Civilization Lives Or Dies With Fertility of Soil
Editor's note: The following
article has been taken from a
treatise on conserving and re
storing the nation's number
one natural resource—the fer
tility of its topsoil. Entitled
"Spartina and Black Velvet,"
the article was taken from the
magazine The Commonweal
and was written by the maga
zine's editor, Edward S. Skill
in. It appeared in the Sept.
5ih issue. Because the Front
iersman deems the subject
matter treated of vital interest
• to farmers anywhere, the arti
cle is reproduced in almost its
entirety.
“The state department of edu
cation in Iowa has just completed
a three-year experiment giving
soil conservation instruction in
the state’s rural elementary
schools. •
“To have American public edu
cation deal with the basic im
portance of things is heartening,
-and now the great majority of
Iowa’s 48,000 rural pupils from
the first to the eighth grades will
not be permitted to forget that
‘civilization moves, survives or
disappears with the fertility of
the soil . . .’
Grave Problem
“A few figures give an idea of
the scope and gravity of the prob
lem. One-fifth of the arable land
of the United States is already
denuded of its priceless topsoil
(on which alone crops will grow);
it is pitted and ruined beyond re
pair. One-third of the remaining
farm land is badly damaged. We
still have over four hundred mil
lion arable acres left in varying
conditions of soil health, but we
are currently ruining a half mil
lion acres a year.
“This after ten full years of
the National Soil Conservation
Service, the instructions of coun
ty agents and the bitter lesson
of the dust bowls of the early
thirties. With other leading na
tional resources badly spent or
dwindling because of the war,
we can ill afford to expend our
topsoil, the one resource which
is indispensable.
“I say this without even taking
into account what happens to
the farm families who are vic
tims of erosion. Particularly as
the increasing use of plastics
widely extends the industrial use
of fibers and other raw materials
produced directly on the land.
Another aspect is this: each year
we extract 2,500,000 tons of phos
phates from our soil by growing
crops and grazing, and lose an
other 3,000,000 tons through
erosion; yet, according to the
National Resources Board, we
are only returning 2,500,000 to
the soil annually through fertil
izers and by other means. One
way or another we are steadily
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MATANUSKA PRODUCE
William Hoskins. Valley farmer who recently won. a trip Out
side as a prize for his garden exhibit at the fair, is pictured
above, as he shows his Matanuska-grown vegetables to ad
miring Seattle residents. Mr. Hoskins holds a 24-inch long tur
nip which measured a foot through. Miss Lulu Fairbanks, of
the Alaska Weekly staff, is ooh-ing over the heft of a Valley
cabbage while Art Ganson of the Seattle Chamber of Com
merce's Alaska department, helps her hold the salad material
for a photograph. Mr. Hoskins' trip, which was his first Out
side in 10 years, was made on a Mt. McKinley Airlines ship.
He look his garden exhibit along for display in Frederick &
Nelson windows in Seattle. (Photo courtesy of Seattle Times).
sapping our soil’s vitality.
Erosion's Cost
“They key state of Iowa itself
has been a bad offender. Last
June alone—due to spring rains
and severe floods—it lost 115,
000,000 tons of topsoil, the worst
erosion loss in its history. Dis
quieting reports issue from Iowa
State College at Ames. One of
the most recent is that in the past
five years acreages devoted to
“row crops” have increased 28
per cent with the decrease in
soil-anchoring pasture land cor
responding. An indication of the
way fertility is declining on the
black-velvet corn land which I
visited before the war is that in
the past five years Iowa farmers
have had to increase their use
of chemical fertilizers nine-fold.
War does accentuate bad farm
ing practices.
“Nearby Nebraska, another
leading agricultural state, is in
no better case. A special dis
patch to the New York Times
from Omaha, dated Aug. 19, tells
of sizable increases in wheat
acreages, and bushels produced,
over last year.
“In the process much land
was plowed that should have
been kept under grass.
“The long-time Nebraska farm
ers charged that speculators, see
ing a chance to make a killing,
have taken the land during the
bonanza and will leave the task
of re-anchoring the soil to some
one else . . . Many soil experts
are predicting another Dust
Bowl worse than the one which
ravaged the country in the line
teen Thirties.
Losing Battle
“Considering the fact that the
Soil Conservation Service is even
today fighting a losing battle,
merely keeping things from get
ting disastrously worse, I won
ler how much can be done to re
verse the downward trend of the
nation’s life-giving topsoil. Flood
control is obviously one of the
major remedies. This spring
three states alone—Illinois, Iowa,
and Missouri—lost $491,000,000
worth of topsoil due to floods.
Another way of putting this is to
say that in the Missouri Valley
this spring 3,000,000 acres of
farm land were inundated, near
ly half of these being flooded
twice or more.
“America’s solitary boast, the
TVA, has shown that, even in
regions of heavy rainfall, devas
tating floods can be averted by
means of a well-planned series
of dams and reservoirs. Similar
plans—-with the necessary re
gional variations — have been
drawn up for the Arkansas,
Columbia, Missouri and other
river valleys.”
. . There are various me
thods utilized' to hold rain-water
on the soil. One analogous to
dams is contour plowing. On
hilly ground the furrows which
follow the land’s contour, in
stead of running straight up and
down a hillside, in reality serve
as a series of little dams to hold
the water in and slow down the
run-off.
“In addition a broad shallow
channel, wider at the bottom of
the hill than at the top, is dug
into the hillside to confine the
run-off water to a definite, re
stricted course. Another well*
| known device is to alternate
strips of closely rooted small
grain with strips of a loose-fur
| rowed crop such as corn. The
soil naturally remains better an
chored under a system of crop
rotation, also, than with the one
crop cultivation so characteristic
of many ‘factories in the fields.’
'Plowman's Folly'
“Another technique is gaining
wider and wider acceptance if
still the subject of heated con
troversy. Its spokesman, Edward
H. Faulkner, brought out his
“Plowman’s Folly” four years
ago, a genuine best-seller. His
thesis, which he presented in an
extreme form, is that the tradi
tional American deep-furrowing
moldboard plow disturbs the na
tural organization of the soil
and, by thrusting the remainders
of past crops and other topsoil
anchorage and moisture-absorb
ing surface debris deep into the
ground, both reduces soil fertil
ity- and leads directly to erosion.
He cited his own highly produc
tive experiments with scratch
ing or surface-disking the soil
to substantiate his claims.
“Despite the astounding suc
ces of his book, Mr. Faulkner
was widely dismissed as a faddist
if not a crackpot. Yet in the
semi-arid Great Plains, and in
the Pacific Northwest, use of the
one-way disk for plowing (to
loosen the soil underneath but
leave the residue of former crops
on the surface) is becoming quite
extensive. This “stubble-mulch”
type of cultivation gives fields a
trashy exterior, with seeds plant
ed through the mulch, but it is
recording superb results.
Pasture Land
“I must touch on the remedy
of restoring pasture land. In the
important dairy state of New
Jersey more than 33,000 acres
have been especially prepared
and seeded for pasture during
the past seven years—planted to
grasses such as orchard, broome
and reed canary and legumes
such as Ladino clover, which is
so prolific that a single plant may
spread 16 square feet in a single
year. And then the cows are not
permitted to graze a field until
the grass is abundant.
“Here is one result, according
to Roscoe De Baun, Farm and
Garden Editor of the Newark
Evening News: ‘In former years,
the pasture lot was usually the
poorest soil on the farm . .Cows
would work for hours to get a
little grass. Tired out, they would
give up. Late in the afternoon,
the hungry cows would return to
the barn to get their fill of costly
hay, ensilage and feed.’ With
the improved New Jersey pas
ture, “cows eat their fill in a
hurry. Then they rest in the
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shade and enjoy their cud. After
a while they have another big
meal with little effort ... the
cows harvest their own feed,
and milk is produced at a mini
mum cost.’
Contented Cows
“In order to achieve this idyl
lic economic state, and establish
pastures resistant to erosion, it
is essential before planting to
prepare the soil with manure,
pulverized limestone and super
phosphate fertilizer. The con
tented cows then bring us to the
final method of soil preservation:
phosphates.
“Phosphorus has again and
again proved particularly good
at promoting the hardy growth
of vegetal cover for the land. It
makes the land something like an
absorbent sponge which retains
water for growing purposes. In
Alabama phosphates have been
particularly effective in the es
tablishments of pastures similar
to those described above.
U. S. Resources
“Eighty percent of United
States soil are deficient in all
important phosphorus together
with the inability of the Ameri
can fertilizer industry as pre
sently constituted to produce
nearly enough phosphates. Phos
phorus is one of the many raw
materials with which America is
heavily endowed; we have, in
fact, more than half of the
world’s known reserves—prin
cipally phosphoric rock in Idaho,
Utah, Montana and Wyoming.
There is no basic reason why
phosphates could not be plenti
ful for the American farmer.
“But it is important to note
here that the marked accomplish
ments of super-phosphates pro
duced at TVA-operated Muscle
Shoals have been established on
over 40,000 demonstration farms
in 26 states throughout the Un
ion. If produced in sufficient
quantities from our vast natural
store super-phosphates would in
deed constitute one of the major
techniques for conserving and
restoring America’s vital topsoil.
“Any one of the projects des
cribed here, if widely, adopted
in time, would go far toward
stemming the appalling waste of
our most precious material en
dowment. And if most of them
are undertaken in concert, the
present trend of prodigality and
devastation would be sharply re
versed.”
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