September 1952 — Vol. 33, No. 9 —
Conserving Our
Soil
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Some people are shocked by the idea of the
need for conservation of resources. They are still attuned
to the thought of wide open spaces - all the West to fill
- Canada the granary of the world - and all that.
Their sort of thinking marches alongside the old idea that
man's chief end is to conquer nature. Today, we realize as
never before that man can only remain top of creation by working
with nature.
The fact that agricultural soil resources in the world are
limited makes it necessary to use and conserve them to our
best ability. Dr. E. S. Archibald, director of the Experimental
Farms Service at Ottawa, and now an executive in the Food
and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, estimated
in 1949 that we have only two acres to support each person
in the world.
That is not much soil to supply all our food needs, but
when proper development and conservation are used we can make
it do. This is why farmers are introducing new practices,
and learning to use technology and science.
Conservation may be embraced as a way of life, designed
to promote better and more enduring values for the human race.
The human element is the very foundation of every conservation
programme, as well as being the reason for it.
There is no need for hysteria about conservation. While
accomplishments up to now in relation to needs give no cause
for complacency, the great strides that have been made in
research in a few years are truly impressive. The work looks
small against the backlog of things undone. It lagged in its
early days because of the too—great enthusiasm of its
crusading supporters who killed public interest by their exaggerations.
Now we are starting to catch up with the realities.
What IS Conservation?
Conservation is the informed, conscientious management of
resources. It is development as well as protection. It is
use as well as saving.
Conservation means more than putting the brakes on use of
field crops, trees and minerals. The conservationist is not
a hoarder, but a person who makes judicious choices. He has
three general principles. In the first place, he applies resources
primarily to those uses for which they possess particular
qualifications: for example, crude oil can either be burned
under a boiler in competition with coal or, when refined into
gasoline, be used in ways with which coal cannot compete.
In the second place, he prefers to use continuing or recurring
resources instead of fund resources: vegetation, water and
sunshine instead of minerals, when such a substitution is
economically feasible. And in the third place, he tries to
protect his sources of supply.
Conservation may be summarized as meaning "We will use without
using up." It also means the restoration to sustained productivity
of worn or damaged resources, and it means selection of land
for use according to the best it is capable of giving.
A report of the United States Soil Conservation Service
in 1948 said: "Of the approximately 450 million acres now
classified as cropland, about 60 million should be taken out
of cultivation altogether." That land is too steep, too shallow,
too poor, or too "susceptible to erosion to be cultivated
successfully.
In our economic system, wherein farmers are free agents,
there is no authority to "take" their land out of cultivation.
Use and care of their land is the responsibility of owners
and users. They may, however, call upon government authorities
to help them.
Agriculture in Canada
It will be realized that how to use our land resources is
at once a national problem, a local problem and an individual
problem.
Canada has, said last year's census, a total farm area of
174 million acres, about 7½ per cent of our total land area.
Our grain exports reached an all—time high record in
the crop year which ended on July 31st, 1952: 509 million
bushels, including 357 million bushels of wheat and flour,
72 million bushels of oats, and 70 million bushels of barley.
How much more farm land have we? Dr. Archibald told a UNESCO
conference in 1949 that estimates of the total potential acreage
in Canada suitable for cultivation ranged from some 350 million
acres to about 130 million acres. The higher figure represents
land which is physically arable, and the lower figure represents
land which on present day economic and technical levels would
support a self—sustaining agriculture. "Unsettled, tillable
land in Canada suitable for present—day agriculture,"
he said, "would probably not exceed some 40 million acres,
much of which is as yet inaccessible."
Canada's continued prosperity in agriculture reflects the
fact that many of the practices which are basic in a planned
soil conservation programme have been followed for years by
our more progressive farmers.
Some farms which have been under cultivation since long
before Confederation are producing far above the average yields
of farm crops. Their owners have appreciated the fact that
the maintenance of soil fertility is the key to successful
land use and preservation. They have not mined their soils,
but have consistently put something back into the soil as
a capital investment.
The changes that have taken place since those farms were
first ploughed, and the changes which are in prospect daily,
make farming a many—sided business. Young men who look
forward to farming as an occupation will need to learn the
skills associated with mechanization, how to conduct a complex
business enterprise, and the chemistry and physics of conservation.
Those who are well adapted for a business of this kind are
likely to find in agriculture opportunities for gracious living
and a sense of achievement as good as in any other occupation.
The Needy World
That is Canada. But beyond Canada there is a needy world.
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution there has
been an explosive upsurge in world population. We have increased
in number fourfold in the last two hundred years, and experts
do not predict a slackening in the rate of increase for at
least fifty years. Every day there are 60,000 more people
to feed and clothe from the resources of the earth than there
were the day before.
About half of the world's people, a billion of them, are
under—nourished or near starvation, declares Dr. O. M.
McConkey in his book Conservation in Canada published
this year. His estimate is confirmed by an article in the
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science, where Dr. H. L. Shirley, acting dean of the State
University of New York, says: "In a world where half the people
are poorly fed and housed, needless waste of resources is
viewed as a sin against mankind." Sir John Orr (now Lord Boyd—Orr),
who was director general of the Food and Agriculture Organization
of the United Nations, said in 1947 that we must double the
world's food production if all the people in the world are
to enjoy an adequate diet. If we keep increasing our population
at the present rate we are heading toward a food crisis.
Some people in the well—endowed western world think
that public men and writers are unduly pessimistic. In our
own interests we should not deride the thoughtful students
of resources who point out that there is a limit
to how much the land can produce, and that the day can
come when, as it was phrased by the conservation director
of the Izaak Walton League of America: "there will he a smaller
cut of the pie for each to have."
There remain few appreciable areas of unused fertile topsoil
on earth except in regions where production is impractical
because of climatic conditions or lack of water. However far
apart the "prophets of doom" and the optimistic "cornucopians"
may appear, both groups agree that, if man is to escape want,
all known methods of decreasing present waste and of increasing
production and productivity will have to be much more widely
understood and applied during the next fifty years.
Three books which go deeply into the problem have been published
within the past few years. They are: Fairfield Osborn's Our
Plundered Planet; William Vogt's Road to Survival,
and Egon Glesinger's The Coming Age of Wood.
Since our space for growing crops is limited, the problems
of resource adequacy in future years will involve primarily
human wisdom. Conservation calls for co—operation of
city and country, of agriculture and industry.
Because all wealth derives primarily from the earth and
water, industry has an enormous stake in conservation. It
can prosper only if there is a bounty of raw materials from
which to fabricate the products it sells. Our homes, our incomes,
our food and our clothing come, at some stage or another of
their existence, from natural resources. There is, indeed,
a very human element in conservation.
"Water" is a Key Word
Water, a basic resource, has suffered because of man's lack
of understanding. We have accepted it casually. Because it
is so readily available, we have wasted it; we have allowed
it to run wild on our farm lands.
Waste of water by unnecessary runoff, by excessive use in
industry, in the home, and in irrigation, can lower the underground
water level over wide areas and may deplete the resource dangerously.
In some places water has become the earth's most precious
resource.
Animals and plants are tied, by their life cycle, to water.
Most crops require between 300 and 400 pounds of water for
every pound of dry matter they produce.
Conservation of water begins with the watershed which is
the area of drainage that feeds water by runoff and seepage
to surface and underground streams. A watershed may be a small
basin supplying a single stream tributary to a larger stream,
or it may be the drainage area, hundreds of square miles in
extent, supplying water to a large river.
Erosion must be controlled in the watershed if floods are
to be avoided, if reservoirs are not to become silted up,
if water is to be stored in times of rain and fed out in times
of drought.
Watershed development demands careful planning and the best
technical skill. Sound land—use and land—protection
programmes are needed as well as dams and other stabilization
works.
There is no magic formula that will reclaim overnight a
watershed that has been allowed to deteriorate over many years.
Only thoughtfulness, a desire to set things right, and skilful
work will do the trick.
Some parts of Canada have the problem of surplus water,
and drainage is needed. This is particularly true in Eastern
Canada, where heavy clay and muck soils become unworkable
for long periods. Observation reported by Dr. McConkey showed
that the average yield of grain was increased 23 bushels per
acre on drained land as compared with undrained land in the
first year.
In dry areas, irrigation takes a great deal of the risk
out of farming, and a bigger variety of crops can be grown.
Even in Ontario, where drought is not the problem it is in
the West, crops sometimes suffer from dryness during the critical
growing periods.
To increase underground water for wells, for springs, and
for maintenance of streams, every effort should be made to
have the rainfall sink into the ground, and to store it in
pools on high land and at stream sources.
Ponds are now being widely used in the conservation programme
in Western Canada. Earth is removed at a low part of a pasture
field, or in a gully, and built into a dyke or small dam.
Then a few trees, such as willow, elm or soft maple are planted
around the pond, and turf is grown down to the water edge.
Besides acting as reservoirs for replenishment of streams,
these ponds store water for domestic animals and accommodate
fish and other wildlife creatures.
It is not Amusing
The need for conservation is not something to be brushed
off lightly, even in a well—endowed country like Canada.
Study of what caused the downfall of once great countries
shows that failure to conserve natural and renewable resources
had much to do with their collapse. Many of them were just
as rich as Canada.
In sections of Europe, Asia and Africa nothing is left but
scars and ugliness and the ashes of burned—out civilizations.
There are some striking contrasts. China, whose northern
mountainsides were left bare by removal of forests and other
natural coverings, is a ghastly epitaph of human effort misapplied,
while Corsica, its hillsides covered with cultivated chestnut
trees, is an example of conservation practically applied over
centuries.
The Middle East, believed to be the birthplace of civilization,
has been deforested and erosion is widespread. At the beginning
of our Christian era Palestine had three million people; by
1850 the population had been reduced, largely by war, abuse
of land, and the cutting down of forests, to below 200,000.
On the other hand, consider what was done by people on the
Andean Plateau in South America. They were challenged by a
bleak climate and a grudging soil. Their coast approached
the barrenness of an equatorial desert, but they husbanded
the scanty water that descended from the western plateau and
gave life to the plains by irrigation: the pioneers on the
high plateau transformed their hill—sides into fields
by husbanding the scanty soil on terraces preserved by retaining
walls.
All the past is a lesson to the most wealthy countries of
today as well as to those which have constant or recurring
scarcities: on the one hand to preserve what they have, and
on the other to rebuild to the extent of their ability.
How it is to be Done
Conservation grows only through a continuous, critical correction
of past errors.
Take erosion control, for example. The erosion process is
vicious. A gully, eaten out by unchecked water, is a cancer
which can spread into a farmer's richest land, ruining it.
Wind erosion not only carries away soil, but it changes the
texture of the land through removal of fertile elements. Samples
taken of dust carried by the wind contained more than three
times as much organic matter and nitrogen, nearly five times
as much phosphoric acid, one and a quarter times as much potash,
as the original soil.
Water erosion starts with the first drop of rain, because
the impact of the raindrop tamps the soil into a thin hard
layer that reduces infiltration, increases runoff and encourages
the water to pursue its devastating course.
Small grain crops, such as wheat, oats, barley and rye,
will lose 16 to 40 times as much soil to water erosion as
will woodlands, forests and undisturbed prairies. Dr. McConkey
provides a table showing the soil eroded on test lots in 1945
to 1950. The loss per acre on summer fallow was 154.7 tons;
on land planted to corn 172 tons; on oats 3.85 tons, and on
alfalfa 0.29 tons.
Loss of Fertility
What does this mean in loss of soil fertility? The late
Dr. F. A. Wyatt, professor of soils at the University of Alberta,
said that the loss of one inch of soil from one acre of land
in the black soils belt of Alberta means the removal of 300
pounds of phosphorus, 1,500 pounds of nitrogen and 15 tons
of organic matter. It would require 150 tons of farm manure
to replace the lost nitrogen, and the phosphorus lost would
be equal to the amount removed from the soil by 20 crops of
wheat, each yielding 50 bushels to the acre.
Some preventive measures are purely mechanical, such as
terracing to slow down the runoff, but the higher and more
rewarding forms of soil conservation involve various modes
of incorporating plant material in the soil. They build up
the fertility of the soil. Only a fertile soil can resist
erosive forces.
Contour cultivating is a variation of the terrace idea,
and strip cropping is a supplement which pays well in Eastern
Canada by placing a further impediment in the way of the water,
and in Western Canada by reducing the creeping menace of erosion
by wind.
Crop rotation plays its part. By growing different kinds
of crops on the same land in recurring succession it varies
the consumption and replacement of organic material and nitrogen
in the soil, increases absorbency and reduces water runoff.
Stubble—mulch farming is a system in which the residues
of the crops are left on the surface. This mulch prevents
rainfall from packing the soil, it holds water, it resists
wind action, and as it decays and forms humus it improves
the soil structure.
This last is very important, because sick soil means sick
crops. A deficiency of humus means a deficiency of bacteria
in the soil and a deficiency of those useful aids to agriculture,
the earthworms (to which someone gave the poetic title "The
ploughs of God").
The farmer's soil is not a dead storehouse, but a living
dynamic system in which constructive and destructive forces
are constantly proceeding.
On Blaming the Past
Man has indeed, in the past, marked the earth with ruin,
but spread of knowledge leaves today's men without the excuse
that can be made for ancestors ignorant of the facts science
has uncovered.
With no criticism of the past, but having reached maturity
and being anxious to avoid the natural mistakes of our youth,
we need to formulate and carry out plans which will cause
our successors of a hundred years hence to say that we had
the imagination and courage to carry out the conservation
plans which our science made possible.
We need a broader and more earnest educational drive. Conservation
of Canada's natural resources is not a subject to fill an
odd hour, or to hover around on the periphery of the school
curriculum.
For Canada as a whole the bottom of the barrel seems well
covered, but for people in many sections of Canada it is frighteningly
bare.
Looking to the Future
Our conservation education and efforts need the support
of every citizen - farmer, industrialist, professional man,
housewife, merchant, union leader, parliamentarian, journalist
and artisan.
Searching always for water—saving practices, for weed
and pest control, for adaptation of seeds and plants to our
Canadian climate, and for farming operations designed to make
for better farm living, the directors and scientists and technicians
of federal and provincial government departments and of private
enterprises are doing good work to turn human effort to nature's
way. But more is needed.
The activities of government at all levels should promote
and assist the conservation practices which are to be undertaken
by individuals, and government must accept the responsibility
for necessary enterprises which are beyond the capacity of
individuals. Government must, too, bring in regulatory measures,
which are the rules of the game, just as necessary in conservation
as they are in transportation, communication and other enterprises
that affect the public welfare.
Wide public support is essential. Interest and activity
in conservation give every one of us the chance to say that
we are a part of the answer to a world problem and not part
of the problem itself. Through membership in and support of
the national and provincial and community conservation organizations
we can participate personally in a great endeavour.
If we are farmers, we can redesign our farms to put every
acre to its best use in accord with its individual capabilities.
Our farm plants can be actually redesigned, just as factories
are, for more efficient operation.
The conservation job is far from completed. A series of
major problems and tasks stretch out before the people of
Canada, and especially before the owners of natural resources
and industries. It is a sign of the highest intelligence to
take effective action before rather than after a threatening
event.
By thinking constructively and acting energetically, we
may avert the need for desperate emergency measures of reclamation
and rehabilitation.
Whoever destroys, or by his negligence allows to be destroyed,
the fertility of the soil in any region is doing an injury
to mankind as a whole.
As sane and responsible people, we will subscribe to the
creed of a Nigerian chieftain who said:
I conceive that the land belongs to a vast family, of which
many are dead, few are living, and countless numbers are still
unborn.
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
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