In Defence of the Plough

Review:

In Defence of the Plough Fiji Writer Contributes to Agriculture’s Hottest Argument

TO anyone who has grown as much as a radish or a window-box of geran iums, other men’s theories about agriculture are very interesting indeed.

The great thing appears to be, however —if you want to produce anything—to re gard the theories merely as interesting and

to go ahead leaving most of it to nature and the plant. If you ponder on the theories long enough it will produce a state of complete mental dizziness and a profound wonder as to how man has managed to grow enough to feed himself in the ages that have passed since he went into the agricultural business |N my case, this present fit of agricul

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London last year and sets out to vindicate the use of the plough which was spurned and trampled on by the American, Edward Faulkner, in his book Ploughman’s Folly.

In a very minor way I have been a dis ciple of Faulkner—leave the subsoil alone, green manure crops, death-to-the-plough let’s-buy-a-rotary hoe, a nice mulch on top of the soil to stop water evaporation— but it seems that all this could be wrong.

Mr. Carew, who has had over 20 years farming experience with the Colonial Sugar Refining Co., in Fiji, sets out to prove his points by very ingenious means and if you are the type who is impressed by what you read, as I am, you will prob ably agree that it makes sense.

By and large, Mr. Carew’s theory seems to be a version of that branch of agricul tural science of which we heard something pre-war—hydroponics, I think it was called —wherein vegetables were grown in tanks of water into which was dissolved all the minerals and chemicals necessary for their growth. Only Mr. Carew uses the earth instead of a water tank—“all the good in the soil which the plants need, must, first of all, be dissolved in water be fore the plant roots can take it up.’’ This deep-soil water, as he calls it, is the natural water that lies at varying depths under all our agricultural land —it con tains, he says, all the nutrients any plant needs and, to Mr. Carew’s mind, agricul ture consists fundamentally of drawing this fluid to that part of the soil which holds the plant roots. Therefore, he ad vocates deep aeration of the soil—the ploughing of the sub-soil if you like that better—to expedite the upward movement of this deep water and bring it to the roots of the plants.

The old theory of stopping the capillary action of water in soil by top-soil cultiva tion to break up the small tubes or capillaries, is dismissed by Mr. Carew as nonsense. It is, he says, beneficial to pro mote the evaporation into the atmosphere of the deep-soil water as it leaves behind on the surface the plentiful supply of minerals and salts that the plants re quire. When the rains come—and rain water itself contains no plant food ex cept nitrogen—these minerals are washed down through the soil to the roots and, presumably, to the store of deep water where they originated.

The rise of water by capillary action alone, Mr. Carew discounts. From ex periments he carried out he proved that, although there is some rise of water by this means, it is not the full story and he accounts for the continual rise of this deep water to the surface by the “cohesion theory” (which is believed to account for the rise of sap in a tree) plus the fact that carbon dioxide dissolved in the deep water acts as the motive power which carries the water to the surface soil.

To sum up, Mr. Carew believes that the best way to get results in agriculture is to work deep into or aerate the subsoil in order to allow this deep-soil water and its plant food to reach the roots of the plants.

A FEW other things propounded by Mr.

Carew which will astound the Faulk nerites: — • There is no such thing as soil ex haustion —its physical condition may have been so badly treated as to retard the rise of deep-soil water but the supply of plant food in the deep-soil water remains in exhaustible. • The only type of fallow which can be beneficial to future crops is bare fallow.

After the remains of a crop have been cleared up, turned in or burned, the area should be deeply subsoiled (aerated), and nothing should be permitted to grow thereon; weed or bean crop both are just robbers of the future crop. • Green manure crops are a waste of time for the above reasons and because any ’nitrogen they can give to the soil could be given anyway by mechanical means—i.e., ploughing up the subsoil.

AS I said in the beginning, a man and his theories are always interesting.

A man I know—well known to PIM readers also —has a theory about the health-giving properties of rain-water as opposed to town water.

Town water, he says, rots your teeth and gives you stomach ulcers and has all its goodness destroyed in the process of standing in reservoirs and being piped therefrom to one’s kitchen sink.

But rain water! Ah!—There we have the elixir of life. He goes so far as to advocate bringing a jar of it back from a week-end jaunt in the country for con sumption in his city flat.

All this being so, I was most interested in Mr. Carew’s theories on the same mat ter. I quote: “In this part of the world (Fiji) on plantations, we rely almost entirely on rain-water from the catchment provided by bungalow roofs run off into tanks. I am convinced that this is the cause of many of our ailments.

“I was horrified to find that when our baby daughter had established a magni ficent set of milk-white first teeth they began at once to break up. Her second teeth were better but so too, was the source of the water she drank at boarding-school.

Her young brother produced not teeth but a sort of jelly bean. My own teeth are like Rocks of Gibraltar. I knew their mother’s were less robust, but I did not know why. But I know now; for she too was reared on rain-water.

“Rain water is a pleasant drink: it sparkles with the atmospheric gases, sxygen, nitrogen and carbon-dioxide but it contains no mineral salts except a trace 3f common salt. River water and well water and all that we call natural waters abound in health and life-giving mineral salts.”

MR. CAREW has produced a very in teresting book; possibly it will not convinced the confirmed Faulkner devotee, but it has contributed considerably to agricultural observation. Mr. Carew’s practical experiments have proved, with out doubt, that by following the direct opposite course to that advocated by Faulkner he gets good results. Which pro phet will prove right in the long run we leave history to record.

In the meantime, the unscientific ama teur may take comfort from the fact that no matter what we may do to this old earth, root it up, flatten it down, sprinkle it with this or withhold that, it still con tinues to grow grass and trees, the lowly spud and cabbage and occasionally a rose

bush.-

Judy Tudor.

(Plowman’s Wisdom, Published by Faber and Faber, London, for 15/- per copy.)