February 1951 — Vol. 32, No. 2 —
Two Better Blades
of Grass
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We have become so accustomed to
thinking of increasing our food production as merely a matter
of opening up new land that it is somewhat shocking to realize
that the world supply of new land is just about exhausted.
We must think, in these days, how to make two blades of grass
grow on land where only one grew before. Or, if we insist
upon extending our farm land we must make it out of wornout
or inferior soil, after learning how to correct its shortcomings.
Soil, plants, animals and men are dependent upon one another.
If the human race is to survive, we must concern ourselves
with seeing to it that the soil is preserved and conserved.
It must be protected from washing away or blowing away, and
it must be enriched so that it has the proper nutrient qualities
for our plants.
There is no use in our eating apples to keep doctors away,
or carrots to improve our eyesight (even if these results
are guaranteed) unless the apples and the carrots have secured
from the soil and incorporated within themselves the natural
excellence they should have.
Attention has been directed by national and international
organizations to the plight of people in foreign lands who
have not enough food to go around. It is time we in Canada
turned our attention to this other aspect of the food problem.
We need to think of quality as well as quantity. One good
turnip may provide as much nutrition as two poor ones, and
if we can grow the same number of good turnips as poor ones
we have thereby doubled our crop of food.
The lack of a plant nutrient in soil may be made up by applying
manure, adding commercial fertilizer, and using farm management.
Because the deficiency may communicate itself to every one
of us through our daily meals, these three features of farming
become of pressing importance to people in every business
and in every part of Canada.
A run—down soil grows run—down food. Every crop
takes away part of every mineral from the soil, and every
bank customer knows only too well the budget difficulty he
gets into when he withdraws continually without putting equal
amounts or more into his account.
In the Farmers' Hands
Our health is to a large extent in the hands of our farmers.
The veterinarian may put drug store remedies into the feed
box to cure the ailments of livestock, and physicians may
prescribe pills and tonics to cure the ills mankind brought
about by eating faulty food, but the farmer can contribute
year by year to the prevention of physical disorders in men
and animals by producing crops that are abundantly supplied
with the necessary and proper qualities.
Our soil must be made so productive that it supplies the
required elements in proper balance for the normal growth
of the plants we need for health.
We can't judge food by our taste. Generations of faulty
feeding have robbed us of the taste—test used by animals.
Professor J. H. Ellis, of the Soils Department of the University
of Manitoba, said in an address published by the Manitoba
Department of Agriculture that animals have an instinct or
they develop some sense of values in regard to the healthfulness
of feeds. If allowed to range at will, they avoid the less
nutritious areas and gravitate with unerring accuracy to the
high mineral feeds on the better soils. When given free choice
under a kind of cafeteria system, animals will first consume
the food that is most needed for body functions.
This brings us to the question of bulk versus quality. Is
our food supply to be called "good" just because there is
plenty? By no means. It is good to have high yields, but luxuriance
of crops of itself is not goodness. Goodness in food plants
should imply possession of those qualities that satisfy the
requirements of animals and men for hear, for energy, for
growth, for body repair and for reproduction. To achieve such
goodness is a noble ambition for our farmers, and to retain
it is an equally high aim for our food processors.
What Plants Need
It may be worth while to consider briefly what is needed
from the soil by plants, livestock and human beings. All are
part and parcel of the same nutrition cycle which governs
all living cells.
Plants are living things. They take in food and convert
it into body tissues and energy. They seize the energy of
the sun's rays to build their tissues out of inert material.
Set a child and a cow on a heap of minerals, surrounded
by air, and with a tub of water: all the chemical elements
required for their bodies would be present. They would die
of starvation, because neither of them has the power to combine
the chemical elements into the food they require. But plant
alfalfa and grass and micro—organisms in the soil minerals,
water them, and give them air: the alfalfa and grass will
grow, converting the chemical elements into plant tissues
containing the food compounds needed by the cow, and the cow
in turn will convert the alfalfa and grass into milk, which
will provide food for the child.
This is a highly simplified illustration of food supply.
The amount of nourishment gathered into a crop depends upon
three factors: the amount of crop root in contact with the
soil, what goes on where they touch each other, and the time
they are in contact. In all this there is activity by the
plant and by the soil. The result is influenced by sunlight
and other factors as well as by the quality of the material
of which the soil is composed, but what the plant has of food
value depends in all but a tiny measure upon the fertility
of the soil.
Livestock Requirements
Livestock farming has been found to provide the least drain
on soil richness, because less plant food is exported in animal
products than when crops are sold off the farm, and a greater
portion of the fertility is retained in the form of manures.
However, livestock raise other problems.
Regular and adequate supplies of certain minerals in the
diet of animals are necessary if they are to grow and produce
and remain healthy. Some, such as calcium and phosphorus,
are required in considerable amounts to provide for proper
bone development. Others, such as copper and cobalt, are equally
necessary, though in much smaller quantities,
Common sense tells us that dairy or meat products from run—down
pastures, lacking in these minerals, cannot possibly have
the nourishing values of similar products from well—bred
and healthy animals reared on balanced, nutritious forage
and pastures.
Sir Robert McCarrison showed by experiment in India that
health and disease are the result of the quality of the food
eaten. He produced at will almost any disease he desired,
simply by varying the diet of the rats with which he was experimenting.
There are two interesting ways of judging the quality of
crops grown for animal feed. A deficiency in soil nutriment
may affect the plant by limiting its growth, or it may be
a deficiency in some mineral which is not needed by the plant
but should be passed on by it to the animal.
Pasture for livestock belongs on good soil, not any old
good—for—nothing else corner—of the farm. It
should be seeded to productive grasses and legumes, fertilized
to maintain high yields, and managed so that the herbage is
grazed uniformly. The good pasture should have several types
in its makeup - permanent, rotational and temporary - thus
providing plentiful grazing all season.
Owners of livestock do not like to be told that they are
starving their animals, but that is just what is happening
when over—grazed, under—fertilized land is seen
under the hooves of runty, scrubby and anaemic cattle. The
under—nourished grass does not fatten; it may be a filler,
but it is not food.
Experiments at Ottawa conducted continuously since 1930
have proved that pasture production can be increased economically
by the use of fertilizer. It encourages the growth of clovers
and the desirable kinds of grass, and increases the percentage
of protein and minerals in the fodder.
Human Health
The quality of the food we eat is the chief factor in our
physical fitness. No health campaign can succeed unless the
materials of which the body is built are sound.
Professor Ellis said, in the address previously referred
to: "To be healthy is to be well fed. If the foods produced
by farm and garden satisfy all food requirements so that bodies
can be kept in health, then the works of our hands are good.
On the other hand...if the women develop goitre, if the babies
have rickets, if the men cannot work because they are crippled
with arthritis, if the children have white spots on their
teeth, or if the girls have anaemia...these disorders are
evidences of malnutrition and faulty feeding."
Many of the soils on which food crops are grown do not supply
the plants with sufficient minerals to enable them to synthesize
vitamins in quantities to meet our demands. Further, and worse,
we are not satisfied to use many of our plant products in
the form in which nature gives them to us, but demand that
they be processed. Unless we know what nutrients are removed
in the processing, and make up the quantity from other sources,
we do not get enough of them.
Every step in food production is important. We have the
right to ask that the nutrition value of our food shall be
safeguarded all the way, through cultivation of the fields,
harvesting, processing, distribution, preparation and serving.
Managing the Land
To produce food of the highest quality to feed today s world
population is far from the subsistence husbandry of other
days. The ownership of land is a privilege, but it is also
a responsibility.
Soil fertility can result only from the foresight, labour
and study of generation after generation. That sort of farming
can make soils naturally poor into farms agriculturally rich,
and soils naturally fertile into lasting yielders of still
more nutritious crops.
What we are talking about now goes far beyond ordinary soil
conservation practices such as irrigation, contour ploughing,
planting cover crops to prevent wind erosion, and all that.
Many farmers who have taken all the conservation measures
written about in text books have been disappointed. They have
seen their crops dwindle in quantity and quality, but didn't
know just what to do about remedying the situation. The secret
is to regulate the quantity and the quality of organic matter
and plant food available to growing crop.
This starts, perhaps, with cultivation. In the United States,
the area in clean cultivation and row crops approaches one—half
of the cultivated land; in France and England, with their
longer agricultural experience, only about one—fourth
of the cultivated soils are in clean cultivation. Sod crops
have been found to be a most important factor in holding the
soil and maintaining its healthy productivity by their regular
additions of organic matter.
The question is, of course, how far should a farmer go in
ploughing, discing, hoeing, and the spreading of manure and
fertilizer? Canadian agriculture consists of many agricultures,
with regions differing widely in their soil condition and
requirements. What is successful on one farm may be ruinous
on another.
No farmer need remain in ignorance of the needs of his land.
The necessary instructions and question blanks for soil surveys
are available from agricultural representatives and agricultural
colleges, and samples of soil will be tested and reported
upon, and recommendations will be made for tillage and improvement.
Soil surveys are not an end in themselves. They are like
the physician's diagnosis that tells what is wrong and leads
to the proper treatment.
Just how intricate is the matter of soil selection and soil
feeding may be shown by a few examples. Consider cobalt. There
is no evidence that cobalt is necessary to the plant's health,
but soils deficient in cobalt may produce crops so low in
cobalt content that animals cannot get enough for their requirements,
even though they have ample bulk of feed to meet all other
needs.
Soil deficiencies in other minerals stunt the growth of
the plants themselves, reducing the quantity of feed. Too
much potassium may bring about a shortage of magnesium. When
there is lack of nitrogen, the plants cannot use phosphorus
or potash effectively, even though they may be present in
the soil in adequate amounts. And, still more complex, if
we follow an all—too—common practice of returning
to the soil only nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulphur
and calcium, we are hastening the depletion of the other plant
nutrients through increased crop production.
Maintaining Fertility
Fertilizer, properly chosen and applied, is an indispensable
friend of the farmer. We shall need fertilizer always, because
every crop harvested or grazed removes nutrient elements from
the soil. We must deposit if we are to continue to withdraw.
Fertility can only be maintained in one of two ways: either
by supplying large quantities of organic raw materials from
which humus can be manufactured in the soil itself, or else
by manufacturing humus outside the soil and applying it to
the land as a finished product.
To a person not a farmer the sensible approach to a solution
of this question would go something like this: the soil is
my capital; it is not inexhaustible; every crop I harvest,
every beast I graze, removes some of my capital; that capital
must be maintained. The best way to maintain it is like this:
I will get information from my agricultural representative
or the nearest agricultural college about the mineral requirements
of all the kinds of crops I might wish to grow; I will have
my soil tested to find out what it contains and what it lacks;
then I will sit down and make a budget. Knowing how many pounds
of each mineral will be removed by the crop I intend to have,
I shall know the composition of fertilizer and the amount
of fertilizer I should apply to meet that year's needs and
provide a little "kitty" for other years.
Natural or Artificial?
There has been controversy from time to time about the relative
value of organic fertilizers of animal origin as opposed to
chemical fertilizers produced commercially. Traditional ideas
tend to linger, but usually join themselves to newer ideas
in a compromise agreement. That is so with reference to manure
versus artificial fertilizers.
It is true that continuous injudicious use of artificial
fertilizers may lead sometimes to a loss of soil structure,
but on the other hand manure and other natural fertilizers
cannot be said to provide everything needed for all sorts
of land in the proper balance. Artificial fertilizer is usually
applied for the current crop, and the carry—over of benefit
to future years is less than that provided by farmyard manure.
Some soils respond to manure, and others respond to artificial
fertilizer.
This problem is better solved after talking it over with
people at a Dominion Experimental Station, a Provincial Department
of Agriculture, an agricultural college, or with your agricultural
representative.
Organic Quality
Holding a major place in our economy (though seldom thought
of by any but agricultural scientists) is the organic quality
of our soil. It is an important natural resource, a major
factor affecting the levels and quality of crops this year
and in the future, and a vital feature in the productive life
of every farmer.
Organic matter, sometimes loosely called "humus", is composed
of plant and animal matter undergoing decay. It includes such
material as dead roots, leaves, fruits, and stems of plants;
carcasses of insects, worms and animals; live and dead soil
micro—organisms; and various products of decomposition
of dead tissues. It tends to bind loose soils, open up heavy
soils, and increase the water—holding capacity of all
soils. In decomposing, it liberates nutrients which are then
available to the plant.
The most common methods of maintaining the necessary organic
matter in the soil are by the use of farm manure, cover crops
and residues. Our neglected wastes of straw, corn stalks,
and so on should be put to active work. No one should minimize
the importance of organic matter in the soil. It is one of
the essential or major factors in successful crop production.
In addition to turning under the residues of crops after
harvest, we may grow plants with the sole purpose of turning
them under. The function of a greenmanure crop as to add organic
matter to the soil; the purpose of a cover crop is to prevent
erosion, to shade the ground, or to protect the ground from
excessive freezing and heaving.
In reckoning the value in dollars and cents of either practice,
the farmer should keep in mind the investment feature. The
increase in the following crop may or may not be great enough
to pay for the ploughed—under crop or the year of sod,
but these practices may have a marked effect on yields of
subsequent crops for two or more years. A man's objective
should be to so plan his land use that the organic matter
will be maintained so far as is consistent with a reasonable
use of the soil
Commercial Fertilizers
Artificial fertilizers must be regarded as an essential
requirement of agriculture. They supplement the production
of plant food by the soil body itself, they improve the quality
of the vegetation, and they help to preserve the soil.
Farmers are accustomed to look at fertilizers in terms of
cost and yield. The fertilizer which is cheapest in dollars
per ton may not necessarily be the cheapest in actual content
of plant food or in actual fertilizing value. The price should
bear some relation to the nutrient qualities of the contents
and their fitness for the soil where use is planned.
Sales of mixed fertilizers and of fertilizer materials for
direct application to the soil by Canadian users amounted
to 764,581 tons in the year ended June 30, 1950. It is interesting
to see the provincial distribution of these sales (amounts
are in short tons): Newfoundland 4,214; Prince Edward Island
47,279; Nova Scotia 32,744; New Brunswick 71,459; Quebec 148,036;
Ontario 346,568; Manitoba 21,560; Saskatchewan 31,015; Alberta
32,876; British Columbia 28,830.
The sale of all fertilizer materials is regulated by the
Plant Products Division of the Dominion Department of Agriculture,
under authority of the Fertilizers Act.
The practice of mixing artificial fertilizers has become
common. The elements nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are
of great importance to plant growth, and commercial fertilizers
may carry one, two or all three, together with other elements.
Mixed fertilizers are described by a series of three numerals,
such as 5—10—5, which means 5 units of nitrogen,
10 of phosphate, and 5 of potash, always stated in that order.
The Fertilizers Act requires that substances or elements in
addition to these three shall be marked on the package. If
one of the elements is boron, there must be a warning given
that the fertilizer should be used only when recommended by
a competent authority.
Applying fertilizer in the right place is fully as important
as applying the right analysis or the right amount. Progressive
manufacturers of farm equipment have improved their distributors
in accord with the findings of scientists in laboratories
and field men making on—the—land tests.
There is no general pattern, but it has been found more
efficient to place the fertilizer at the sides of the seed
or plant, where it will be available when it is most needed.
This can be done by using a proper fertilizer attachment on
the seed drill, thus combining two operations in one.
It is good practice for the farmer to leave a check strip
in his field. This unfertilized strip will enable him to observe
the effects on growth throughout the season, and to estimate
the advantages obtained from the use of fertilizer.
A Way of Life
This has not been by any means the whole story of our food
needs and the usefulness of good husbandry in meeting our
needs. To tell that would mean going back far into antiquity,
and looking past the atom bomb into the future. Our horizons
are widening insofar as technical knowledge enables us to
do more productive work, but our obligations are broadened
year after year by the increase in world population and our
constantly rising standards of living.
Conservation of natural resources is a way of life. It is
wrapped up with goodness and generosity, with morals and life
satisfactions. Technology is its servant.
We in Canada need sound farming systems which will maintain
and improve soil fertility, if full advantage is to be gained
from the other benefits by which we are surrounded. There
must be no sub—marginal thinking about the problems involved,
or we shall all end up with sub—marginal living. History
suggests that a decline in soil fertility is always accompanied
by a corresponding decline in the vigour of the people who
dwell upon it. Freedom has never flourished in a hungry and
impoverished land.
In a mystery story by Michael Gilbert there is mention made
of the Husbandmen's League, which had an emblem showing
two blades of grass, representing thrift, crossed in front
of a sickle, representing hard work. The title of this Monthly
Letter is taken from Gulliver's Travels: "And he gave it for
his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or
two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only
one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more
essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians
put together." But let us make them two better blades
of grass.
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