Word: moldboards
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...central tenet is retiring the old moldboard plow, which laid the earth open to wind and water erosion. Instead farmers leave residue from the previous year's crops in place to hold soil and moisture, then scratch or chisel in seeds, which sprout through the decomposing residue. Crop rotation is used to break insect cycles. Weeds are targeted, controlled by new herbicides that quickly break down and vanish. In this rare and happy story that emerges from centuries of anguished agriculture practices and policies, there is the touch of God's hand soothing the earth and nudging it back...
...General David M. Shoup delivered a peppery annual report in the form of a "happy, warless New Year" greeting to his Pentagon staff. Said Leatherneck Shoup: "A year ago I took the grips of the plow in my hands. After pushing an accumulation of vines and weeds from the moldboard, I lifted the lines from the dust and found hitched to that plow the finest team I ever held a rein on. Little geeing and hawing have been necessary." But Shoup also gave the Corps a tilling in spots. Speaking of "pride," he deplored the noncommissioned officer "whose uniform looks...
...standard and short-wave broadcasts, a cigarette lighter on the dash, hydraulic controls, the tractor would retail for $4,000. Commenting that "two-thirds to three-quarters of my top soil now is in the Atlantic Ocean, or somewhere between here and there," Farmer Ike asked if the moldboard plow would cut 14 inches deep, was assured that it would go down 16 inches. He was anxious to ask his doctors how soon he could test his gift. "I always had ideas about what I would do when I got to the farm," he said, "but now I guess...
...minister to France, he spent a day in an Italian dairy learning how to make Parmesan cheese. His design of a more efficient moldboard for a plow won a gold medal from a French agricultural society. His library at Charlottesville, Va., which was the finest private library in the U.S., was bought by the Government to restock the gutted Library of Congress, burned by the British...
Like Edward H. Faulkner (Plowman's Folly, TIME," July 26, 1943), Dr. Hardy has found that farmers who use the old moldboard plow spend 33%-50% more than those using the shallow-plowing one-way disc. With the disc a farmer can cover double the acreage plowed in the same time. Nearly all of the farmers are now using discs. To avoid pulverizing the soil and laying the prairies open to soil drifting, they should not be pulled faster than 5½ miles an hour...