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Show Earth Does Not Absorb All Rain Hitting Ground "Wken raindrops hit the ground they either enter it, being absorbed by the soil, or collect on top of the ground and move off over the surface sur-face in the form of surface runoff," run-off," R. O. Cole, Purdue university extension soil conservation specialist, special-ist, told a group of Indiana farmers recently. "If it were possible for the soil to absorb all of the rainfall there, of course, would be no runoff run-off and therefore no soil and fertility losses caused by erosion. Since this is not possible all that we can hope to do is to maintain and in some instances in-stances increase the organic mat-ter mat-ter supply of the soil which will tend to reduce the amount of run-off. The other thing which we can do is to reduce the rate at which this run-off travels over the surface of the ground. This may be accomplished accom-plished by keeping slopes under better bet-ter cover, cultivating on the contour, con-tour, that is, across the slope rather than up and down, and breaking up the long slopes by strip cropping, buffer strips or terraces." |