Check out the full story!