Word: subsoilers
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...laugh at is the familiar phrase, "irreplaceable topsoil." Topsoil should certainly be cherished and protected, the soil men say, but it is not irreplaceable. In 1937, a U.S. Government experiment station skinned ten inches of soil off half an acre of virgin Ohio grassland, leaving nothing but the yellow subsoil. Corn planted on an untreated strip of this poor stuff produced no crop at all. But other strips were nursed along with fertilizer and crop rotations. During the sixth season, the best strip of man-made topsoil produced 86 bushels of corn an acre, more than twice the U.S. average...
...Kellogg thinks has been oversold. Some soils erode badly, he says, but others do not, even on steep, long-cultivated slopes. Great gullies cutting through a field destroy its value, but gradual erosion does little harm and may even be beneficial. When the topsoil washes gradually away, the subsoil may turn into topsoil with renewed fertility. "Much [erosion]," says Dr. Kellogg, "is a perfectly normal concomitant of mountain building and wearing down ... An important part is essential to the formation of productive soils. One cannot, or should not, try to stop erosion, but rather to control...
...whopping year. But in a literal sense, the sky might turn out to be the limit of such prosperity. It was much too bright. Last week was two weeks past the time to plant winter wheat, but the soil was hard and dry; there was little of the subsoil moisture that makes for banner crops. The last good sod-soaking rain had been in September's first week. From the north Texas and Oklahoma wheat plains came disturbing news: planting was far behind schedule; some farmers were seeding dusty fields. There were no critical spots...
Last week, near Fairbanks, Alaska, Army engineers were watching thermometers sunk in the icy subsoil under buildings and airports. Their job: to catch up with the Russians, leading authorities on Arctic construction problems...
While neighbors looked on approvingly, bulldozers dragged the fertile topsoil from John Haussermann's farm near Alma, Neb. and dug deep into the subsoil. The draglines and scrapers were collecting fill for a dam across one of Big Muddy's most fractious tributaries, the Republican. After more than a century of periodic suspense and terror, men were harnessing their old enemy, the Missouri River...