Word: plowing
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...most revolutionary ideas in agricultural history last week had the general approval of U.S. Department of Agriculture officials. The idea: that the plow is a great enemy...
Chief exponent of this theory is an Ohio experimental farmer named Edward H. Faulkner. He believes that plowing is responsible for erosion and most other ills of the U.S. soil. He tested his theory by using a cultivation method of his own: instead of plowing he disk-harrowed the soil and planted his crops in the chopped-up surface stubble, weeds and debris. His harvest was astonishing. Many a farmer who reads his newly published report (Plowman's Folly; University of Oklahoma Press; $2) may be tempted never to plow, again...
...Kentucky farmer's son, longtime county agent and agricultural teacher, Faulkner for 25 years has badgered farmers to tell him why they plow, claims that he never got an answer that made scientific sense. Most farmers plow, he concludes, mainly because they like to. Why is it, Faulkner asks, that when crops in a plowed field become parched and yellow, the weeds in unplowed adjoining fencerows still grow lush and green? Why do plants in meadows and forests grow prodigiously without cultivation? Because, answers Faulkner, they are fed TIME, July 26, 1943 and protected by decaying plants...
...result, Faulkner points out, is to render the bare soil a ready prey to drought or erosion by rain. Appalled at the damage done by the moldboard plow during its 200-year history, Faulkner observes that with all their machinery U.S. farmers get less yield per acre than Chinese peasants...
Bearded Soil. Farmer Faulkner is sure, on the basis of these results, that abandonment of the moldboard plow would result in immensely richer crops-without artificial fertilizer, lime, insecticides or even cultivating. His method, says he, would ultimately conquer insects (because bugs would find the crops less tasty) and weeds (because they would be killed off as they came up; weed seeds would not be buried and stored for future trouble, as they are by the plow). To the anticipated objection by most farmers that Faulkner's "bearded" soil would be harder to handle than clean plowed land, Faulkner...