Small
farms
Farming and Gardening for Health or Disease
(The Soil and Health)

by Sir Albert Howard C.I.E., M.A.

Part II
Disease in Present-day Farming and Gardening

A simple method of estimating the success of any method of farming is to observe how it is affected by disease. If the soil is found to escape the two common ailments -- erosion and the formation of alkali salts -- which afflict cultivated land; if the crops raised are found to resist the various insect, fungous, and virus diseases; if the livestock breed normally and remain in good fettle; if the people who feed on such crops and livestock are vigorous, prolific, and more or less free from the many diseases from which mankind suffers; then the method of farming adopted is supported by the one unanswerable argument -- success. It has passed the stiffest examination it can be made to undergo -- it has yielded results comparable with those to be seen in the wayside hedges of this country of Great Britain. These strips closely resemble in their agriculture the primeval forest.

In our roadside hedges hardly a trace of the common diseases of the soil are to be seen; the wildings come into flower regularly every spring and early summer; there is no running out of the variety and no necessity to supply new and improved strains of seeds; one generation follows another century after century; the vegetable life of the hedgerow is to all intents and purposes eternal; there is very little plant disease. A similar story can be told of the birds and other animal life. The wayside hedge is, therefore, an example of successful soil management for all to see and study. It has stood the test of time.

In striking contrast to the picture of general health and well-being which has just been lightly sketched is the spectacle of widespread disease which has resulted from many of the methods of farming, and particularly the modern methods, which have so far been devised. Disease of one kind or another is the rule; robust health is the exception.

Let us, therefore, examine in some detail the generous dividends in the form of trouble with which Mother Earth has rewarded our methods of agriculture. The examples chosen have been largely taken from my own personal experience. They are arranged in their natural order starting with the diseases of the soil, then going on to the maladies of crops and livestock, and ending with the afflictions of homo sapiens himself.

Chapter 7
Some Diseases of the Soil

Soil Erosion

Perhaps the most widespread and the most important disease of the soil at the present time is soil erosion, a phase of infertility to which great attention is now being paid.

Soil erosion in the very mild form of denudation has been in operation since the beginning of time. It is one of the normal operations of Nature going on everywhere. The minute mineral particles which result from the decay of rocks find their way sooner or later to the ocean, but many may linger on the way, often for centuries, in the form of one of the constituents of fertile fields. This phenomenon can be observed in any river valley. The fringes of the catchment area are frequently uncultivated hills, through the thin soils of which the underlying rocks protrude. These are constantly weathered and in the process yield a continuous supply of minute mineral fragments in all stages of decomposition.

The slow rotting of exposed rock surfaces is only one of the forms of decay: the surfaces not exposed are also subject to change. The covering of soil is no protection to these underlying strata, but rather the reverse, because the soil water, containing carbon dioxide in solution, is constantly disintegrating the parent rock, first producing subsoil and then actual soil. In this way the constant supply of minerals -- like phosphates, potash, and the trace elements needed by crops and livestock -- are automatically transferred to the surface soil from the great mineral reservoir of the primary and secondary rocks. Simultaneously with these disintegration processes the normal decay of animal and vegetable remains on the surface of the soil is giving rise to the formation of humus.

All these processes combine to start up denudation. The fine soil particles of mineral origin, often mixed with fragments of humus, are gradually removed by rain, wind, snow, or ice to lower regions. Ultimately the rich valley lands are reached, where the accumulations may be many feet in thickness. One of the main duties of the streams and rivers which drain the valley is to transport these soil particles into the sea, where fresh land can be laid down. The process looked at as a whole is nothing more than Nature's method of the rotation, not of the crop, but of the soil itself. When the time comes for the new land to be enclosed and brought into cultivation, agriculture is born again. Such operations are well seen in England in Holbeach Marsh and similar areas round the Wash. From the time of the Romans to the present day new areas of fertile soil, which now fetch £100 an acre or even more, have been recreated from the uplands by the Welland, the Nene, and the Ouse. All this fertile land, perhaps the most valuable in England, is the result of two of the most widespread processes in Nature -- weathering and denudation.

But Nature has devised a most effective brake. The nature of this retarding mechanism is of supreme importance, because it provides the key to the solution of the problem of soil erosion. Nature's control of the rate of denudation is to create the compound soil particle. The fragments of mineral matter derived from the weathering of rocks are combined by means of the specks of glue-like organic matter supplied mostly by the dead bodies of the soil bacteria which live on humus; as in a building made of bricks, some suitable cementing material is needed before the fragments of mineral matter in the soil can cohere. There must be sufficient of this cement of the right type always ready, so that when the mineral fragments come together a piece of glue is there at hand of a size corresponding to the minute areas of contact. This involves the constant production of large quantities of this bacterial cement. Provided, however, that we keep up the bacterial population of the land in any catchment area, the supplies of glue for making new compound soil particles and for repairing the old ones will be assured.

It will be seen from this how fundamentally important is the role of humus. It is the humus which feeds the bacterial life, which, so to say, glues the soil together and makes it effective. If the supply of glue is allowed to fall into arrears, the compound soil particles will soon lie about in ruins and so provide more raw material for speeding up the process of denudation. The mineral particles are thereby released and ready for their final journey by water to the sea to form new soil, or by wind to form a new dust bowl and so begin a new desert.

It is when the tempo of denudation is vastly accelerated by human agencies that a perfectly harmless natural process becomes transformed into a definite disease of the soil. The condition known as soil erosion -- a man-made disease -- is then established. It is, however, always preceded by infertility: the inefficient, overworked, dying soil is at once removed by the operations of Nature and hustled towards the ocean, so that new land can be created and the rugged individualists -- the bandits of agriculture -- whose cursed thirst for profit is at the root of the mischief can be given a second chance. Nature is anxious to make a new and better start and naturally has no patience with the inefficient. Perhaps when the time comes for a new essay in farming, mankind will have learnt the great lesson -- how to subordinate the profit motive to the sacred duty of handing over unimpaired to the next generation the heritage of a fertile soil. Soil erosion is nothing less than the outward and visible sign of the complete failure of a farming policy. The root causes of this failure are to be found in ourselves.

The damage already done by soil erosion all over the world, looked at in the mass, is very great and is rapidly increasing. The regional contributions to this destruction, however, vary widely. In some areas like north-western Europe, where most of the agricultural land is under a permanent or temporary cover crop (in the shape of grass or leys) and there is still a large area of woodland and forest, soil erosion is a minor factor in agriculture. In other regions like parts of North America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and the countries bordering the Mediterranean, where extensive deforestation has been practiced and where almost uninterrupted cultivation has been the rule, large tracts of land once fertile have been almost completely destroyed.

The United States of America is perhaps the only country where anything in the nature of an accurate estimate of the damage done by erosion has been made. Theodore Roosevelt first warned the country as to its national importance. Then came the Great War with its high prices, which encouraged the wasteful exploitation of soil fertility on an unprecedented scale. A period of financial depression, a series of droughts and dust storms, emphasized the urgency of the salvage of agriculture. During Franklin Roosevelt's presidency soil conservation became a political and social problem of the first importance. In 1937 the condition and needs of the agricultural land of the United States of America were appraised. No less than 253,000,000 acres, or 61 per cent of the total area under crops, had either been completely or partly destroyed or had lost most of its fertility. Only 161,000,000 acres, or 39 per cent of the cultivated area, could be safely farmed by present methods. In less than a century the United States has, therefore, lost nearly three-fifths of its agricultural capital. If the whole of the potential resources of the country could be utilized and the best possible practices introduced everywhere, about 447,466,000 acres could be brought into use -- an area actually greater than the present crop land of 415,334,931 acres. The position, therefore, is not hopeless. It will, however, be very difficult, very expensive, and very time-consuming to restore the vast areas of eroded land even if money is no object and large amounts of manure are used and green-manure crops are ploughed under.

Such, in this great country, are the results of misuse of the land. The causes of this misuse include lack of individual knowledge of soil fertility on the part of the pioneers and their descendants; the traditional attitude which regarded the land as a source of profit; defects in farming systems, in tenancy, and finance -- most mortgages contain no provisions for the maintenance of fertility; instability of agricultural production as carried out by millions of individuals, prices, and income, in contrast to industrial production carried on by a few large corporations. The need for maintaining a correct relation between industrial and agricultural production, so that both can develop in full swing on the basis of abundance, has only recently been understood. The country was so vast, its agricultural resources were so immense, that the profit seekers could operate undisturbed until soil fertility -- the country's capital -- began to vanish at an alarming rate.

The resources of the Government are now being called up to put the land in order. The magnitude of the effort, the mobilization of all available knowledge, the practical steps that are being taken to save what is left of the soil of the country and to help Nature to repair the damage already done are graphically set out in Soils and Men, the Year Book of the United States Department of Agriculture of 1938. This is perhaps the best local account of soil erosion which has yet appeared. The progress that has been made in recent years can be followed in Soil Conservation, a monthly periodical issued by the Soil Conservation Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C.

The rapid exploitation of Africa was soon followed by soil erosion. In South Africa, a pastoral country, some of the best grazing areas are already semi-desert. The Orange Free State in 1879 was covered with rich grass, interspersed with reedy pools, where now only useless gullies are found. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, it began to be realized all over South Africa that serious over-stocking was taking place. In 1928 the Drought Investigation Commission reported that soil erosion was extending rapidly over many parts of the Union and that the eroded material was silting up reservoirs and rivers and causing a marked decrease in the underground water supplies. The cause of erosion was considered to be the reduction of vegetal cover brought about by incorrect veldt management -- the concentration of stock in kraals, overstocking, and indiscriminate burning to obtain fresh autumn or winter grazing. In Basutoland, a normally well watered country, soil erosion is now the most immediately pressing administrative problem. The pressure of population has brought large areas under the plough and has intensified over-stocking on the remaining pasture. In Kenya the soil erosion problem has become serious during the last ten years, both in the native reserves and in the European areas. In the former, wealth depends on the possession of large flocks and herds; barter is carried on in terms of livestock; the bride price is almost universally paid in anima's s; numbers rather than quality are the rule. The natural consequence is overstocking, over-grazing, and the destruction of the natural covering of the soil. Soil erosion is the inevitable result. In the European areas, erosion is caused by long and continuous over-cropping without the adoption of measures to prevent the loss of soil and to maintain the humus content. Locusts have of late been responsible for greatly accelerated erosion; examples are to be seen when the combined effect of locusts and goats has resulted in the loss of a foot of surface soil in a single rainy season.

The countries bordering the Mediterranean provide striking examples of soil erosion, accompanied by the formation of deserts which are considered to be due to one main cause -- the slow and continuous deforestation of the last 3,000 years. Originally well wooded, no forests are to be found in the Mediterranean region proper. Most of the original soil has been washed away by the sudden winter torrents. In North Africa the fertile cornfields which existed in Roman times are now desert. Ferrari in his book on woods and pastures refers to the changes in the soil and climate of Persia after its numerous and majestic parks were destroyed; the soil was transformed into sand; the climate became arid and suffocating; springs first decreased and then disappeared. Similar changes took place in Egypt when the forests were devastated; a decrease in rainfall and in soil fertility was accompanied by loss of uniformity in the climate. Palestine was once covered with valuable forests and fertile pastures and possessed a cool and moderate climate; to-day its mountains are denuded, its rivers are almost dry, and crop production is reduced to a minimum.

The above examples indicate the wide extent of soil erosion, the very serious damage that is being done, and the fundamental cause of the trouble -- misuse of the land, resulting in the destruction of the compound soil particles. In dealing with the remedies which have been suggested and which are now being tried out, it is essential to envisage the real nature of the problem. It is nothing less than the repair of Nature's drainage system -- the river -- and of Nature's method of providing the countryside with a regular water supply. The catchment area of the river is the natural unit in erosion control. In devising this control we must restore the efficiency of the catchment area as a drain and also as a natural storage of water. Once this is accomplished, we shall hear very little about soil erosion.

Japan provides perhaps the best example of the control of soil erosion in a country with torrential rains, highly erodible soils, and a topography which renders the retention of the soil on steep slopes very difficult. Here erosion has been effectively held in check by methods adopted regardless of cost, for the reason that the alternative to their execution would be national disaster. The great danger from soil erosion in Japan is the deposition of soil debris from the steep mountain slopes on the rice fields below. The texture of the rice soils must be maintained so that the fields will hold water and allow of the minimum of through drainage. If such areas become covered with a deep layer of permeable soil, brought down by erosion from the hillsides, they would no longer hold water and rice cultivation -- the mainstay of Japan's food supply -- would be out of the question. For this reason the country has spent as much as ten times the capital value of eroding land on soil conservation work, mainly as an insurance for saving the valuable rice lands below. Thus, in 1925 the Tokyo Forestry Board spent 453 yen (£45) per acre in anti-erosion measures on a forest area valued at 40 yen per acre in order to save rice fields lower down valued at 240 to 300 yen per acre.

The dangers from erosion have been recognized in Japan for centuries and an exemplary technique has been developed for preventing them. It is now a definite part of national policy to maintain the upper regions of each catchment area under forest as the most economical and effective method of controlling flood waters and insuring the production of rice in the valleys. For many years erosion control measures have formed an important item in the national budget.

According to Lowdermilk (Oriental Engineer, March 1927), erosion control in Japan is like a game of chess. The forest engineer, after studying his eroding valley, makes his first move, locating and building one or more check dams. He waits to see what Nature's response is. This determines the next move which may be another dam or two, an increase in the former dam, or the construction of retaining side walls. After another pause for observation a further move is made and so on until erosion is checkmated. The operation of natural forces, such as sedimentation and re-vegetation, are guided and used to the best advantage to keep down costs and to obtain practical results. No more is attempted than Nature has already done in the region. By 1929 nearly 2,000,000 hectares of protection forests were used in erosion control. These forest areas do more than control erosion. They help the soil to absorb and retain large volumes of rain water and to release it slowly to the rivers and springs.

China, on the other hand, presents a very striking example of the evils which result from the inability of the administration to deal with the whole of a great drainage area as one unit. On the slopes of the upper reaches of the Yellow River extensive soil erosion is constantly going on. Every year the river transports over 2,000,000,000 tons of soil, sufficient to raise an area of 400 square miles by five feet. This is provided by the easily erodible loess soils of the upper reaches of the catchment area. Some of the mud is deposited in the river bed lower down, so that the embankments which contain the stream have constantly to be raised. Periodically the great river wins in this unequal contest and destructive inundations result. The labour expended on the embankments is lost, because the nature of the erosion problem as a whole has not been grasped, and the area drained by the Yellow River has not been studied and dealt with as a single organism. The difficulty now is the over-popuration of the upper reaches of the catchment area, which prevents afforestation and laying down to grass. Had the Chinese maintained effective control of the upper reaches -- the real cause of the trouble -- the erosion problem in all probability would have been solved long ago at a lesser cost in labour than that which has been devoted to the embankment of the river. China, unfortunately, does not stand alone in this matter. A number of other rivers, like the Mississippi, are suffering from overwork, followed by periodical floods as the result of the growth of soil erosion in the upper reaches.

Although the damage done by uncontrolled erosion all over the world is very great and the case for action needs no argument, nevertheless there is one factor on the credit side which has been overlooked. A considerable amount of new soil is being constantly produced by natural weathering agencies from the subsoil and the parent rock. This, when suitably conserved, will soon re-create large stretches of valuable land. One of the best regions for the study of this question is the black cotton soil of Central India which overlies the basalt. Here, although erosion is continuous, the soil does not often disappear altogether, for the reason that, as the upper layers are removed by rain, fresh soil is re-formed from below. The large amount of earth so produced is well seen in the Gwalior State, where the late ruler employed an irrigation officer, lent by the Government of India, to construct a number of embankments, each furnished with spillways, across many of the valleys, which had suffered so badly by uncontrolled rain wash in the past that they appeared to have no soil at all, the scrub vegetation just managing to survive in the crevices of the bare rock. How great is the annual formation of new soil, even in such unpromising circumstances, must be seen to be believed. In a few years the construction of embankments was followed by stretches of fertile land which soon carried fine crops of wheat. A brief illustrated account of the work done by the late Maharaja of Gwalior would be of great value at the moment for introducing a much needed note of optimism in the consideration of this soil erosion problem. Things are not quite so hopeless as they are often made to appear.

Why is the forest such an effective agent in the prevention of soil erosion? The forest does two things: (1) the trees and undergrowth break up the rainfall into fine spray and the litter on the ground further protects the soil from the impact of the descending water stream; (2) the residues of the trees and animal life met with in all woodlands are converted into humus, which is then absorbed by the soil underneath, increasing its porosity and water-holding power; the soil cover and the soil humus together prevent erosion and at the same time store large volumes of water. These factors -- soil protection, soil porosity, and water retention -- conferred by the living forest cover, provide the key to the solution of the soil erosion problem. All other purely mechanical remedies, such as terracing and drainage, are secondary matters, although, of course, important in their proper place.

The secret of soil conservation is thus seen to lie, first, in maintaining the soil cover in good condition to ensure that the rainfall is received on the surface in a proper manner with no disturbance of the soil below, and second, in conserving ample supplies of humus so that by means of the compound soil particles the water, when it has descended, is adequately absorbed and stored: as well might we expect a living creature to survive without its protective skin as to suppose that the earth can live without her proper covering. The forest has been cited as the pre-eminent example of these protective devices, for the leafage is thick and the ground litter abundant. In the absence of forest some form of grass cover is the natural protective agent which will for centuries often maintain the soil in good heart. Indeed, this device of the grass cover is far more efficient than might be supposed possible. The accumulations of humus under a grass carpet are often immense; they are, indeed, so extraordinary that they can be described as veritable mines of fertility. This is proved by the fact that an agriculture based on their spoliation can, in favourable circumstances, continue for many years before it fades out. But fade out it must if the humus is never restored. Williams (Timiriasev Academy, Moscow) regarded grass as the basis of all agricultural land utilization and the soil's chief weapon against the plundering instincts of humanity. He advanced the hypothesis that the decay of past civilizations was due to the wholesale ploughing up of grass necessitated by the increasing demands of civilization. His views are exerting a marked influence on soil conservation policy in the U.S.S.R. and indeed apply to many other countries.

Grass is a valuable factor in the correct design and construction of surface drains. Whenever possible these should be wide, very shallow, and completely grassed over. The run-off then drains away as a thin sheet of clear water, leaving all the soil particles behind. The grass is thereby automatically manured and yields abundant fodder. This simple device was put into practice at the Shahjahanpur Sugar Experiment Station in India. The earth service roads and paths were excavated so that the level was a few inches below that of the cultivated area. They were than grassed over, becoming very effective drains in the rainy season, carrying off the excess rainfall as clear water without any loss of soil.

If we regard erosion as the natural consequence of improper methods of agriculture and the catchment area of the river as the natural unit for the application of soil conservation methods, the various remedies available fall into their proper place. The upper reaches of each river system must be afforested; cover crops, including grass and leys, must be used to protect the arable surface whenever possible; the humus content of the soil must be increased and the crumb structure restored, so that each field can drink in its own rainfall; over-stocking and over-grazing must be prevented; simple mechanical methods for conserving the soil and regulating the run-off, like terracing, contour cultivation and contour drains, must be utilized. There is, of course, no single anti-erosion device which can be universally adopted. The problem must, in the nature of things, be a local one. Nevertheless, certain guiding principles exist which apply everywhere. First and foremost is the restoration and maintenance of the crumb structure of the soil, so that each acre of the catchment area can do its duty by absorbing its share of the rainfall.

The Formation of Alkali Land

When the land is continuously deprived of oxygen, the plant is soon unable to make use of the nourishment it contains: it becomes a dead instrument, from which no crop can draw anything. If left to itself, this condition of infertility is permanent.

In many parts of the tropics and sub-tropics agriculture is interfered with and even brought to an end because of the injury inflicted on the soil by accumulations of soluble salts composed of various mixtures of the sulphate, chloride, and carbonate of sodium. Such areas are known as alkali lands. When the alkali phase is still in the mild or incipient stage, crop production becomes difficult and care has to be taken to prevent matters from getting worse. When the condition is fully established, the soil dies; crop production is then out of the question. Alkali lands are common in Central Asia, India, Persia, Iraq, Egypt, North Africa, and the United States.

At one period it was supposed that alkali salts were the natural consequences of a light rainfall, insufficient to wash out of the land the salts which always form in it by progressive weathering of the rock powder, of which all soils largely consist. Hence alkali lands were considered to be a natural feature of arid tracts such as parts of north- west India, Iraq, and northern Africa, where the rainfall is very small. Such ideas of the origin and occurrence of alkali lands do not correspond with the facts and are quite misleading. The rainfall of the Province of Oudh in India, for example, where large stretches of alkali lands naturally occur, is certainly adequate to dissolve the comparatively small quantities of soluble salts found in these infertile areas, if their removal were a question of sufficient water only. In North Bihar the average rainfall in the submontane tracts where large alkali patches are common is about fifty to sixty inches a year. Arid conditions, therefore, are not essential for the production of alkali soils; heavy rainfall does not always remove them.

What is a necessary condition is impermeability. In India, whenever the land loses its porosity by the constant surface irrigation of stiff soils with a tendency to impermeability, by the accumulation of stagnant subsoil water, or through some interference with surface drainage, alkali salts sooner or later appear. Almost any agency, even over-cultivation or over-stimulation by means of artificial manures, both of which oxidize the organic matter and slowly destroy the crumb structure, will produce alkali land. In the neighbourhood of Pusa in North Bihar old roads and the sites of bamboo clumps and of certain trees, such as the tamarind (Tamarindus indica L.) and the pipul (Ficus religiosa L.), always give rise to alkali patches when they are brought into cultivation. The densely packed soil of such areas invariably shows the bluish-green markings which are associated with the activities of those soil organisms existing in badly aerated soils without a supply of free oxygen. A few inches below the alkali patches which occur on the stiff, loess soils of the Quetta valley, similar bluish-green and brown markings always occur. In the alkali zone in North Bihar wells have always to be left open to the air, otherwise the water is contaminated by sulphuretted hydrogen, thereby indicating a well-marked, reductive phase in the deeper layers. In a subsoil drainage experiment on the black soils of the Nira valley in Bombay, where perennial irrigation was followed by the formation of alkali land, Mann and Tamhane found that the salt water which ran out of these drains soon smelt strongly of sulphuretted hydrogen and a white deposit of sulphur was formed at the mouth of each drain, proving how strong were the reducing actions in this soil. Here the reductive phase in alkali formation was unconsciously demonstrated in an area where alkali salts were unknown until the land was waterlogged by over-irrigation and the oxygen supply of the soil was restricted.

The view that the origin of alkali land is bound up with defective soil aeration is supported by the recent work on the origin of salt water lakes in Siberia. In Lake Szira-Kul between Bateni and the mountain range of Kizill Kaya, Ossendowski observed in the black ooze taken from the bottom of the lake and in the water a certain distance from the surface an immense network of colonies of sulphur bacilli, which gave off large quantities of sulphuretted hydrogen and so destroyed practically all the fish in this lake. The great water basins in central Asia are being metamorphosed in a similar way into useless reservoirs of salt water, smelling strongly of hydrogen sulphide. In the limans near Odessa and in portions of the Black Sea a similar process is taking place. The fish, sensing the change, are slowly leaving this sea as the layers of water, poisoned by sulphuretted hydrogen, are gradually rising towards the surface. The death of the lakes scattered over the immense plains of Asia and the destruction of the impermeable soils of this continent from alkali salt formation are both due to the same primary cause -- intense oxygen starvation. In the instances just mentioned this oxygen starvation occurs naturally; in other cases it follows perennial irrigation.

Every possible gradation in alkali land is met with. Minute quantities of alkali salts in the soil have no injurious effect on crops or on the soil organisms. It is only when the proportion increases beyond a certain limit that they first interfere with growth and finally prevent it altogether. Leguminous crops are particularly sensitive to alkali, especially when this contains carbonate of soda. The action of alkali salts on the plant is a physical one and depends on the osmotic pressure of solutions, which increases with the amount of the dissolved substance. For water to pass readily from the soil into the roots of plants, the osmotic pressure of the cells of the root must be considerably greater than that of the soil solution outside. When the soil solution becomes stronger than that of the cells, water passes backwards from the roots to the soil and the crops dry up. This state of affairs inevitably occurs when the soil becomes charged with alkali salts beyond a certain point. The crops are then unable to take up water and death results. The roots behave like a plump strawberry when placed in a strong solution of sugar; like the strawberry they shrink in size because they have lost water to the stronger solution outside. Too much salt in the water, therefore, makes irrigation water useless and destroys the canal as a commercial proposition.

The reaction of the crop to the first stages in alkali production is interesting. For twenty years at Pusa and eight years in the Quetta valley I had to farm land, some of which hovered, as it were, on the verge of alkali. The first indication of the condition is a darkening of the foliage and the slowing down of growth. Attention to soil aeration, to the supply of organic matter, and to the use of deep-rooting crops like lucerne and the pigeon pea, which break up the subsoil, soon set matters right. Disregard of Nature's danger signals, however, leads to trouble -- a definite alkali patch is formed. When cotton is grown under canal irrigation on the alluvial soils of the Punjab, the reaction of the plant to incipient alkali is first shown by the failure to set seed, on account of the fact that the anther, the most sensitive portion of the flower, fails to function and to liberate its pollen. The cotton plant naturally finds it difficult to obtain from mild alkali soil all the water it needs -- this shortage is instantly reflected in the breakdown of the floral mechanism.

Is the alkali condition confined to the tropics and sub-tropics? May it not, under certain circumstances, occur in temperate regions such as north-western Europe? Is it a factor in the sandy soils of Wareham in Dorsetshire recently investigated by Professor Neilson-Jones and Dr. Rayner? It is impossible at the moment to answer these questions till the soil studies of the future consider the biological activities in relation to the physical and chemical factors as well as to the season. They may not have reached the grade of decay known as alkali land, but they are starved of oxygen, all the conditions needed for the establishment of the anaerobic and semi-anaerobic state being present. This is made clear by the readiness with which they respond to any improvement in surface and subsoil drainage, as well as to sub-soiling. Soil conditions must be looked at as a living and changing system and not merely as something static and stable. The soils of the north temperate zone, for example, often suffer from poor soil aeration. Moreover, many of the soil profiles exhibit the blue and red markings so common under alkali patches, as well as bands of humus which must have been originally formed near the surface, then carried in solution and afterwards precipitated. The soil organisms, which reduce compounds containing sulphur to sulphuretted hydrogen, are known to exist in these soils. All facts point to the necessity for further work so as to provide a clear answer to the above mentioned questions, while from the practical point of view there is an immense field for improvement, especially by means of sub-soiling, over many areas which are now allowed to continue in a very unsatisfactory state. The problem of soil aeration is by no means, therefore, confined to the tropics, and it behoves the pioneers of farming in the temperate countries to turn an immediate attention to the various fairly simple devices by which very great, and above all, permanent improvements could be effected.

The stages in the development of the alkali condition are somewhat as follows. The first condition is an impermeable soil. Such soils -- the usar plains of northern India for example -- occur naturally where the climatic condition favour those biological and physical factors which destroy the soil structure by disintegrating the compound particles into their ultimate units. These latter are so extremely minute and so uniform in size that they form with water a mixture possessing some of the properties of colloids which, when dry, pack into a hard, dry mass, practically impenetrable to water and very difficult to break up. Such soils are very old. They have always been impermeable and have never come into cultivation.

In addition to the alkali tracts which occur naturally, a number are in course of formation as the result of errors in soil management, the chief of which are as follows:

Alkali land, therefore, starts with a soil in which the oxygen supply is permanently cut off. Matters then go from bad to worse very rapidly. All the oxidation factors which are essential for maintaining a healthy soil cease. A new soil flora -- composed of anaerobic organisms which obtain their oxygen from the sub-stratum -- is established. A reduction phase ensues. The easiest source of oxygen -- the nitrates -- is soon exhausted. The organic matter then undergoes anaerobic fermentation. Sulphuretted hydrogen is produced as the soil dies, just as in the lakes of central Asia. The final result of the chemical changes that take place is the accumulation of the soluble salts of alkali land -- the sulphate, chloride, and carbonate of sodium. When these salts are present in injurious amounts, they appear on the surface in the form of snow-white and brownish-black incrustations. The former (white alkali) consists largely of the sulphate and chloride of sodium, and the latter (the dreaded black alkali) contains sodium carbonate in addition and owes its dark color to the fact that this salt is able to dissolve the organic matter in the soil and produce physical conditions which render drainage impossible. According to Hilgard, sodium carbonate is formed from the sulphate and chloride in the presence of carbon dioxide and water. The action is reversed in the presence of oxygen. Subsequent investigations have modified this view and have shown that the formation of sodium carbonate in soil takes place in stages. The appearance of this salt always marks the end of the chapter. The soil is dead. Reclamation then becomes difficult on account of the physical conditions set up by these alkali salts and the dissolved organic matter.

The occurrence of alkali land, as would be expected from its origin, is extremely irregular. When ordinary alluvial soils like those of the Punjab and Sind are brought under perennial irrigation, small patches of alkali first appear where the soil is heavy; on stiffer areas the patches are large and tend to run together. On open, permeable stretches, on the other hand, there is no alkali. In tracts like the western districts of the United Provinces, where irrigation has been the rule for a long period, zones of well aerated land carrying fine irrigated crops occur alongside the barren alkali tracts. Iraq also furnishes interesting examples of the connection between alkali and poor soil aeration. Intensive cultivation under irrigation is only met with in that country where the soils are permeable and the natural drainage is good. Where the drainage and aeration are poor the alkali condition at once becomes acute. There are, of course, a number of irrigation schemes, such as the staircase cultivation of the Hunzas in northwest India and of Peru, where the land has been continually watered from time immemorial without any development of alkali salts. In Italy and Switzerland perennial irrigation has been practiced for long periods without harm to the soil. In all such cases, however, careful attention has been paid to drainage and aeration and to the maintenance of humus; the soil processes have been confined by Nature or by man to the oxidative phase; the cement of the compound particles has been protected by keeping up a sufficiency of organic matter.

The theory of the reclamation of alkali land is very simple. All that is needed, after treating the soil with sufficient gypsum (which transforms the sodium clays into calcium clays), is to wash out the soluble salts, to add organic matter, and then to farm the land properly. Such reclaimed soils are then exceedingly fertile and remain so. If sufficient water is available, it is sometimes possible to reclaim alkali soils by washing only. I once confirmed this. The berm of a raised water channel at the Quetta Experiment Station was faced with rather heavy soil from an alkali patch. The constant passage of the irrigation water down the water channel soon removed the alkali salts. This soil then produced some of the heaviest crops of grass I have ever seen in the tropics. When, however, the attempt is made to reclaim alkali areas on a field scale by flooding and draining, difficulties at once arise unless steps are taken first to replace all the sodium in the soil complex by calcium and then to prevent the further formation of sodium clays. Even when these reclamation methods succeed, the cost is always considerable; it soon becomes prohibitive; the game is not worth the candle. The removal of alkali salts is only the first step; large quantities of organic matter are then needed; adequate soil aeration must be provided; the greatest care must be taken to preserve these reclaimed soils and to see that no reversion to the alkali condition occurs. It is exceedingly easy under canal irrigation to create alkali salts on certain areas. It is exceedingly difficult to reverse the process and to transform alkali land back again into a fertile soil.

An interesting development in the reclamation of alkali soils has recently taken place at the Coleyana Estate in the Montgomery District of the Punjab. The method adopted is a first-rate pointer to the right way of solving this or any other agricultural problem. It consists in a clever diagnosis of natural processes and an ingenious adaptation of them to attain the wished-for end. Nature is made, as it were, to retrace certain steps so as to re-establish more desirable soil conditions; she is asked to undo her own work. On the Coleyana Estate Colonel Sir Edward Hearle Cole, C.B., C.M.G., first removes the accumulations of alkali salts from the surface, then ploughs them up and plants dhup grass (Cynodon dactylon, Pers.) which is grazed as heavily as possible by sheep and cattle for some eighteen months to two years. The turf is then killed by a turnover plough followed by a fallow during the hot season (May and June). The land is then prepared for a green-manure crop, followed by a couple of wheat crops in succession, and then put into lucerne or cotton. The great thing in this reclamation work is to scrape off all alkali salts as they appear, remove them from the land, and use the minimum irrigation water for the establishment and maintenance of the crop of grass. The underground stems and roots of the grass then aerate the heavy soil: the sheet-composting of the turf and the droppings of the livestock create the large quantities of humus needed to get this heavy land into condition for wheat, cotton, and lucerne. Sir Edward is now making a point of never leaving such reclaimed land uncovered so as to make the fullest use of the energy of sunlight in creating vegetable matter, which ultimately gets converted into humus. He also takes advantage of deep-rooting plants such as chicory, lucerne, and arhar (Cajanus indicus, Spreng.) for breaking up the subsoil and is a firm believer in the principles set out in The Clifton Park System of Farming. In this way, areas once ruined by alkali salts are now producing crops of wheat up to 1,600 lb. to the acre. This is, perhaps, the simplest and easiest method of reclaiming alkali soils that has yet been devised. It makes the crop itself do most of the work. (Indian Farming, I, 1940, p. 280.)

A further development of the Coleyana method of reclaiming alkali land suggests itself. When the grass crop is ploughed up, it might be worth while to sub-soil the land to a depth of fifteen to eighteen inches four feet apart, using a caterpillar tractor and a Ransomes sub-soiler. This would shatter the deeper soil layers, provide abundant aeration, and prepare the land for the succeeding crops.

Nature has provided, in the shape of alkali salts, a very effective censorship for all schemes of perennial irrigation. The conquest of the desert by the canal by no means depends on the mere provision of water and arrangements for the periodical flooding of the surface. This is only one of the factors of the problem. The water must be used in such a manner and the soil management must be such that the fertility of the soil is maintained intact. There is obviously no point in creating at vast expense a Canal Colony and producing crops for a generation or two, followed by a permanent desert of alkali land. Such an achievement merely provides another example of agricultural banditry. It must always be remembered that the ancient irrigators never developed any efficient method of perennial irrigation, but were content with the basin system, a device by which irrigation and soil aeration can be combined. (The land is embanked; watered once; when dry enough it is cultivated and sown. In this way water can be provided without any interference with soil aeration.) In his studies on irrigation and drainage, King concludes an interesting discussion of this question in the following words which deserve the fullest consideration on the part of the irrigation authorities all over the world:

"It is a noteworthy fact that the excessive development of alkalis in India, as well as in Egypt and California, is the result of irrigation practices modern in their origin and modes and instituted by people lacking in the traditions of the ancient irrigators, who had worked these same lands thousands of years before. The alkali lands of to-day, in their intense form, are of modern origin, due to practices which are evidently inadmissible, and which in all probability were known to be so by the people whom our modern civilization has supplanted."

These words should be studied by all who are concerned with the extension of irrigation schemes. The unwise pursuance of such schemes with a view to the immediate production of easily grown crops without the lasting maintenance of fertility can only end in the regular suffocation of precious tracts of the earth's surface.


Next: 8. The Diseases of Crops

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