Show to gy get et bigger better crops farmers should toss their plows on Junk pile says expert by ELBIO SCOTT WATSON Ite Beleas leased pd by western newspaper union GRAY the famous ienglish TEn 1 I english glish poet has made immortal the plowman who homeward plods his weary way tt and for two centuries the plowman and his plow have be been en the theme of song and story building up the idea that they are the benefactors of mankind in fact venerate the plow was the motto engraved upon the medals offered by the agricultural society of philadelphia early in the nineteenth century to stimulate agricultural experimentation and more than a dozen of our states have the plow as one of the symbols in their great seals in the face of this tradition it may come as a shock to most americans to be told that instead of venerating the plow we should look upon it as an enemy of agriculture and the tool that is responsible for all of the erosion the sour soils the mounting floods the lowering water table the vanishing wild life the compact and impervious soil surface which have be devilled devillen de the american farmer in recent years yet that is exactly what an agricultural expert tells us in a new book lie ile is edward 11 II faulkner and his revolutionary idea Is developed in the book Plow mans folly published recently by the university of oklahoma press and lest it be thought that he is only a theorist a visionary and a book farmer let it be added immediately that he is the son of a successful farmer that lie he was trained in agriculture at williamsburg baptist institute now cumberland college and at the university of kentucky that he has been a county agent in kentucky and ohio a smith hughes teacher of agriculture and a soil and crop investigator in private employment moreover he has carried on his experiments peri ments in garden plot and on a farm faim scale on land which he owns otiis in ohio and by his crop yields has translated theory into ino solid fact at the beginning of Plow mans folly mr faulkner says that his book sets out to show that the moldboard plow which is in use on farms throughout the civilized world is the least satisfactory implement for the preparation of land for the production of crops this sounds like a paradox perhaps in view of the tact fact that tha for nearly a century there has been a science of agriculture and that agricultural scientists almost to a man have used and approved the use of the moldboard plow nevertheless th eless the statement made above Is true and capable of proof much of the proof as a matter of fact has come in left handed banded manner from scientists themselves the truth is that no one has ever advanced a scientific reason for plowing he then proceeds to examine all the reasons that are gwen given for plowing and points out their inconsistencies cies and even absurdities assuming plowed land to be better for foi plant growth we should find gross grass growing more freely on plowed land than on similar unplowed cd land near by he points out weeds too should show preference tor for plowed land volunteer growth should take over and develop more rankly after land had been plowed than before Is this so observation Is that until plowed land has subsided again to its former state of firmness plants develop in it quite tardily if at all when dry weather follows the plowing it may bo be weeks or even months before either natural vegetation or a planted crop will make normal growth the fact is that bare land which notably erodes worse than soil in any other condition consists almost wholly of land that has been disturbed recently by plow or cultivating implement the only other bare land Is that which has been denuded of top soil by erosion or other forces there is significance in the fact that erosion rind and runoff are worse on bare land and that bare land is s defined dellner above the effect which plowing has upon this top soil is the principal reason why the author of Plow mans F folly ol 01 considers this instrument an enemy rather than a benefactor of agriculture in fact the principal thesis of the book is that it is wrong to plow natural fertilizers deep into the soil and that this natural fertilizer crop residue and green tnt manure inure crops should be incorporated into the top soil which as everybody this pretty girl seems to be heeding the an clent injunction iven crate the plow as she examines what has been preserved of one 7 of the first three plow s made by john deer e the yankee blackam I 1 th who invented the first successful steel aloiv in 1837 A Z recognizes is the really good soil just as mother nature does it in a forest or a meadow disk harrow hotter better we have developed some useless theories in that field declares mr faulkner men have come to feel for example that centuries are rec necessary for the development of a productive soil the satisfying truth is that man with a team or a tractor and a good disk harrow can mix into the soil in a matter of hours sufficient organic material to accomplish com results equal to what is accomplished by nature in decades in fact it is the disk harrow rather than the plow which should be the farmers principal instrument in producing more and better crops here is why the organic matter disked into the top of the soil not only decomposes and adds to the fertility of the soil but acts as a sponge to hold moisture where it is needed faulkner believes there is a capillary movement of water upward from the subsoil when the surface of the soil contains organic matter this top layer not only holds water but is able to receive it from below conversely when the soil has been plowed the loose layer at the surface loses its capillarity while the layer of green manure plowed under actually insulates the upper surface of soil from the subsoil this blotter is often the reason why a crop shows lack of moisture when there is moisture in the subsoil the crop has used RU all the moisture in the loose layer of top soil but can get no more from below until the organic matter plowed under has become completely decomposed and packed although the author of plow mans folly believes that the disk harrow is the farm tool which should more and more replace the plow he admits that it does have its lim limitations ita it is difficult to handle on side hills and it wont work so well on stony soil nor is it the complete answer to the question of how to get rid of weeds he concedes that there is no such thing as completely farming but he does believe that the system of farming which lie he advocates tends to get rid of weeds while the plow tends to encourage them for every time land is plowed seeds are buried for future sprouting then when it is plowed again some of the seeds are brought to the surface for growth while more seeds are turned under to await their turn to sprout and so on ad infinitum fini tum under Faulk ners plan of using the disk harrow rather than the plow the weeds are mixed up LIP into the top soil and their seeds are never very far below the surface when such seed grows into a plant and the tha plant is cut then there is no reservoir of seed far under the surface to take its place gradually a field may get rid of weeds entirely if they are cut before they mature although of course there will always be some weeds 9 grown rown from seed that is blown or carried into the holds not a new idea but the problem of weed control is after all of lesser importance than th anthe the problem of preparing the soil so that it will be more productive in advocating his plan faulknor faulkner does not claim that it is new no new technical discoveries are to be alred here he says in his first chapter the discussion is concerned wholly with rith reducing to practical terms beims employable in any blodys backyard or on any farm the scientific information possessed for decades but hitherto not put to any extensive use moreover he does not just advocate a theory but he cites his own experience to prove that his theory is is practicable for example t there her e was the way he demonstrated its validity with the tomatoes which he transplanted even though he shocked some 0 of f his neighbors with what they considered his careless methods first he harrowed down a crop of rye that had grown three feet tall mixing rye and soil until hardly a trace of vegetation remained then he marked the land off in rows using an instrument he designed himself to pack the e worked soil of the rows firmly this was done to patch the soil back together so natures capillary action carried on by the plant root system could keep on elevating moisture to the surface for his tomatoes lie he cleaned all the dirt from the roots of his tomato plants and laid them along the rows on n the surface he covered the roots with rich soil and packed it down by foot by late afternoon every plant set in the forenoon was pointing toward the sky and bythe by the following morning every plant without exception was standing upright no water was used in transplanting and that was sufficient evidence that natures own watering system was at work prize tomatoes not only did the tomatoes live but his neighbors who had been dubious of his careless methods had bad to admit that his was the finest field of tomatoes in the neighborhood there was further proof of the he fact when he sold his tomatoes for he received as much as 25 cents a peck above the top price in the cleveland market one reason for this was the exceptional weight of my packed pecks mr faulkner explains fifteen pounds is the standard weight of a peck of tomatoes it was not unusual for a peck of my tomatoes to weigh 16 pounds and many weighed 17 most local tomatoes that year weighed from 10 to 14 pounds to the peck what the author of Plow mans folly did with tomatoes he also did with sweet potatoes cucumbers and beans and lest it be thought that his methods apply only to garden truck let it be recorded that they apply also to field grain several years ago he began nudging the united states department of agriculture to experiment with his theory of surface incorporation finally one of the leading agnono mists of tile the department set up a demonstration perhaps the intent was to disprove my theories writes mr faulkner on tho the contrary the outcome of the tests completely confirmed them the results ol of this official experiment proved that by working organic matter into the surface instead of plowing it in the resulting grain yield could be as much as 50 per cent greater the very first year of this tr trial al showed bow d such a result and these are only a few of the illuminating lumina ting facts to he found in the pages of Plow mans folly but they all lend emphasis to its authors contention that the sooner we make ancient history of many of our present farm practices the earlier we will w ill realize that the garden of eden almost literally lies under our feet almost anywhere on the earth we care to step we have not begun to tap the actual potentialities of the soil for producing crops |