Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 12, Number 11, DeMotte, Jasper County, 22 January 1942 — FARM TOPICS [ARTICLE]

FARM TOPICS

SOIL PROTECTION HELPS WAR PLAN Increased Production Takes Toll of Important Resource.

By PROF. C. J. CHAPMAN

(Soils Department, Wisconsin College Of Agriculture, Madison: Wis.) While we are pouring billions of dollars into the war program to fight the aggressions of Axis powers threatening our way pf life, we likewise have an obligation that is of tremendous importance to our future and ultimate security. And that is the protection of our greatest resource—the soil. It is fortunate that before we had to launch this all-out military effort we were already engaged in a peace-time defense program involving soil conservation. It is essential that this program we have so well started, against the forces of nature and of human indifference and carelessness for the preservation of our soils be continued. Otherwise the handwriting on the wall for American agriculture of the future will be visible to even the dimmest eye. It is of vital importance that our soils be made fit to produce the vast crops necessary in this war effort. The federal government has already shown what can be done through its gigantic programs of land use planning, soil conservation, erosion control and reforestation. The combined results of the findings of experiment stations, extension Workers and teachers, and the efforts of the educational agencies of the fertilizer industry, ’nave iong since built up a vast fund of information that leaves no doubt as to the wisdom of and necessity for a neverending program of soil conservation. Steadily, but surely, the soils of the United States have been losing essential plant food elements ever since they were brought under cultivation. Thp organic matter content of our soils is diminishing. Tremendous losses of plant food are being incurred in the yearly sale of farm produce, live-stock and live-stock products. We are losing fertility through the wasteful handling of animal manures. It is true that losses of plant food have been offset to some extent through the purchase of commercial fertilizer. However, the sum total of all losses in actual plant food sold from our farms or wasted on farms is many times that which at present is brought back and applied to cultivated fields in the form of commercial fertilizer. We cannot continue a system of farming where we are spending or using up soil fertility many times as fast as it is being replenished.