Word: soiled
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Such soil, formed by grasses, is favorable to grasses. When man plows a chernozem, his wheat or corn thrive mightily. They are grasses...
...cool, temperate region with enough rainfall to support dense forest, an entirely different type of soil develops: a podsol.† Tree roots do not bring enough lime to keep the soil from being acid, and their dead leaves form a layer of loose mold on the surface. Just below is a light-colored, often almost white layer of soil from which most of the soluble minerals have been leached by the heavy rainfall. Such a tree-formed soil is favorable for trees, but when man clears the forest and plants his grasslike wheat or corn, he gets poor crops...
...Master of Soil. The good farmer knows what to do. He adds lime and fertilizer and grows grass or clover or alfalfa. Gradually the thin, sour forest soil turns into something like chernozem. The well-kept farms of New York State, Pennsylvania and Ohio are now far more fertile than they were when the pioneers (who so vex Vogt) first felled the forest...
Other kinds of soil can be improved, some easily, others not. Sometimes all that a "sterile" soil needs is a trifle of boron or manganese. Such "trace elements" can make all the difference between big crops and failure...
...soil men laugh at the Neo-Malthusian doctrine that man must adapt himself to soil, and live with it as helplessly as wildlife. Man is not the servant of the soil, they say. He is its master...